Role
As the lead designer on the project, I collaborated with a product manager and front-end developer to help this project through. My responsibilities included information architecture, market scans and competitor research, internal and external stakeholder interviews, landing page design, copywriting, and illustration.
Problem
Up until mid 2015, Shopify had a number of tools, resources, and APIs scattered all over their web properties for developers to find. There wasn’t a single place where they could go to learn about all of Shopify’s APIs and the resources available to them if they wanted to build an app.
Our Bet
Our bet was that if we created a home for all our documentation and resources then we would see an increase in the number and quality of apps being produced.
Approach
My first order of business was to make an inventory of all the content we had available to us. I scoured our sites and spoke to a number of teams and stakeholders to leave no stone left unturned. Once I had that all in front of me, I was able to organize it in a way that aligned with the way similar businesses were doing it as well as what I had heard from our customers. I worked with some copywriters to develop a concept and wireframed some comps about how a unifying portal page would be structured. Our “fresh eyes” design critiques were helpful for getting feedback from designers and developers across the company which I believe helped me improve my design.
With all our major stakeholders onboard and the design concept solidified, I began working with a front-end development partner and applied Shopify’s design system to the wireframes. While we worked on implementing the designs, I also whipped up some illustrations, using our illustration guidelines, to bring the page to life.
Outcome
After two short months, we had a brand new developer portal where developers could go to learn about all the tools, resources, and APIs available to them on the Shopify platform. The work we did over four years ago laid the foundation for what’s still mostly in place today and helped us improve the quality, quantity, and diversity of apps being submitted to the app store.