Engineer for Empathy
Treat every visual, metric and data model as a conversation with a human.
Will your future self or a colleague still understand it in six months? Clarity now prevents costly confusion later. Anticipate questions a user will ask and make your outputs intuitive, actionable and trustworthy.
Build for Trust, Clarity and Scalability
Perfect numbers don't matter if nobody trusts them. Speed is useless if something breaks when the user makes a change or when the underlying data changes.
Accuracy is the baseline but what builds trust is when your work is obvious, intuitive and stable especially when you're not around to explain it.
See Yourself as a Translator between Data and Insight
The dataset might be messy, contradictory or partial. Our role is to translate it into insight. Translation means knowing when to simplify, when to state the assumptions made and when not to show something.
It's not dumbing down, it's being selective for the good of understanding.
Talk Like a Teammate, Not a Textbook
The goal of communication is to be understood so avoid technical jargon and focus on shared understanding.
Team dynamics may prevent others from asking for simpler explanations when they struggle to understand. This could lead to meaning being lost. If the words cause confusion, it really doesn't matter that they were the correct technical terms.
It's not about big words, it's about conveying meaning.
Write Like a UX Designer
Every model, measure or transformation is an event. Make it clear, stable and understandable.
- Document intent, assumptions and logic clearly.
- Use meaningful naming conventions.
- Structure models, measures and tables for discoverability and maintainability.
This is human-first data engineering where every artifact communicates intent and supports maintainability and scale.
Semantic Layers and Modelling
Design models that reflect the business, not just the database.
- Use human-friendly naming for entities, columns and measures.
- Group metrics logically.
- Hide helper columns and intermediate columns to reduce cognitive load.
- Align model structure with user mental models, not schema diagrams.
Collaboration and Workflows
I often work at the intersection of data, design and user experience. I focus on creating maintainable, logical and clear outputs that can integrate smoothly with larger workflows.
- I build data models and reports that anticipate user requirements and reduce friction for analysts and stakeholders.
- I think about scalability and clarity in my work. So it's easy for my peers to pick up and extend later.
- I collaborate closely with team members to ensure the work is actionable downstream.
Visual Design
Design visuals that guide understanding, not just decorate.
- If you do nothing else, align everything.
- Use colour sparingly and for meaning.
- Consider accessibility.
- Make use of whitespace and hierarchy to reduce user overwhelm.
- Test thoroughly to ensure all dynamic elements behave predictably.
Toolkit
- Power BI
- DAX, SQL, Python for transformations and calculations.
- Vega-Lite / Deneb for advanced visuals.
- Tabular Editor, DAX Studio and Measure Killer for maintainability and debugging.
- GIT Version control practices for development using .pbip files
- Own experience as a report consumer as well as a builder.