Project Timeline: Between June 2022 - Feb 2023
Developing a Better Experience of
SDLC for PayPal Developers —
a UX Quest
Every quest begins with a question. Ours is a Design-Driven quest.
Can we, the UX team of developer experience at PayPal, improve the experience of the Software Development Lifecycle for our fellow developers?
Before we jump into our journey, let’s learn a few concepts relevant to it:
What is the SDLC and PayPal’s SDLC?
The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) ensures software quality by catching errors early. PayPal’s version, the Secure/Software Development Lifecycle, adds security, audibility, and operational controls to uphold customer trust and excellence.
The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) ensures software quality by catching errors early. PayPal’s version, the Secure/Software Development Lifecycle, adds security, audibility, and operational controls to uphold customer trust and excellence.
What is Console at PayPal?
The Console is PayPal's new internal platform for engineers to seamlessly discover, create, and manage application resources. Built with commodity tools and leveraging internal systems and security, it offers a scalable, modern solution for enterprise application development.
did a cute animation for the console logo
Console & Background
Before PayPal introduced the new Console platform, developers used 'Altus' to navigate the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Although Altus served its initial purpose, it had limitations as the platform grew. Each feature ran on separate systems, leading to performance issues and delays. It also lacked support for diverse user roles like data scientists and analysts.
Altus provided a smooth SDLC workflow with simple tab-based navigation. In contrast, the Console uses extensions for each SDLC phase, requiring users to launch an extension, set the application context, and switch between extensions to progress through the phases.
SDLC: Altus Vs Console
This shift was disruptive for engineers. Based on feedback, we hypothesized that developers needed an interactive, visual SDLC workflow guide to streamline the process from build to production—something neither Altus nor Console offered.
The UX Process
To test our hypothesis, we collaborated with PayPal's SDLC experts to study their workflows and console navigation. We iterated from low-fidelity sketches to a high-fidelity prototype over time.
SDLC Flow Iterations
We conducted a user study with 16 PayPal employees to assess the effectiveness of the interactive SDLC diagram. We focused on:
1. User engagement and utilization of the SDLC diagram
2. Usefulness, accuracy, and educational value of the diagram
3. Emotional connection users formed with the diagram
Participants, representing various roles and locations, shared feedback during virtual sessions based on their experience with the SDLC prototype.
A snippet of the User Studies
Through this process, we discovered the following areas that resonated strongly
with the users.
A snippet of some of the quotations from our users
To summarize,
1. The interactive SDLC diagram brought back the application-centric sense of the UX that existed previously in Altus but was missing from the Console.
2. The users appreciated the overall ability to easily navigate and understand the different stages of the SDLC and found the diagram to be both useful and educational.
3. The SDLC diagram was found to align with the users’ mental model of the software development lifecycle across roles, locations, and ‘Console’ experiences.
We also discovered the following areas for improvement:
A snippet of some of the quotations from our users regarding improvements
Based on user feedback, we made the following changes to the diagram:
1. Simplified the design by toning down colors, adding more space, and reducing clutter
2. Pushed robots into the background to highlight extension cards
3. Removed excessive dotted lines and strengthened main flow arrows
4. Made the flow more linear
5. Added graphical details, personified the robot mascot, and replaced the green flag with a trophy to avoid misinterpretation in the production section
⚡ ️The Final Output :
SDLC Diagram
All our changes and simplifications were user-driven resulting in the improved SDLC diagram shown here:
The Final Simplified Diagram
We additionally experimented with a changed Concole Home for a smoother UX and moved the individual SDLC extensions into a single card for the SDLC Solution — a change to make the Console more solution-based as opposed to extension-based.
⚡ ️SDLC In Use :
First Stage (July - October)
The initial SDLC Diagram was launched to PayPal developers in July 2022. Usage data was tracked via a custom UX dashboard using Google Analytics.
We compared the number of SDLC Diagram users to the average number of users across the 8 SDLC extensions. The graph below shows this comparison.
Data from July ’22 - Oct ‘22
Initial usage was limited to participants’ teams. However, after a popular internal blog post in July 2022, SDLC diagram usage grew 10x, from 16 to about 160 users. Follow-up studies showed users loved it, and instructors began promoting the diagram in Console training sessions.
A snippet of some of the quotations from our users who loved the Diagram
We discovered that many users preferred navigating SDLC extensions through the menu, bypassing the diagram. They perceived the original homepage as a 'marketing' page and overlooked the extension cards.
A snippet of some of the quotations from our users
Second Stage (October - February)
We experimented with updating the homepage after users found the SDLC diagram helpful. Over the next months, we replaced the separate extension cards with a single entry point, while keeping the menu navigation. This aligned the Console with a solution-based approach rather than an extension-based one.
New Console Home Page with a Single SDLC Solution Card
Data from Oct ’22 - Feb ‘23
This led to a 3x increase in SDLC diagram usage, growing from around 160 users in October to about 500 users on average by February 2023.
Conclusion
We set out on a design-driven quest to create an improved and engaging interactive guide for simplified and user-friendly usage of the SDLC Extension in the Console.
We created an interactive SDLC diagram that has been used by almost a quarter of PayPal developers since its launch 8 months ago.
