Addressing the users' most critical pain point in a highly technical domain.
Adverity's data integration platform helps marketing teams connect, transform, and visualize data from hundreds of sources. Data mapping (the process of defining how raw fields from a source translate into a unified schema) is the most powerful yet most complex feature in the product. This project set out to make it accessible without sacrificing flexibility.
Users consistently ranked data mapping as their top frustration. The existing interface required knowledge of SQL-like syntax, offered no visual feedback on transformations, and provided cryptic error messages when mappings failed. As a result, most users relied on support tickets or internal data engineers to configure even basic mappings, creating a bottleneck that slowed down time-to-value for new clients.
We started by analyzing over 200 support tickets and conducting 12 user interviews across different skill levels, from marketing analysts to data engineers. This surfaced a clear gap: power users needed expression-level control, while most users just needed to connect fields visually. We explored multiple interaction paradigms (drag-and-drop canvas, guided wizard, and hybrid approaches), testing each with real mapping scenarios before converging on a solution.
The redesigned mapping interface introduces a visual canvas where users connect source fields to destination fields through direct manipulation. Smart suggestions auto-match fields by name and type, while a live data preview shows the transformation result in real time. For advanced users, an expression editor is always one click away, but it's no longer the default entry point. Inline validation catches errors before execution and explains issues in plain language.
After launch, mapping-related support tickets dropped significantly and self-service mapping completion rates increased across all user segments. New clients reached their first successful data integration faster, and the feature became a key selling point in product demos. The visual canvas was later extended to other transformation features in the platform.