Project Background

Databricks is redesigning the Databricks Assistant experience inside the Data Intelligence Platform to improve discoverability, trust, and task completion for data analysts and data engineers. You are the UX/UI Designer embedded on a cross-functional team of 10 people: 1 PM, 1 designer (you), 5 engineers, 1 UX researcher, 1 data scientist, and 1 content designer. The team has an 8-week timeline to ship the redesign before the start of the annual customer conference, where the feature will be demoed to enterprise customers.

Midway through the project, product leadership changes strategy: instead of a broad visual refresh across Assistant entry points in SQL Editor, Notebook, and the left navigation, the team must prioritize a narrower launch focused on Notebook and a new onboarding flow for first-time Assistant users. The original roadmap is no longer feasible as planned.

Key Stakeholders

The Group Product Manager wants a conference-ready launch with a clear story. Engineering wants to avoid rework because two engineers are already committed 30% to production support. Research wants to preserve usability validation on high-risk flows. Marketing and field teams want polished demo paths, while the design systems team is concerned about introducing exceptions to the existing Databricks component library.

Constraints

• 8 weeks total; strategy change happens at the start of Week 4
• $45,000 remaining for research ops, prototyping support, and visual QA
• Team size fixed at 10; no additional headcount
• Engineering capacity reduced by 1.5 FTE due to support obligations and a planned internal release freeze in Week 8
• Dependency on design system approval within 5 business days for any new Assistant patterns

Complications

1. Early usability findings show first-time users do not understand when Assistant-generated output can be trusted.
2. Sales has already committed the broader redesign story to two strategic customers attending the conference.
3. The PM wants to keep the original launch date despite the strategy shift.

Your Task

1. Create a revised execution plan from Week 4 to launch.
2. Explain how you would re-scope the design work and communicate trade-offs.
3. Define stakeholder alignment steps and decision checkpoints.
4. Propose launch-readiness criteria and a fallback plan if the onboarding flow is not ready.
5. Identify the top risks created by the mid-project strategy change.