By Eyal Shahar: Former Google DeepMind UX lead. By day designs smarter products and leverages AI, by night builds, tinkers, and constantly learns and optimizes life
As the head of UX design for developer-focused tools at Google, (specifically Apigee, Google Cloud’s enterprise API management platform, and Intent Lab, Google's advanced NLP platform powering internal tools like Search and Assistant), I've learned that great tools empower users. Here are ten insights to help you create developer tools that truly resonate."
1. Developers Care About Their Solutions, Not Your Product
Developers might geek out on shiny new tools at first, , but they're mostly passionate about the solutions they're building. Your product should facilitate their goals without creating friction. The best developer tools feel almost invisible, enabling efficiency without demanding unnecessary attention. Prioritize unobtrusiveness, ensuring your product seamlessly blends into developers' workflows, supporting them in achieving their objectives effortlessly.
2. Seamlessly Integrate into Existing Workflows
Developers have established workflows, and your tool must fit smoothly into their Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Focus on minimizing disruptions. Prioritize keyboard-driven interactions and embrace command-line interfaces (CLI) for experienced users. Provide visual interfaces primarily for onboarding and initial exploration, helping new developers quickly build an accurate mental model of your tool.
3. Prioritize Keyboard Interactions
The keyboard remains central to developer productivity. Offer comprehensive keyboard shortcuts and fuzzy search capabilities, such as typing shorthand commands (like “mtrl” for the Material library). The faster developers can navigate and utilize your tool without relying on a mouse, the more they will appreciate its efficiency. Emphasize keyboard-first design to significantly enhance the developer experience.
4. Provide Robust Contextual Awareness
Developers handle complex projects, making context critical. Enhance your tool with context-sensitive insights such as detailed call stacks, relevant logs, and error traces. Immediate, clear contextual information enables quicker problem-solving and smoother workflow continuity, significantly reducing cognitive load and frustration.
5. Support Advanced and Diverse Workflows
Recognize and accommodate the unique ways developers approach tasks. Your tools should empower rather than limit creative and varied workflows. Remain open to continuous feedback, adapting your tool to support both standard and advanced user practices. Offering advanced customization and flexible options encourages long-term adoption and satisfaction.
6. Ensure Robustness and Reliability
Reliability is non-negotiable. Developers depend heavily on tool stability and security. Incorporate redundancy, automated recovery, and fail-safes to handle unexpected crashes gracefully. Clearly communicate status updates and issues transparently to build user trust. A dependable tool significantly reduces anxiety, allowing developers to focus confidently on their core tasks.
7. Integrate Version Control Seamlessly
Version control is fundamental to software development. Your tool must integrate effortlessly with popular version control systems like Git. Provide clear, immediate feedback on actions, and simplify complex version management tasks. Efficient version control integration streamlines collaboration, reduces errors, and enhances overall productivity.
8. Facilitate Safe Experimentation
Offer isolated environments such as sandboxes and playgrounds where developers can freely test ideas and solutions without risking production stability. Providing safe spaces for experimentation encourages creativity and innovation. Developers appreciate the freedom to explore new possibilities without the constant fear of breaking something critical.
9. Design for Effective Collaboration
Collaboration is integral to modern development processes. Enable frictionless team interactions by designing intuitive multi-user environments. Features like real-time collaboration, shared dashboards, and team-based permissions significantly streamline teamwork. Your tool should actively support communication and cooperation without impeding individual workflows or team productivity.
10. Optimize UI Design for Productivity
Your user interface must enhance, not hinder, developer productivity. Structure UI elements around established workflows. Prioritize clear visual hierarchies, thoughtful navigation, meaningful icons, and readable typography. Offer customizable dashboards and support high information density without visual clutter. Consistency across elements and responsive design further ensures your tool remains effective across different screen sizes and devices, maximizing usability and minimizing frustration.