Bridging the quantum gap: Redesigning a developer documentation platform for Python products
Timeline
Q3 2023 - Q4 2024
Team composition
Senior Growth Product Manager: Liz
Senior Full Stack Engineer: Yashar
Lead Product Designer:
Mark Do
Platform
Growth
Docs
Mobile
Web
API Packages
Google colab
Skills
Design systems
Information architecture
Workshop facilitation
User interviews
Usability testing
Prototype development
As product designers, intuition is one of our strongest traits, I believe in the natural ability of designers to bridge the gap between worlds of engineering solutions and customer use cases
Trusting your gut, and pushing through
I wanted to bring forward my work within the Growth team, leading the discovery, implementation, and re-design of Q-CTRL's Documentation website. Q-CTRL's flagship products were API packages which relied heavily on documentation within the customer journey.
To provide some context as to how this project formed, I had approached the CEO and Head of Design in regards to my concerns with the developer experience at Q-CTRL. Docs was a key component of User Onboarding, yet there was no dedicated team or design resources allocated to product. The organizational structure of the product teams was also leading to inefficient development cycles.
With the help of the head of product, engineering and design, a Triad was set up consisting of a Product, Engineering and Design Lead. The project was considered an experiment in order to resolve the efficiency issues within the organization and it was crucial for me to lead that team to success.
The problem
Q-CTRL's main flagship products, Fire Opal and Boulder Opal, existed almost entirely as python packages, for any such SaaS platform the developer documentation is a crucial aspect of the product experience.
Coming into this project there were many aspects of the legacy platform that required an essential update to align it with best practices in the current landscape of developer documentation. Given that Fire Opal and Boulder Opal heavily rely on the documentation as the primary resource for understanding and utilizing the packages, improving the docs will be instrumental in driving user adoption and satisfaction.
Analytics
The thing about start ups is that you are often the first person undertaking essential work required for the continuous development of products. Prior to this project, there was no dedicated team for Docs, the foundations of analytics were there but they were not accurately portraying how users interacted with the platform. I worked alongside the product manager to set up analytics dashboards that would allow anyone to facilitate the process of continuous discovery and iteration, successfully implementing a system for scalability and continuous improvement through the evaluation of data.
Within the spectrum of this project, our main goals were to target activation and retention metrics.
Adoption
100+
Activation
Retention
Mission
Enhance user activation and retention for Fire Opal and Boulder Opal by improving documentation structure, navigation, and content relevance.
Hypothesis driven frameworks, beyond hunches and intuition
Discovery is perhaps one of my fondest moments within the design process. It allows me to step into the shoes of the user and dive deeply into the product from their perspective. The process of elimination when investigating a complex problem and the process of ideating through elegant solutions are moments which I crave as a product designer. There is nothing quite like bringing a team together to solve problems in this way, and I believe it's essential in building long-lasting bonds between product teams.
As product designers, intuition is one of our strongest traits, I believe in the natural ability of designers to bridge the gap between worlds of engineering solutions and customer use cases. For this reason, it is also why a hypotheses driven discovery process is crucial in developing products. In this way, we are able to make assessments quickly based on our expertise and experience within the field, and also test and validate these assumptions in a matter of days or weeks.
Hypotheses
Users are not able to navigate through Docs, and they have a hard time getting started
Assumption
Providing a hierarchy of information that correlates with the customers most important jobs-to-be-done will help users understand where to get started, and how they might progress with important tasks
Surveying the competitive landscape
Evaluating competitors such as Stripe, Apollo, Vercel and Next.JS provided insights that were not so surprising given my hypotheses:
Great experiences provided complex navigation structures based on user needs.
Great experiences provided pathways to success allowing users to be lead in the right direction.
Re-defining Infromation Architecture through stakeholder workshops
Building products is never just the sum of one individuals ideas, it is built upon the foundations of the community and the skilled individuals that have made contributions along the way. I believe that these contributions are essential in building a culture of active collaboration, and as a means of creating a deeper sense of connection with the people we work with and the products we're working to build together.
With this ideology, a key aspect of my workflow is the involvement of internal stakeholders within the design process. Working with Quantum Product Engineering (QPE) was essential in formulating my understanding of the problem space. I facilitated various workshops to understand key aspects of the onboarding process with a deep focus on the hierarchy of actions required from users to become active within the product. These workshops also served to break down the barriers between cross-functional teams, to understand one another and the different ways we each contribute to the product, and also to communicate the design process as we traverse through ambiguity.
Usability testing: Nothing is proven until tried and tested
One cannot preach the importance of a hypothesis driven framework without acknowledging how it must coincide with usability testing.
I have stated the importance of intuition within my design methodology, yet that cannot discount how crucial it is to understand the users perception and point of view.
A/B testing and usability insights
To validate my hypotheses, I developed a clickable prototype and conducted A/B testing on key features, focusing on improvements to navigation and content discoverability. The goal was to determine if a JTBD framework for organizing content would help users get started more effectively and complete tasks with ease.
User testimonials
“I definitely feel like everything makes more sense and I know where to go”
“This feels a lot more polished and enjoyable to use. I feel like this also elevates the experience of the brand. Everything looks clean and well done”
Why building systems of scalability was essential to the success of this project
My primary goal as a product designer has always been to create systems that lead to scalability and iterative growth over time. What is evident through my experience is the impact of design thinking methodology on product teams. If products are not inherently intentional and considered in their construction, that methodology cannot be iterated upon.
It was crucial to me to build systems of Information Architecture and design thinking as a means to strive towards continued success for the product, even if this project were to be taken on again later down the road, I wanted to ensure that future designers and product teams had a solid foundation to look towards and draw inspiration from.
Creating a framework of Information Architecture around Jobs-To-Be-Done
The results confirmed that the JTBD-oriented design not only met user needs but also fostered a deeper sense of trust and satisfaction in the documentation platform. These findings guided final refinements and ensured the solution resonated with both novice and advanced users.
Providing an additional layer of categorization based on JTBD simplifies the systems of navigation. It allows us to directly communicate with the customer by creating connections between their real-world use cases, and how the product is able to serve them in those scenarios.
This facilitates the process of Systems 1 thinking (where users are able to make quick and instinctive choices), and allocates Systems 2 thinking (slow and deliberate) to the process of deciphering and understanding notebooks. Customers can quickly scan the navigation based on their needs and it greatly increases the likelihood of exploration and product retention.
Home page onboarding
To further reinforce the JTBD navigation, the motif is repeated consistently throughout the product experience. I redesigned the home page of each product to communicate essential notebooks required for onboarding, alongside reinforcing the JTBD structure of navigation through the repetition of those categories. These interactions were designed to create a sense of ease and familiarity as users move through Docs and explore various features and products.
Continuous iteration within the product development cycle
Product teams must be forward thinking, always a few steps ahead of the implementation cycle, ensuring that we never fall behind.
Having a firm understanding of how I wanted to proceed with re-design, this provided a great opportunity to look towards identifying optimizations that were outside of the original scope.
Google Colab
A vital aspect of the product development cycle is coming to understand what work will drive the most impact with the least amount of effort. Working on the integration with Google Colab was perhaps the easiest part of this re-design. It was a quick and definitive growth design strategy to partner with such a large platform, and the experience is equally as rewarding.
With a simple click, users are able to launch notebooks within Google Colab's IDE streamlining the process of executing their experiments.
Securing the future of analytics
To tie things back to Growth Design and Pirate Metrics, I had successfully designed features that targeted activation and retention, yet to create disruptive products one must aim to target each aspect of the Pirate Metrics funnel. There was still a long way to go for Docs to reach it's full potential in serving a personalized experience.
Single Sign On was implemented as a means to ensure Q-CTRL's system of analytics were scalable. By providing the facility to accurately understand the customers actions, and how they are related to pivotal moments within a user journey, ensures that product teams will be able to continuously iterate and optimize the product with a hypotheses driven framework.
Building community through Discord
Setting up the Discord server was typically outside of my scope as a designer. Albeit I wanted to provide as much impact as I could to target those growth metrics.
Discord serves as an avenue for many of our product needs, inherently targeting referral and activation, whilst maintaining the needs of building community through providing support and discussion.
Building systems that are made to last
This project began as an experiment but grew into a cornerstone for Q-CTRL’s product strategy. Its success not only validated my hypotheses but also secured ongoing investment in the Docs/Growth team.
As a designer, I thrive on solving complex problems with elegance and empathy. This experience reaffirmed my belief that great design isn’t just about features; it’s about enabling teams to collaborate meaningfully and create systems that scale.
The foundation is now set for whoever comes next to build on this momentum.
Adoption
100+
Activation
Retention