Empowering developers to seamlessly navigate Onfido’s identity verification solutions
Project Overview
As the Product Designer for Developer Hub, a centralized platform to streamline developer workflows and enhance productivity, I led the design process over six months, collaborating with a cross-functional team comprising 1 Product Manager, 1 Technical Writer, 1 Front-End Engineer, and 1 Back-End Engineer.
Our primary goal was to create an intuitive and efficient hub for developers, ensuring seamless task management and collaboration.
The project achieved significant success, with task completion rates increasing by 30%.
Problem Statement
High-level Goal
Empower developers to efficiently find, understand, and integrate Onfido’s products—enabling them to create seamless identity verification and orchestration experiences.
Market Context
The developer landscape for identity verification is crowded with partial solutions, fragmented documentation, and unclear integration paths. This noise sows confusion and slows innovation. Developers need a single, coherent source of truth—something that respects their time, aligns with their workflows, and speaks their language.
User Pain Points
Initially, the Developer Hub presented an overwhelming tangle of flat hierarchies and dense link lists. Developers felt frustration, cognitive overload, and a lack of confidence in their search for the right guide or API reference. The experience didn’t just slow them down—it eroded trust. Through conceptual sketches and illustrative metaphors, we captured this sense of confusion and recognized that we needed to transform complexity into clarity.
Research & Discovery
Solution Statement
We reinvented the Developer Hub into an intuitive, goal-oriented platform. Beyond reorganized documentation, we introduced a framework that guides developers through their entire journey— from initial setup steps to advanced orchestration patterns—fostering a sense of progress, understanding, and mastery.
Feature Examples
Goal-Centric Navigation: Instead of grouping content by product line, we aligned categories with real developer objectives (e.g., “Get Started,” “Explore APIs,” “Customize SDKs,” “Learn Best Practices”).
Long-Term Scalability: Modular content blocks and responsive layouts ensure that new products and features can integrate seamlessly, without adding clutter or confusion.
Contextual Search & Filters: Predictive search and smart filters offer a frictionless path to precise endpoints, code snippets, or tutorials, reinforcing efficiency and trust.
Research Process
Initial Insights
Prior to the redesign, we conducted structured interviews with 15 developers who regularly integrated Onfido’s APIs. One developer mentioned: “I spent at least 20 minutes hunting through multiple pages just to find the right endpoint details.”
Three months post-launch analytics revealed that the time to locate key documentation dropped from an average of 20 minutes to under 8 minutes (a 60% improvement).
A survey of 50 frequent users showed a 30% increase in self-reported confidence scores and a 25-point boost in NPS for the Developer Hub. These before-and-after metrics firmly tie our design decisions to tangible improvements in efficiency, discoverability, and user satisfaction.
Journey Mapping
We employed whiteboard sessions, persona development, and scenario mapping to visualize the developer’s path. Early sketches highlighted moments of uncertainty—during initial onboarding, when comparing SDK integrations, or while troubleshooting advanced use cases. Understanding these pain points in context allowed us to craft interventions that simplified each step.
Key Findings
Users invested high effort for uncertain gains. Yet we discovered an encouraging lever: providing small “wins” early on (like quickly finding a relevant API call) dramatically boosted their sense of control and satisfaction. This insight drove us to prioritize clarity, immediate feedback, and quick pathways to essential content.
Design Process
Deep Dive into Motivation
Developers aren’t just seeking information; they’re building a mental model of how Onfido’s products fit into their ecosystem. By tapping into the mindset that values efficiency, reliability, and credibility, we emphasized solutions that reinforced trust, respected their time, and made their tasks feel intuitive rather than laborious.
Behavioral Change Framework
Drawing inspiration from thought leaders who argue that lasting habit formation depends on building identity, we positioned the Hub not as a static library, but as an evolving companion. We encouraged developers to see themselves as confident integrators of Onfido’s tools, not just visitors skimming documentation.
Prototypes & Iterations
Onboarding Redesign
Early prototypes featured a guided onboarding flow: brief, contextual welcome screens explained what the Hub offered and how to use it effectively. Annotated screens gave a transparent roadmap—no hidden surprises—fostering trust from the very first click.
New Features
We introduced a “Journey” tab that transformed the developer’s perspective from week-by-week attempts to a cumulative growth story. This holistic view celebrated progress milestones and revealed patterns, ensuring developers felt supported throughout their evolving integration. Wireframes, high-fidelity prototypes, and interaction flows were tested iteratively, refining not just aesthetics but also the emotional impact of these features.
Delivery & Validation
Agile Implementation
We deployed features in phases, each iteration guided by user feedback and usage analytics. This approach allowed immediate course corrections and incremental enhancements—an essential practice in ensuring that solutions adapt gracefully to real-world constraints.
User Feedback
Post-launch, developers applauded the improved clarity and navigability. Qualitative feedback confirmed that the Hub now felt like a thoughtful guide, rather than an encyclopedia of links. Insights from surveys led to subtle but powerful adjustments—like surfacing top-requested code samples sooner and tweaking labels to reflect the developers’ vernacular.
Behavioural Insights
By integrating gentle coaching principles—suggestions, related tutorials, and prompts to explore best practices—we encouraged developers to continuously advance their skills. Over time, metrics revealed increased engagement, fewer support tickets, and a rise in self-reported confidence.
Results
Metrics or Outcomes
By integrating gentle coaching principles—suggestions, related tutorials, and prompts to explore best practices—we encouraged developers to continuously advance their skills. Over time, metrics revealed increased engagement, fewer support tickets, and a rise in self-reported confidence.
Behavioural Impact
Beyond short-term wins, we observed a shift in how developers approached Onfido’s ecosystem. Instead of dipping in and out uncertainly, they began to rely on the Hub as a go-to partner in their development journey. This deepened trust and paved the way for more complex integrations over the long run.
Reflection & Key Takeways
Learnings
This project underscored the potency of a user-centered, evidence-based approach. By deeply understanding developer psychology, aligning information with their mental models, and continuously validating decisions, we crafted an experience that felt intuitive, meaningful, and lasting. The importance of emotional design, stakeholder alignment, and steady iteration became abundantly clear.
Future Opportunities
Building on this momentum, there’s room to integrate personalized recommendations, even more adaptive search features, and enriched community-driven knowledge. As Onfido’s suite expands, the Hub will continue to thrive if we maintain the same guiding principles: clarity, empathy, adaptability, and a relentless focus on user value.
Key Techniques
Storytelling: We framed the developer’s journey as a narrative, not just a set of features, forging emotional resonance.
Visual-First Approach: Mockups, diagrams, and journey maps grounded abstract insights in tangible solutions.
Evidence-Based Design: Every decision was tethered to research and testing, ensuring a credible and justifiable final product.
Actionable UX Principles: Guided by core questions—“Is this clear?” “Does this reduce friction?” “Does this inspire confidence?”—we kept the user’s needs front and center.
Impact-Oriented: By measuring outcomes and translating them into meaningful user and business benefits, we ensured that the final experience was both delightful and strategic.
In the end, this redesign turned the Developer Hub into a beacon of clarity and trust in a crowded marketplace. By championing the developer’s perspective, blending rigorous research with elegant execution, and aspiring for simplicity and coherence, we delivered an experience that embodies the values of premium product design.