In-House Data Catalog App ("cat-a-log")

A data-to-English dictionary, search bar UX with e-commerce-style filters, so anyone could find, tag, and monitor data assets without switching screens.

16
user research interviews across technical and non-technical users
20
catalog vendors evaluated against real user feedback before deciding to build
↑
daily usage and adoption company-wide

Shipped in phases

Phase 0
Kickoff: 20-vendor evaluation confirms the build-vs-buy case
Phase 1
Ship v1: search UI + filters live, built on the existing ETL
Phase 2
Research: 16 user interviews, technical + non-technical
Ongoing
Blocked: roadmap paced by lack of a full-time developer

Find, tag and monitor on one screen

Filters
source, type, owner, team

Search
"page_path"

Results
+ annotations + tags

Two risks, and what happened

Risk	How it was handled	Result
Feasibility. Could a fully custom in-house tool match what 20 vendors offered, without the technical debt of a third-party dependency?	Evaluated 20 catalog vendors against real user feedback before deciding to build.	A web-based search engine built on top of the existing metadata ETL.
Usability. Users still had to switch screens to search, tag, and monitor.	Drop-down filters rather than exposing all metadata at once. Discoverability vs. overwhelm, resolved by user testing.	16 interviews post-launch reshaped the roadmap and confirmed the underlying ETL's data quality.

My role. Owned the build-vs-buy synthesis from the 20-vendor evaluation, ran and synthesized the 16 user interviews into roadmap changes, and onboarded UX Research to mentor the team on interview technique.

The tradeoff. Project pace was directly constrained by not having a dedicated full-time developer. Next: prioritize the backlog of user-requested features and secure a dedicated full-time developer.

Product leader with a data scientist past · Zapier, Clearbit, HubSpot

Product doc: ale-cabrera.com/portfolio/catalog-app