Our developer-facing product had an SDK that required some guidance for setting up and using it. Our engineers wrote a wiki on GitHub, but the feedback showed developers needed more guidance to reduce development time. Product CDs at Meta aren’t expected to write dev docs, but my Eng partners needed a hand.
I co-led the effort to migrate the docs from GitHub to Meta for Developers and make some key improvements.
Restructuring
People told us information was hard to find, so my first step with the content itself was to greatly simplify the navigation and group sub-pages logically under main topics.
More instructions, please!
Developers were having trouble with some of the more complex setup processes and were asking for expanded step-by-step guides. I worked closely with Eng to pick apart the developer workflow and produced illustrated walkthroughs for known pain points.
Quality guidelines
The experiences our developer partners created with our technology varied greatly in quality and so engagement. It was critical for us to set a clear bar for quality in order to meet our success metrics, so I created a set of guidelines based on discussions with marketing, Eng and product management, who understood the requirements.
Below are the guidelines
Note: I redacted info and changed the name to “Product X”
Use these guidelines to help you design Product Xs that achieve your business goals while maintaining high standards for experiences on Facebook.
Offer a valuable and functional experience.
Product Xs let you build flows around real goals people have, like buying your products or previewing before downloading your native app. Design your Product Xs to enable people to achieve a moment of real success, rather than an empty ad experience.
Make it immediately usable.
Allow people to have a significant experience with your Product X before asking them to sign up, sign in, onboard, etc. Product Xs do support sign-up and login scenarios, but these should not be barriers to getting value from your Product X.
Keep navigation simple.
Avoid tabs. Product X flows should reach a meaningful moment quickly, and navigation should be simple and task-oriented.
Make it feel like a native app.
A Product X should not scroll, zoom or pan like a webpage.
Use consistent branding and images.
Use icons and splash images that represent the visual style of your Product X so the experience will match people’s expectations.
Make installs or transactions a natural part of the flow.
Avoid gimmicks like extra UI pointing to the install button.