Workday Extend Devsite: The User Is the Product
Another enormous editorial image of the final dashboard concept for the redesigned Devsite.
The Scenario
Workday Extend's Devsite is a top-tier development product designed for creating custom HR solutions, however, it’s user experience did not always reflect how dynamic it actually was.
In short, the Extend Devsite was in need of a complete overhaul. I was brought in to spearhead the reimagining of both the user experience and to collaborate on rethinking the underlying info architecture.
The Problem
To start with, the problems needed to be clarified. After reading documentation and interviewing both stakeholder and users, things began to come into focus. They included:
1. Bolted-On UX: Over two decades, builder tools had been incrementally added to the application, resulting in a disjointed user experience.
2. Unclear User Differentiation: While it was evident that our users were developers specializing in custom Workday applications, we lacked a comprehensive understanding of their unique distinctions.
3. Low-Code/No-Code Integration: With an existing visual UI generator, and AI on the horizon, we aimed to provide low-code and no-code options builder, but we were uncertain about the depth of involvement of low-code personas for Project Managers (PMs) and Business Analysts in designing HR applications.
4. Community Engagement: Workday's Extend product relied heavily on its user community, yet the existing site architecture hindered effective communication of new features and concepts from Extend leadership.
5. Code Reusability: Code reusability on standard components was lacking, forcing users to repurpose code from previous custom projects, resulting in a lack of overall institutional knowledge.
The Discovery
The foremost need was to know our users better in order to generate personas for the project. We needed to delve into their identities, motivations for using Extend, builder proficiency, pain points, and the rationale behind their feature requests via the Extend community. Initially, we thought there were three types of developers, but even after talking to 35+ developer types, we would hit the same problems of overlap.
You can ignore what’s written on the stickies in the mental map on the right, the important thing to know is that for every single persona, we reworked them sometimes 9 times before getting a presumptive developer persona rejected during stakeholder validation. We kept on hitting the same wall.
A Stickie Situation: Presumptive developer personas would constantly get rejected by stakeholders, and overlap was the problem.
The assumptions we had about the variety of developers using the site proved to be wrong. Instead, they were facets of the same persona. This insight made us realize that the product was not our system, but indeed the user themself.
Then, while walking my dogs one evening, it hit me: The developer personas overlap so often because they are different permutations of the same person! This is because even the newest developer must learn from their more experienced colleagues at every step, because Workday has no standard coding methodology within the Devsite environment, and no certification course for new developers. Essentially, learning to develop, administer, or architect in Devsite is more like being the member of a guild. Knowledge is passed between individuals.
This was the missing piece: Understanding that we needed to think of the user as one person in various stages of professional development, we could now move onto the next phase, understanding the problems, and creating an experience that delights.
The Solution
Devsite takes inspiration from W3 WebAssembly, reimagining Workday Extend building products as ad-hoc workspaces within the "Build" section, which relies on AI to access Extend building products, eliminating the need for users to navigate to a separate webs application dedicated to just one type of builder.
Our initial solution was to avoid creating a new site information architecture that would lead to yet another superficial bolt-on experience. Instead, we presented their projects in a manner that allowed for seamless development and recycling of old projects within a single page.
Our core business goal was to keep the community informed, engaged, and productive. This encompassed feature releases, education, and, critically, documentation. The Console dashboard page transformed into a place that encouraged community collaboration and content generation, not merely a gateway to work.
As of 2023-24, the project is ongoing, with several solutions already implemented:
1. We recognized that there were essentially two distinct developer personas: security admins and everyone else. We created role-based experiences with high customizability through draggable tiles, enabling users to prioritize app shortcuts, documentation, and community access.
2. We streamlined the five major tools into a single, versatile interface by turning app-building tools into a filter rather than separate pages. This allowed users to organize their projects based on their creation tools, eliminating the need to navigate multiple pages.
3. We introduced the concept of a "workspace" tab on the developer page, allowing users to toggle in and out of it to work on multiple projects simultaneously. This would allow them to get around base architecture limitations to repurposing code, and keep all their workflow focused on one area of the site.
4. On the console page, we prioritized access to generative content and current applications for developers, while focusing on security analytics and generative documentation for security admins. These changes resolved the challenge of moving beyond role-based experiences and ensured the website's future relevance.
Additionally, we engaged Education Development stakeholders and embarked on a comprehensive overhaul of the learning experiences. We organized content around learning tracks and implemented progress tracking. We moved away from the old ad-hoc video-watching approach.
These solutions are meant to not be just useful, but transformative. As much as Extend is a product, so too are the developers. The new Devsite is not just a place to get work done, but a place that nurtures and forms the developer as product as well.
From 3) - Early POC prototype, showing builders being loaded in the context of the same page instead of having to navigate away to use a builder app. Note filters as well for locating projects.
From 4) - Depicting a hi-fi mock concept for the Extend Console dashboard. There are separate selectable contexts for devs and admins, with the ability to also add customized tiles.
The Result
The project started with the redesign of the new console dash. Pictured here is the Admin context.
As mentioned before, the project is ongoing as of 2023-24, however, we conducted extensive initial user testing on the new console dashboard. The results were promising, with eight out of twelve trials revealing that admins and developers alike believed that the correct information was being presented to them in a useful order on their respective pages. Custom tiles were. also correctly assessed to be the right fit for the job. The addition of promising new generative AI really pushed things over the net for our users, as they could get results faster than asking on the forum, and these generated documents were also shareable, meaning they could both generate documentation and ask Wex for recommendations for existing documentation
For the remaining four trials, valuable feedback was provided, offering recommendations for further enhancements. These insights continue to guide us as we refine and optimize the console dashboard and the overall user experience, ensuring that Workday Extend's Devsite remains user-friendly and responsive to the evolving needs of our developer community.