What I Learned About Designing Tools for Developers
Before I joined Algolia, I designed products that supported people in highly emotional contexts. For example, one product monitored contractions in pregnant women, and the other one was a pet GPS tracker. When I spoke to pregnant women or pet parents, the conversations were highly personal and full of emotional anecdotes (e.g. “The first time Sparky ran away…”, “I had preterm labor last time, so now I am always anxious”). Joining Algolia, I knew the product design work would be intellectually stimulating, engaging and complex. Yet, I was nervous about designing for a product that wouldn’t have such an emotional involvement in people’s lives. I wondered: would I be just as engaged? Almost two years in, I’d like to reflect on what it’s been like to design for developers, to think about DX (developer experience), and the many surprising ways I’ve found my work at Algolia rewarding and exciting.
Developers are tough to crack, but when you do 🤩
One of the things I learned quickly was that developers are extremely persistent. They dislike being stuck on a problem and most will go to extreme lengths to fix an issue. Also, because developer tools are generally neglected by design, I have found that most developers put up with less than ideal user experiences and consider it rather normal. This means that it’s very hard to get them to complain about anything! In user interviews, I’ve had to dig a lot to get user feedback about our product, but when I finally did get a nugget, it felt like true victory.
A technique that has worked well for me is to ask developers to actually solve a problem they’re working on using our tool or a tool of their choice. By seeing how they use it, it has allowed me to ask questions directly.
Developers make many decisions beyond the technical
As the people closest to the product building, developers make many decisions that ultimately affect the overall experience even if they have a whole team of designers and PMs behind them. The truth is, many developers are building the full search experience for their company. This means that building a product that helps developers make design and UX decisions is crucial. For example, when we provide filtering widgets that devs will implement, we need to ensure that they are built to the best UX standards.
Our designers’ work goes well beyond designing the API Dashboard. We also design best practices for end-user search experience (widgets for front-end implementation), tools that provide a feedback loop about how well search is performing with users (analytics), and much, much more.
Developers love interfaces
I work with many developers at Algolia, and early on, I started hearing “developers just want to use code.” In my research, I heard quite the opposite. Sure, there were some users who loved code and only code, but the vast majority of people I spoke to preferred interfaces. One of my favorite quotes was:
“I am lazy, I am constantly trying to work myself out of a job, so clicking a few buttons is so much easier than going into code.”
A well-designed API dashboard is a developer’s best friend as it saves them time and usually gives them a holistic overview of their API settings and any ongoing issues.
Developers are designers’ best partners
Developers I’ve spoken to usually light up when we start talking about dev products they like. In that sense, they are an incredible partner in product building. They may not know all the UX and UI best practices, but they are creative problem solvers. Some of our best design ideas have come from them. This is why I highly recommend including a developer user in design sprints and workshops (in addition to the devs on your squad). They will likely get a lot of satisfaction out of it, and your team will get great ideas.
Investing in DX is crucial to keeping your user base
Developers like to try new tools and see how they work. This is the reason Algolia has a free account option. We knew early on that the tinkerers of the dev world would like to try our product, and if they liked it, they would advocate for it internally. This is important, because they may dump your product as quickly as they adopt it if a better and easier-to-use alternative comes along. Which brings me to my next point.
Documentation is a product and a differentiator
Working on our documentation re-design project, I learned that documentation is a product in and of itself and good documentation can be a differentiator for your company. Think about how Stripe revolutionised the developer experience. They did it with an easily implementable product and a solid dashboard, but what many developers rave about are the docs. If your documentation is bad, most developers will still make your product work if they have to (see above about being extremely persistent), but they will do so begrudgingly. They will feel frustrated that they cannot easily fix issues, because your docs are hard to navigate or don’t provide enough information. And as soon as a competitor with better DX comes along, they will switch. Adapt Carl W. Buehner’s quote:
They may forget what you said — but they will never forget how you made them feel.
By enabling a developer, I enable an organisation and millions of users
This has been one of the most fulfilling parts of designing tools for developers and thinking about DX. Seeing Agolia’s search API enable some of the world’s largest brands’ search experiences (even if I can’t name them… thanks, NDA) has been extremely rewarding. Knowing that by giving developers tools to build amazing search engines and experiences, I am creating a whole cascade of positive effects. I am allowing organizations to achieve their key goals, such as increasing conversion, by helping their customers find the products they are looking for quickly. I am also improving the everyday search experiences for millions of people like you and me.
If this sounds exciting to you, come design with us! We’re hiring.
More about designing for devs
There are many great articles on how to design for developers and I did not want to repeat all of their points here, so check them out:
