Nokia

Project Overview

During my time at Nokia with the Network Infrastructure team, I led a key design project to improve user experience and developer collaboration. I redesigned the community section of Nokia's Developer Portal Website, addressing engagement and collaboration challenges. Restricted by a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), I am unable to disclose detailed information about the project.

Non-Disclosure Agreement

A large portion of my work is protected by Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs). I'm currently working on presenting the best possible showcase of my projects within these limitations. If you're interested in learning more about my work, please feel free to contact me via email or LinkedIn. I’d be happy to discuss my experiences and contributions in more detail!

Problem

The community section had a long, continuously scrolling page with feature updates and code examples, but it didn’t provide a space for developers to interact with each other. A community section is generally a platform that allows people to connect with each other, share information and ideas, and collaborate on projects. However, this community section did not serve that purpose.

Constraints I had to account for

1. Had a tight deadline of 6 weeks to design, develop, test and implement: Aligning my design roadmap with the development roadmap was crucial. I needed to negotiate with the developer and product manager to ensure we found a solution that met both user goals and business requirements and was implemented within the six-week timeframe.

2. Align the new design to the existing visual design standards: While I was creating a completely different information architechture, I still had to create something that was consistent with the rest of the site.

3. Limited access to end-users: I met with users briefly to understand their pain points, but couldn't test the final solution due to time limits. Instead, I based my decisions on thorough external research, heuristic analysis, and team input.

Discovery + Feature Ideation

I began my research by talking to a few stakeholders like, developers and product managers to grasp how they use the community platform. They mentioned visiting the community section to discover useful code examples posted by fellow developers but often struggle to find relevant information due to a lack of search options. Additionally, they find it challenging to engage with fellow developers for discussions and queries.

My next step was to conduct a competitive analysis to identify how the big tech companies like Apple, Google, Meta, Oracle, Microsoft, etc., design their developer community platforms.

1. Intuitive Navigation: Simplified menus and clear pathways that allow developers to easily find resources, tools, and documentation.

2. Engaging Community Features: Forums, discussion boards, and social features that foster collaboration and knowledge-sharing among developers.

3. Personalized User Experience: Customizable dashboards and content recommendations based on individual developer preferences and activities.

4. User-Friendly Interfaces: Clean, responsive design that enhances usability across different devices and screen sizes.

Next, I combined insights from all my research, I brainstormed and listed a range of potential features that aimed to enhance collaboration and improve the overall user experience of the community platform.

After conducting a detailed analysis with the UX design team, product managers, and developers, we narrowed down our focus to two main ideas. The first idea is to create a blog-style hub for knowledge sharing, and the second is to develop a discussion forum to increase developer engagement. While integrating gamification features seemed promising, it would have required more time than we had available. Rapidly implementing them might not have brought significant value to the platform. As a result, we decided to prioritize the blog-style hub and discussion forum as it was feasible within our project's timeframe.

Adding 'User Stories' as a feature

I added a feature called "User Stories," which works like posts on Reddit or Stack Overflow. Developers can interact with these stories by liking, commenting, replying, and saving them. This feature directly addresses the issue mentioned by end users during the initial stages of my design process, where they found it challenging to engage with fellow developers for discussions and queries. By providing a platform for these interactions, "User Stories" makes it easier for developers to share knowledge, ask questions, and collaborate effectively. Here is the information architechture I formulated for this new feature-

Solution

Decision 1: Two-Column Layout

Based on competitive analysis and user research, the decision to implement a two-column layout was made to enhance the usability and overall experience of the developer community portal.

During initial discussions with developers and stakeholders, they expressed concerns about the older page layout, where it was difficult to find relevant information. The lack of effective search options and content organization was a significant pain point. The new two-column layout directly addresses these issues by dedicating the left column to navigation and search options, and the right column to main content, facilitating better engagement and interaction.

Decision 2: Cards for enhanced content division

The second design decision focused on crafting card-based layouts to improve content division and user experience on the developer community portal.

Feedback from developers highlighted that the previous community section was a lengthy page filled with dense paragraphs of software update information. This cluttered layout made it challenging to locate relevant information. Developers expressed a need for a more organized and cleaner presentation of content. Implementing a single card per row, with ample whitespace, directly addresses these concerns by offering a more streamlined and user-friendly experience.

Decision 3: Tri-fold searching approach

The third design decision involved implementing a tri-fold searching approach to enhance content discovery on the developer community portal.

Developers previously struggled with finding relevant content due to limited search options. The old system lacked sufficient tools for precise content discovery, making the process cumbersome. They expressed a need for a more effective search mechanism. The decision to implement a tri-fold searching approach, combining a search bar with filtering and sorting options—addresses these concerns and offers a more intuitive and efficient method for discovering content. This approach was also validated by the competitive analysis, which revealed that most leading developer portals use similar features to enhance search functionality.

What Did I Learn?

1. Collaboration in a large team: I learned a lot about design processes at a large company like Nokia. This experience taught me how to work well with teams, handle feedback, and incorporate it into my designs effectively.

2. Negotiation: I honed my negotiation skills, delving into the intricacies of my designs, estimating implementation timelines for release schedules.

3. Communication: I refined my communication skills by clearly presenting concepts with detailed annotations, reducing any potential confusion for my audience during presentations.