Databricks wants to improve the Databricks Assistant experience inside the notebook and SQL workflow by redesigning how generated results, follow-up actions, and citations are presented. A UX/UI Designer has proposed a richer interaction model in the notebook side panel, including streaming response states, inline source previews, and editable follow-up chips. Engineering has pushed back, saying the current frontend architecture and backend event model cannot support the full design in the planned release window.
The project team includes 1 designer, 1 product manager, 5 engineers (3 frontend, 2 backend), 1 user researcher, and shared QA support. The redesign is tied to a customer-facing platform release in 10 weeks, and leadership wants a credible improvement shipped to support enterprise adoption of Assistant.
The PM for Databricks Assistant wants a visible UX improvement in the release. The Engineering Manager wants to avoid destabilizing the notebook experience and is pushing for a narrower scope. The Design Director wants the shipped experience to preserve the core interaction principles from the original concept. The Field team wants something demo-ready for strategic accounts already evaluating Assistant.
You have 10 weeks, a fixed budget of $120K for design validation and QA, and no additional headcount. Engineering estimates the full design would require 14 engineer-weeks beyond available capacity. The release also depends on a shared notebook UI component library update scheduled for Week 4 and a backend citation API that may not be production-ready until Week 6.