Siemens X Data Hub ETL
Sole Designer
B2B SaaS
0→1 Product Design
Design System
Internship
01
Overview
X Data Hub ETL is a lightweight data platform designed for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to model, integrate, and serve industrial data across IT and OT systems.
The product aims to lower the barrier of data integration by providing a configuration-driven, visual approach to data modeling and pipeline orchestration without requiring heavy custom engineering.
Note: This project is still in development. Due to confidentiality and launch constraints, only high-level design thinking and selected abstractions are shared here ：）
02
My Role
My responsibilities included:
03
The Challenge
Designing an ETL platform for SMBs presented some unique challenges:
Challenge 1
Flexibility
Support diverse data sources and evolving schemas without hard-coded pipelines.
Challenge 2
Control
Ensure predictable, transparent workflows instead of opaque automation.
Challenge 3
Lightweight
Reduce engineering overhead while retaining core ETL capabilities.
Balancing these constraints required careful product-level design judgment rather than surface-level UI optimization.
04
Design Focus
Given the early stage of the product, my design work focused on establishing a strong foundation rather than polishing individual screens.
Key areas of focus included:
Defining clear boundaries between data sources, models, pipelines, and services
Designing configuration-driven workflows that scale without becoming chaotic
Creating shared interaction patterns that could be reused across multiple modules
Building a design system that supports rapid iteration and future expansion
The platform’s power comes from allowing users to visually orchestrate pipelines without writing code. The design enables this by breaking the process into logical, configurable steps built upon the foundational abstractions.
05
Outcome (So Far)
Although the product has not yet launched, the design work helped:
🧠
Align product, design, and engineering teams around shared mental models
📈
Create a scalable structure for future feature development
✨
Reduce design and engineering rework as requirements evolved
This project marked a shift in my practice, from designing individual interfaces to designing systems and constraints that enable long-term product growth.
06
What’s Next
As the product continues to evolve, future work will focus on:
