FirstNet Developer Portal
Redesigned a responsive informational website for application developers.
What is FirstNet Developer?
FirstNet Developer Program is a joint initiative of AT&T and FirstNet that supports the development, certification, and distribution of public safety apps and solutions.
My Role
Working alongside a fellow experience designer and a visual designer, I conducted guerilla research, created the sitemap, wireframes, and prototype, and redesigned the registration process.
Challenge
Redesign an informational website to make it responsive and improve its user engagement.
Design Approach
Guerilla Research
Being a large technology company, we didn’t have any problem finding our target research audience: developers. We created a survey and distributed it to developers across our company. We also conducted several qualitative interviews with developers not involved in the project.
Content Strategy
The interviews and survey findings helped us understand which content was more valuable to our audience. I then restructured the sitemap to focus on the most valuable content and collaborated with AT&T stakeholders and a technical copywriter to optimize it.
Design Studio
My design peers and I ran two design studio sessions to brainstorm and sketch ideas, which we later turned into wireframes and tested with our research participants.
Solution
Strengthening Developer Support
As we learned from the research, developers need more support during application creation, including having detailed information about APIs, tutorials, and informational resources. We created robust API detail pages and a Resources section designed to provide all the information they need to get started with building a public safety application.
Building Community
Developers often use forums and blogs where they learn from their peers and collaborate with them. FirstNet wanted to leverage this finding and create an online community for the developers participating in their program. We designed a Community section where FirstNet can promote events for developers and get them engaged with their forums or blogs.
Streamlining Registration Process
The existing account registration process confused users because their experience didn’t change after completing the registration form. To access the sandbox and unlock more features in their account dashboard, they had to fill in and submit several other forms. The process was built this way because it didn’t differentiate between individual and organizational accounts. We streamlined the registration process by creating a distinct registration path for each type of account.
Outcome
The prototype of the redesigned FirstNet Developer Portal got good reviews from both our research participants and the client stakeholders. We did a fully-annotated design handoff since the client wanted to use their internal development team to bring the new experience to life. The website joined the other FirstNet products for developers and public safety professionals I had previously worked on: FirstNet App Catalog, FirstNet App Control, and FirstNet Local Control.