BECKY TODD • SENIOR TECHNICAL WRITER • ATLASSIAN • @BECKATODD

Design thinkingBuilding a developer experience from scratch

My name is Becky I’m a Senior Technical Writer on the Atlassian Ecosystem team

I Git

Ready, set, launch!

Usability

Content integration

New info architecture, fully responsive site, refreshed visual treatments

Crafted content presented side-by-side with auto-generated content

Improve this pageContribution from the developer community

Let’s take a step back…

Research1• Who writes the docs? • Is content updated with each release? • What kinds of content do we have? • Who is using the content, and why?

“ Update the documentation on the site to include the current versions of everything. Some docs and tutorials are very out of date.

S U RV E Y F E E D B A C K

”

• Multiple starting points • 45 mins to finish (or quit) • 4 out of 5 devs failed • Most didn’t create usable code

User testing: Onboarding new developers

• Single starting point • < 30 minutes start-to-finish • All devs can finish • Produce usable code that can be

expanded upon

Goals Problems identified by user testing

Key takeaways• Users need accurate, up-to-date content • Navigating and searching are difficult • Writers want an easy-to-use process

Design2• Improve search and navigation • Update stale, out-of-date content • Refresh the design with users in mind • Make authoring easy for everyone

How the #%@& do we do this?

Focus areas

Collaboration Who can write content? What will the

workflow look like?

Usability How will we improve search and the IA?

How will we keep content up-to-date?

Repo management What will the branching strategy be?

How many repos do we need?

Content as code

Assets

How often do you publish content? Are your releases versioned?

ImagesHow frequently do you replace images, diagrams, and other visuals?

Releases

Do you have versioned zip files, videos, or other large files?

Keep contribution workflow simplecontribute mergeapprove (x2) publish

auth

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view

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prov

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DEV

TW

PO

Build & adopt3• Support early adopters • Build content toolkit • Community contributions

Publishing

Include setup, tools, style guides, and any other necessities

WorkflowCovers the writing and review process, including the roles involved

How to get started

Describes staging and publishing docs

Content toolkit

Community contribution

• Multiple starting points • 45 mins to finish (or quit) • 4 out of 5 devs failed • Most didn’t create usable code

User testing: Onboarding new developers

• Single starting point • < 30 minutes start-to-finish • All devs can finish • Produce usable code that can be

expanded upon

Goals Problems identified by user testing

User testing: Updated onboarding flow

• Single starting point • 30 minutes start-to-finish • All devs finished • Produced deployable code

Goals achieved

• Users felt it was much more appropriate, felt successful

• Devs used responsive mode on desktop

New learnings

Content champions Thinks “docs first” and “don’t forget to doc that” are a good thing

Thank you!

BECKY TODD • SENIOR TECHNICAL WRITER • ATLASSIAN • @BECKATODD