My approach to design
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Overview
Acquia's content management solution, Drupal, is complex and heavily reliant on developers, making it frustrating and difficult for non-technical users to navigate. This lack of inclusivity creates significant barriers for beginners or anyone who simply wants to build a website, limiting the platform's usability and excluding those without technical expertise. As a result, it slows down project timelines and hinders overall productivity.
What’s the problem?
Role
Lead Senior Product Designer
Tools
Figma, FigJam, Drupal, Dovetail
Prototype
End-to-end MVP
Duration
March, 2024 - Present
With over 1.3 million registered Drupal users—including developers, site builders, designers, and content managers/editors—Experience Builder will deliver significant value, transforming the way they create, manage, and update sites.
What are we hearing from the people behind the problem?
Our exploration:
How might we make Acquia's content management solution more intuitive and accessible, empowering non-technical users to build and manage websites independently without relying on developers?
The Solution
Create a content management experience that feels like second nature — empowering anyone, regardless of technical expertise, to confidently build, customize, and manage websites on their own. By simplifying complex tasks and breaking down barriers, we can unlock creativity, boost productivity, and make the web a more inclusive place for everyone.
Empowering users with…
Users can easily create, manage, and preview sites with no technical expertise, using out-of-the-box templates or starting from scratch.
Effortless Site Creation & Management
Intuitive Design & Customization
The drag-and-drop interface, Brand Kits, and Global Regions simplify creating consistent, on-brand experiences — with options for advanced customization through the Code Editor.
Seamless Content & Publishing
A visual-first interface empowers content creators to produce and publish both structured and unstructured content confidently, supporting both coupled and headless CMS experiences.
How over 178 hours of user and customer research transformed data into human centered requirements.
The Discovery
Understand and empathize with the people using the product. First, we assessed and understood the users we were designing for by utilizing our key personas.
With the diverse range of skills our personas represent, we knew we needed to approach this problem space strategically. We saw two possible paths:
One would lean into Drupal's classic strengths — a reliable, flexible foundation that has stood the test of time. The other? A bolder vision — one that not only levels the playing field but redefines it, outpacing the competition by combining Drupal's dependability with a more intuitive, modern experience.
Both directions had merit — so we asked ourselves, what if we could have the best of both? That’s where we decided to dig in — exploring what makes each path compelling to uncover the sweet spot between power and simplicity.
Research & Key Findings
User Testing Round 1
Constrained user flow prototype
Divergent user flow prototype
Approach
Unmoderated Playbook UX Testing
Technical participants and non-technical participants
Two concepts - divergent and constrained
10 total participants
Overall objectives and goals
Understand and meet our users’ mental models
The process makes sense to the user, the flow meets their expectations
Determine which concept we will converge on
Anticipating that our insights will uncover this
Understand if the tooling/core construct pieces meet expectations
Users are able to complete their tasks with the tools provided and can easily adapt
Understand how users interpret terminology and affordances
Terminology aligns with the users’ expectations and it’s clear and familiar to them
User testing revealed strong alignment with user mental models in the divergent approach, with high success rates and an intuitive experience. However, the constrained approach exposed pain points around terminology and feature recognition, showing that some users struggled to find and understand key features.
How might we
Help users quickly spot essential tools?
Simplify navigation to reduce friction?
Align terminology with user expectations?
Improve the find-ability of site creation tools?
What we learned
A high-level overview of key deliverables produced following the initial round of research.
The approach we took to converge on next steps
Benchmarking Competitors – We analyzed other site builders to identify common patterns and affordances that users are familiar with, helping us increase feature recognition.
Information Architecture (IA) Creation – We designed an IA based on our existing technology and personas' navigation behaviors. We validated this approach by running a Category Tree Test to refine the IA concept.
Terminology Review – We revisited old terminology and benchmarked it against modern standards to ensure clarity and alignment with user expectations.
Task Flows with Key Jobs to Be Done – We mapped out task flows to identify opportunities to improve the findability of site creation tools, ensuring they were accessible and intuitive.
Workshop Brainstorming – We conducted a team workshop to generate ideas based on insights from our testing, exploring possible directions for improvement.
SWOT Analysis – We performed a SWOT analysis to evaluate where we could leverage existing strengths and identify areas for improvement, helping us align our solutions with both user needs and business goals.
User Testing Round 2
The research aimed to understand how users navigate content, customize layouts, and manage design consistency across sites, while identifying pain points like preview issues, user permissions, and multilingual content management. Based on these insights, the focus shifted to streamlining workflows through automation, improving previews, enhancing collaboration tools, and scaling SEO capabilities — all while maintaining brand consistency with AI-driven templates and reusable design elements.
User Testing Round 3
The research aimed to understand how users navigate content, customize layouts, and manage design consistency across sites, while identifying pain points like preview issues, user permissions, and multilingual content management. Based on these insights, the focus shifted to streamlining workflows through automation, improving previews, enhancing collaboration tools, and scaling SEO capabilities — all while maintaining brand consistency with AI-driven templates and reusable design elements.
A high-level overview of key deliverables produced following the remainder rounds of research.
The approach we took to converge on next steps
High-Fidelity Design Progression – Refined low-fidelity wireframes into high-fidelity designs based on user feedback.
Brand Kit & Library Exploration – Explored a centralized library for reusable layouts and elements with preview functionality.
Collaboration Research – Investigated live collaboration tools to enhance role-based workflows.
SEO Tools Expansion – Integrated SEO meta tags and optimization tools into the CMS interface for better accessibility.
Terminology Alignment – Clarified terminology in key areas to improve user understanding.
Component Interaction Simplification – Explored alternatives to drag-and-drop for easier component placement.
Preview Enhancements – Improved the preview experience for clearer front-end content representation.
Site Organization Improvements – Added list/grid views and sorting options to improve site management.
Design Refinement
After several iterations, we refined the designs based on valuable insights and research, focusing on the MVP roadmap to ensure users could complete their jobs to be done. We leveraged the Radix design system to streamline the process, ensuring consistency, improving the user experience, and focusing on higher-level design decisions. Radix's accessibility and flexibility enabled us to create scalable, inclusive, and efficient solutions that met both design and technical standards.
Key Learnings & Next Steps
As the lead designer on my first end-to-end project, I drove the product's design from discovery through the MVP release, contributing to over 1,200 sign-ups for the beta launch. This experience taught me the importance of strategic thinking, adaptability, and effective collaboration with stakeholders, the Drupal Community, and multiple sprint teams in a fast-paced, cross-functional environment. With the beta now live, the next steps involve auditing the MVP release, gathering insights, and prioritizing the next feature for usability testing to inform future iterations.
