How we designed Metric Trees for Mixpanel

How we introduced a more expressive, strategic, and collaborative way to work with metrics.

Metric Trees started with a design problem, not a data one. In strategy meetings and planning sessions, teams aren’t lacking metrics; they're surrounded by them. What’s missing is structure: a clear view of how those metrics relate, which matter most, where ownership lives, and how strategy ties in.

While dashboards are good at displaying data, they struggle to visualize relationships. Tools like Figjam and Miro can help with visualization, but they're disconnected from the underlying data.

We aimed to develop a more expressive model—one that combines visualization and data, to accurately reflect how a business operates. A space where teams can align on what matters, track performance in context, and adjust course together.

Enter Mixpanel Metric Trees.

KPI trees offer a visual, hierarchical view of how metrics across a business ladder up to top-line goals. But most are static snapshots. So, we asked: What would it take to make a metric tree feel alive—something you can build, refine, and act on collaboratively?

We’re introducing an entirely new surface inside Mixpanel, backed by design primitives we hadn’t used before. What follows are six foundational design choices we made to bring this idea to life: from the way the tree is structured, to how it evolves over time.

When early customers showed us their examples of Metric Trees, one thing became clear: there is no standard tree shape. Some are deep and narrow, others broad and shallow. Some teams group by product lines, others by organizational structure or user journey.

We needed a layout that wouldn’t prescribe one way of thinking. That’s why we chose a canvas.

The canvas gave teams spatial freedom: to grow the tree in any direction, to visually group ideas, and to structure their model around how their organization actually operates.

It also sets the foundation for more flexible workflows. Teams can cluster metrics, layer on strategy cards, or use empty space to sketch new branches, helping to adapt the structure to fit the way their business evolves.

As teams began using the canvas to plan and structure their Metric Trees, something interesting happened—they stopped treating it as a personal workspace and started treating it like a shared one.

White space became a scratchpad. Strategy reviews turned into working sessions. People wanted to build the tree together, live.

To support this shift, we introduced Mixpanel’s first real-time multiplayer editor, complete with autosave, cursor presence, and shared state across collaborators.

It transformed the canvas from a static layout tool into something more dynamic: a space where executives, analysts, and PMs could align in real time. The tree became not just a reflection of strategy, but a collaborative space to shape it.

Mixpanel Metric Trees aren’t just about mapping relationships. Trees help teams answer: Is this performing as expected? and What changed?

Too often, that means jumping between reports, toggling filters, and managing tabs, which turns strategy into busywork. We designed metric cards to cut through that.

Each card surfaces enough context to make confident decisions in the moment. Teams can add up to three time comparisons—like WoW, MoM, or YoY—tailored to the natural rhythm of each metric: WAU weekly, ARR monthly, retention quarterly.

To keep the interface clean, each card shows one metric and chart at a time. A segmented toggle allows users to switch views, with each option labeled by its lift, so trends jump out instantly.

We also added a subtle interaction detail: when you select a comparison, such as “YoY”, on one card, every other card with this option updates to match. It’s a small thing, but it turns fragmented data points into a cohesive structure.

Most of Mixpanel is built for users who already know what they want to measure and have the data to do it. But Metric Trees flipped that assumption.

Here, teams often start with questions. They’re defining what matters, mapping strategy, and outlining what should be measured, often before any data exists.

So we designed for that moment of ambiguity. Every metric card starts blank. You can name it, move it, group it. No data required.

It’s become a tool for shaping implementation, not just reflecting it. New customers use Metric Trees to map what to track, surface what’s already available, and align on a clean implementation, before any data is sent.

Strategic conversations don’t end at the surface. A metric moves, and the next question is immediate: Why?

Thanks to Mixpanel’s foundation—a fast, intuitive analysis platform—Metric Trees make that next step seamless. Behind every metric card is the full power of Mixpanel: Insights report, Funnels report, Retention report, Session Replay, and more. One click, and you’re gliding from the tree into a targeted query, without needing to reconfigure filters or recreate the metric.

This speed is especially powerful in live settings such as planning reviews, QBRs, executive check-ins, where clarity needs to come fast. You can move from high-level view to diagnostic depth in seconds, without interrupting the conversation.

But understanding the “why” in the moment is just the beginning.

A single insight can answer a question, but strong strategy is built from connecting insights over time.

Too often, important discoveries fade. They’re shared in passing, tracked in silos, or lost when roles change. And when context is lost, teams repeat work, miss key patterns, and lose out on opportunities.

The Insights Hub is our response to that. It’s a new space attached to each metric card: part notebook, part bulletin board, part audit trail.

Users can add reflections, pin relevant analyses, and track experiment results—all tied to that specific metric. It’s not about writing everything down. It’s about capturing the key inflection points so they’re there when you need them for your next strategic decision.

In many ways, this is our bet on institutional memory. If strategy is a series of decisions, Insights Hub helps explain why those decisions were made.

Designing Metric Trees meant rethinking fundamentals: how time behaves, how metrics relate, and even what a metric is before any data exists. This project pushed us to make tough tradeoffs and question long-held assumptions. A few key learnings helped us navigate those moments:

There’s more to explore. We’re beginning to think about how trees help teams track what they set out to do, and even assist in mapping themselves. Some of what’s coming next will build directly on what’s here—some will push even further.

Our job as designers at Mixpanel is to shape clarity in complex systems. Metric Trees are our attempt to do that, for metrics, for teams, and for the conversations in between.

Explore Metric Trees in Mixpanel today.