Designed a platform to help enhance developers' productivity and reduce coding time.
Duration:
2 months
Industry:
Technology
Platforms:
Web
Areas:
Research, Product, UX, Testing
Background & Challenges
Developers used scattered, unorganized tools, making onboarding and transitions difficult.
They lacked awareness of tools that could speed up development.
There was no easy way to share work or reuse code, often causing them to start similar projects from scratch.
Problem Statement
How might we boost developers' efficiency, enhance collaboration, and make better use of shared assets and resources?
User Research & Pain Points
To start the process off, I began by interviewing several developers and creating a persona and customer journey to better understand the end user, their current experience, and the pain points they face.
I worked with the project sponsor to create a prioritized list of pain points and determine which ones we would include in the MVP.
Pain Point Prioritization & Ideating Solutions
Next, I hosted a workshop with key stakeholders to prioritize pain points. Afterwards, we ideated solutions that would address these pain points which would become features of the platform.
Defining Requirements
For this particular project, I also had to fill in the role of a product manager, as the project sponsor was mostly hands-off.
I proceeded to write requirements in the form of user stories to obtain approval from the project sponsor prior to starting creating wireframes.
Information Architecture
Now that I had a better idea of the users' pain points and how we would solve them, I created user flows to map out the pages and features that would fulfill their needs.
Additionally, I designed a sitemap to illustrate how we could optimally organize the pages within this platform.
Design Ideation
Now that we had a better understanding of the user, a clear picture of the pages within the platform, and the requirements for each of pages, I was ready to start the design ideation process.
Prototyping & User Testing
I wanted to get at least one round of usability testing and feedback as part of the design process. I wrote a testing script, created a clickable prototype that would help me test my key questions , and proceeded to conduct 5 user tests with developers.
Key Insights From Testing
Content Design: Some users were confused about terminology used across the platform.
Difficulty with Navigation: Several users expressed confusion regarding what page they were currently on as they navigated throughout the platform.
Maintaining Documentation: While not a usability issue, most devs were concerned with how to maintain and update documentation on this platform.
Recommendations
Re-word certain terms, such as "download," "register," and "subscribe" which did not always make sense for every asset.
Add clear page headers so users know what page they are were on.
Conduct additional research on the best way of creating and maintaining up-to-date documentation that would not be burdensome to the users.
High-Fidelity Wireframing
I then incorporated the results of the user test into the finalized wireframes.
Outcomes
Finalized high-fidelity designs.
Handed designs off to development team
Conducted additional research on new user pain point identified during testing, and proposed a solution that was added to the product backlog.
Lessons Learned & Next Steps
Was able to practice product management skills of prioritizing pain points, defining features, and writing user stories prior to beginning designs.
You sometimes miss key features that users would have wanted for MVP that you might discover later on during feedback & testing.
Help guide development team as they begin development of this tool.
