Turning chaos into order.

Date. 2020 — 2021.

Company. New Relic.

Role. Product Designer.

Services. UX/UI, Prototyping, User Research, Information Architecture.

Tools. Sketch, Figma, Whimsical, Amplitude, Zoom, Airtable, Notion, Miro, Slack, Abstract, Lingo

Situation — The Chaos of Data and the Need to Filter.

New Relic handles massive volumes of data. But what happens when you need to find patterns, problems, or insights within millions of records? The platform had a search bar and filters applied across multiple sections: Galaxy Maps, Alerts, Incidents, Events and Violations, Dashboards, Workloads, Logs, Traces, APM, and Explorer.

But there was a problem:

It wasn’t scalable.
It didn’t allow advanced chained searches.
It didn’t help users efficiently narrow down and group relevant data subsets.

Through user interviews, we discovered that customers needed a more flexible and powerful system. They wanted to concatenate filters, save combinations, and quickly access what really mattered to them.

Task — Designing a Modular and Scalable Filtering System.

As a Product Designer, my role was to lead the design solution, working closely with developers, UX researchers, and the Product Manager.

This wasn’t just about designing a new UI. The challenge was to create a reusable system, easy to implement across multiple parts of the platform, and one that improved the search experience without adding unnecessary friction.

Action — Introducing Chiclets: The Filter Revolution.

The vision was clear: a compact, scalable, and modular system. This led to the creation of chiclets.

Each chiclet was a small, structured search unit composed of:

Key + Operator = Value.
Ability to add intermediate operators.
Chaining multiple chiclets to create advanced queries.
Saving custom filters for reuse across different sections.

Additionally, we focused on interaction design, ensuring that developers could implement keyboard navigation while keeping it intuitive for mouse users. Efficiency in every keystroke.

Result — Faster Searches, Less Frustration.

The impact was immediate:

32% reduction in search time, allowing users to find relevant data faster.
Increased adoption of saved filters, with 62% of users reusing them regularly.
Seamless implementation across the platform, scaling the solution from Explorer to the rest of New Relic’s modules.
Better user feedback, with customers feeling, for the first time, that they truly had control over their data chaos.

Designing systems instead of just screens makes a real impact. Because when everything fits together, people stop fighting against the tool and start working with it.

And that, my friend, is good design.

Final Reflections.

Designing filters might seem like a minor task. But in a system like New Relic, where data flows like an unstoppable torrent, organizing information is what makes the platform make sense.

This project taught me that great product architecture doesn’t just solve problems—it makes users feel like everything flows effortlessly. And to achieve that, you have to think about the details from the very beginning.

In design, as in life, it’s not about adding more things. It’s about placing the right things, in the right place, in the right way.

And that is the real art.

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