My Role & Mandate‍

was in charge of redesigning the full CI/CD developer experience. My goal was to make developers’ work easier by removing confusion, simplifying complex steps, and delivering a design system that can grow with the product.

Challenges‍

The old CI/CD platform was powerful but hard to use. Developers faced complex YAML files, unclear error messages, and risky deployment steps. Logs were long but not helpful. The interface had grown in a messy way, lacked keyboard accessibility, and made onboarding harder than needed.

The Process‍

I began by spending time with engineers during real problems and reviewing support tickets. This helped me understand the main jobs developers needed done: creating pipelines, finding errors, promoting releases safely, rolling back if needed, and managing secrets.

With this understanding, I led the redesign of the main CI/CD flows using clear, easy-to-understand patterns:

• Created an easy-to-use pipeline editor with suggestions and inline checks to reduce errors.
• Added timeline views and clear error panels to make debugging faster and easier.
• Designed approval steps, secret management, and environment rules to make deployments safer without slowing down developers.
• Built a keyboard-first, accessible design system with dark and light modes that engineering could use to build features faster and keep the UI consistent.

Research & Problem Solving‍

Throughout the project, I combined shadowing engineers, analyzing customer support data, and mapping key user tasks. This research-driven method allowed identifying exact pain points and priorities. I tested design changes with real users and adjusted based on feedback to ensure we solved the right problems effectively.

Outcome

• Developers build pipelines faster and with fewer mistakes thanks to better tooling.
• Debugging is quicker and less frustrating because errors are more clear and logs easier to search.
• Releases became safer with clear rules and audit ability, without slowing development down.
• The new design system offers a strong, easy to maintain base that can support future growth and keeps user experience consistent.

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