Jeff Paul / Product Designer & Researcher
Redesigning Zapier’s Editor,
a new vision for workflow automation
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Role
Product Designer. Responsible for leading the vision of this redesign. Worked closely with product and engineering counterparts for shaping and delivery.
Team
Product Manager and Engineering Manager (core EPD), as well as 8 Engineers. Consulted with Executive Leadership, Director of Product Design, Director of Product, Lead Product Designer, Content Designer, UX Researcher, and numerous other stakeholders.
Timeline
2024. Q1 for visioning, designs, and alignment. Q2-Q3 for engineering build. Ongoing refinement and iterations.
Context
Users and stakeholders both agreed: the Editor was long overdue for an upgrade
Zapier, a leader in the workflow automation space, had built their platform around a core product known as the Editor. Our product teams were a powerhouse, continually developing much-requested and increasingly powerful features for users. As more features were introduced to the Editor, however, the interface became bloated. Complexity creep prompted us to take a step back and reexamine the entire experience.
We had also heard a disproportionate amount of feedback from users commenting on not the features and functionality of the product, but instead its look and feel. Their sentiment was that the Editor felt clunky and cluttered when compared to similar automation tools. We recognized the need to raise our quality bar.
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At the same time, we were fresh off the heels of a major brand refresh (one that felt disconnected from the product itself) and enduring the growing pains of maturing from a single to multi-product company. Part of this redesign became articulating a new visual language, one that would align with our new brand identity and lay the foundation for unification across all products in the Zapier ecosystem, including Tables, Interfaces, Canvas, Chatbots, and Functions.
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Ultimately, this project aimed to re-imagine the Editor. We wanted to address the UX debt that had accumulated over time, while also taking a future-looking approach to how we could modernize and elevate the UI of our product.