Case study · Tableau
Tableau Pulse Northstar Vision
From Hack to the FUTURE!
How a 2019 hackathon shaped Tableau's path to agentic AI. In 2019, a hackathon concept evolved into a long-term strategic vision that influenced Tableau's product direction, organizational structure, and approach to AI-driven data experiences.
The problem
In 2019, Tableau had reached a place of market saturation. They had attracted a massive audience of data analysts worldwide, but the company needed to set its sights on a larger user base. The goal? Grow the company by attracting more business users to the product. I identified an opportunity to combine emerging product capabilities with the metrics platform to deliver personalized, bite-sized insights. The vision was to transform how business users interact with data, shifting from exploration to guided, role-specific insights and actions.
Stage 1: Hackathon prototype
In partnership with Project Manager Katrina Midgely, I developed a prototype demonstrating a real-world scenario: a business user navigating Black Friday performance data.
The experience showed how users could:
- Quickly surface meaningful insights.
- Understand performance in context.
- Take immediate, informed action.
This prototype brought the concept of proactive, insight-driven analytics to life.
Stage 2: Organizational impact
The hackathon concepts directly influenced executive thinking. CTO Chris Stolte reorganized three major teams—machine learning, alerting, and metrics—into a unified "Insights and Actions" organization.
This shift aligned technical capabilities around a shared vision: delivering intelligent, actionable data experiences.
Stage 3: Expanding the vision
The impact of the hackathon extended far beyond product concepts. It catalyzed a rare and significant organizational moment at Tableau.
Following the reorganization, the UX team organized and led a leadership summit that brought together senior leaders across product management, engineering, user research, and UX. This level of cross-functional alignment was unprecedented for the UX team and marked a pivotal shift in how strategic vision was created within the company.
At Tableau, reorganizations of this scale are uncommon. Aligning multiple large teams under a new "Insights and Actions" organization created both an opportunity and a challenge: defining a shared vision for what this newly unified group could achieve.
To meet that challenge, we facilitated a large-scale Jobs-to-Be-Done workshop with executive and senior leadership. Through this process, we:
- Identified and aligned on the core user needs across business roles.
- Mapped opportunities for proactive, insight-driven experiences.
- Translated fragmented capabilities into a cohesive product direction.
The outcome was not just an extension of a hackathon prototype. It was the creation of a comprehensive North Star vision. I distilled these insights into a strategic framework that leadership could use to guide decision-making, product development, and investment for years to come.
Outcome
The original 2019 vision anticipated what is now recognized as agentic AI in data products.
When Tableau released its 2025 launch video for Tableau Pulse, the experience closely mirrored key elements of the original hackathon prototype, from proactive insight surfacing to guided, contextual user actions.
This was not a short-term iteration. The concepts introduced in 2019 helped set a direction that Tableau continued to invest in over the next six years. The eventual product experience reflects a sustained effort to realize that early vision at scale, validating both the direction and its long-term strategic value.
