CA Developer Console

Role: Lead Designer & Product Manager

Product Space: API Management, SaaS, Enterprise

An API Consumer toolkit for developers to discover and access enterprise APIs.

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Problem → When shopping for APIs as a developer, it was hard to try a new API and learn about it. Often the developer has to leave their tools to do discovery and request access. On the other side, it was hard for API publishers to control the developer experience of their APIs.

Solution → Provide an API toolkit that enables Developers to discover and access APIs instantly. The solution needed to work with the developers existing tools. As well as, enabling the API Publisher to easily provide usable documentation to developers.

CA Developer Console

Process

Discovery research with a dozen different API publisher customers to determine their pain points in gaining adoption of their APIs.

Discovery research with API Developers to learn why current tools were not working for them.

Multiple design sprints to identify the most important problems.

Validation of concept with customers onsite, over the phone, and at CA World in Las Vegas.

Design artifacts were created using Sketch and Invision.

CA Developer Console Design Sprint

CA Developer Console Flows

CA Developer Console Design Wireframes

Results

Upon release of the design prototype at CA World, several customers said it was just what they needed for their developer customers.

API Developers were delighted to learn a lightweight tool that they could integrate into their existing tool chain was available.

I lead a scrum team of designers and developers in building an MVP for the product in a few months. It was run like an incubator project inside of CA. My main advisors were the VP of Design and the API Management Distinguished Engineer.

Upon completion of the MVP, several customers purchased and deployed the app to their developer customers. The best feedback we received was, “This was the product we didn't know we desperately needed!”

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