The challenge: lack of consistency, inefficient user journeys
Red Hat identified several challenges that prompted a website redesign and information-architecture overhaul: low user conversions, no personalization for major website personas (registered developers and general users), and a slow, complicated Learning Management System experience.
Red Hat wanted to keep a consistent visual language across the portal while achieving the following:
- Restructure the information architecture to favor conversion-based user journeys.
- Showcase the value proposition of paid products and services while highlighting the brand's commitment to open source.
- Create personalized learning journeys with dedicated environments, tutorials, and easily accessible resources.
- Use user research and personas to strengthen the developer learning experience and improve product buyer journeys.
- Improve the product buyer journeys behind the Red Hat Developer Subscription Program.
The solution: achieving the brand's vision with efficient collaboration
We set up clear communication channels with the client, with daily scrums and open discussions to keep alignment, especially in unfamiliar market territory. The design work evolved in sync with Red Hat's vision.
Our approach was divided into five workstreams:
- Top Design Jobs: we used the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework to capture business and design requirements while balancing user needs and business goals.
- User research: we ran user research using three critical methods.
- User journey mapping: we used earlier findings to chart the user's journey across the developer portal.
- Persona empathy mapping: we created formal personas and empathy maps for each major persona identified during discovery.
- Stakeholder interviews and mapping: we mapped the length and breadth of stakeholders involved, their objectives, challenges, and priorities.
- Information architecture and navigation redesign: we introduced more inclusive, meaningful structures, taxonomies, and content models, and produced low-fidelity wireframes with elemental depth and proposed behavior.
- UI design: we built high-fidelity, mobile-responsive mockups from the low-fidelity wireframes, aligned to Red Hat's visual branding.
- Usability audit: we ran a usability audit against Nielsen's Usability Heuristics on the existing portal to surface interaction issues and design flaws.
The impact: better conversion journeys
Close collaboration with Red Hat was central to the outcome. Their active involvement in research helped the team surface insights that would have been invisible otherwise.
By grounding the redesign in user personas, we helped revamp the Red Hat Developer Portal with a new information architecture for cleaner navigation and personalized learning experiences. Together we moved the following outputs:
- Higher conversion rate: we uncovered major personas along with their needs, expectations, and pain points, and categorized them into primary (Technical Architect) and secondary (Linux Developers). This let us nudge users along a desired journey and lift conversions.
- A new learning experience: the reworked information architecture let users track and understand their learning journey on the portal.
- Better user journey tracking: with the new learning experience in place, Red Hat could track resources consumed across stages of the journey.
- Higher engagement: the portal became more experience-led with personalized touchpoints, lifting engagement across sessions.
- Stronger subscription programs: with sharper end-user insight, Red Hat improved the design of its subscription programs and improved the odds of conversion.
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