Contributed towards increasing community open source contributions by 20% for projects like Apache Airflow.
Client
Google Cloud
Team
1 PM, 1 Information Architect
Stakeholders
8 within 2 teams
TL;DR Led a 9-week User Research project for Google Cloud, uncovering barriers to Open Source documentation contribution. Through qualitative research, stakeholder alignment, and strategic modeling, we delivered actionable frameworks that improved adoption and influenced documentation processes in projects like Apache Airflow—insights later presented at Google Next.
INTRODUCTION
In collaboration with Rachel Price, I led a project for Google Cloud through a critical User Research study that successfully identified barriers to Open Source contribution. This was a 9-week project I worked on in 2019 at Guidea, an award-winning Design Strategy firm. My role extended beyond research—I brought Google in as a client and led the engagement from research through to strategic recommendations.
PRODUCT THINKING
Challenge
Motivating developers to contribute to open source documentation was a persistent issue. Many contributors faced barriers such as lack of time, uncertainty about where to start, and limited employer support. Documentation is crucial for project health, yet it is often overlooked or deprioritized.
Context
Most Open Source contributors do not provide effective documentation when contributing code. Open Source documentation is treated as a second-class citizen, making it harder for new contributors to onboard and for projects to scale efficiently. We partnered with a Google Cloud team and collaborators from the Apache Foundation to conduct research and uncover opportunities for process and strategy improvements.
Solution
We provided our client with a holistic strategy to improve the 'Journey to Open Source Adoption.' Through qualitative research, we developed models and frameworks that highlighted key opportunities throughout the Open Source User Journey. These artifacts were shared with the Open Source community and presented at major industry events, such as Google Next.
Value to the business
This project enabled Google Cloud to better understand how to drive contributions to Open Source documentation, ultimately improving the sustainability of key Open Source projects. The adoption of our insights helped optimize documentation processes for major projects like Apache Airflow and Apache Beam.
Value to the user
By improving documentation, we made Open Source contribution more accessible. Our research identified ways to lower barriers, provide better support, and improve the overall contributor experience.
DISCOVERY
Project Alignment
Stakeholder interviews gave us valuable insights into the vision, goals, and potential risks identified by key stakeholders. We began with a brief presentation, followed by a stakeholder workshop and 1:1 interviews. With two teams working remotely in different locations, this approach ensured alignment across both groups and helped us uncover their unique needs, goals, and motivations early in the process.
Key takeaways:
- Defined a shared understanding of current organizational challenges
- Prioritized focus areas and expectations for near, mid and long-term goals
- Identified potential value gained by investment in focus areas
- Established expectations for collaboration between teams
- Shared knowledge & identified barriers or other risks that could impact success
Kickoff workshop with key stakeholders
Stakeholder Interview Findings
Context
Good documentation is just as important as good code, but it’s often overlooked. Keeping it up-to-date is crucial for project health, yet finding volunteers is tough. The challenge? Getting contributors to see documentation as a priority, not a chore.
Social Barriers
Code gets all the glory, while documentation is undervalued. Writers don’t get the same recognition as code contributors, and there’s a sense that Google insiders have an easier path than outsiders in the contribution process.
Lack of Incentives
Employers and the community reward code contributions, but documentation takes a backseat. Without the right incentives, keeping documentation strong just isn’t a priority.
Unclear Path
The path to contributing isn’t clear—people don’t know where to start, what’s required, or how the process works. The workflow feels complicated, and it’s unclear who the best potential contributors might be.
Expected Outcomes
Create clear, universal guidelines to streamline documentation processes and establish best practices that make contributing easier and more rewarding.
The plan
After wrapping up the kickoff, we put together a clear plan to tackle the challenges ahead. We focused on deep research to understand Open Source documentation barriers, developed strategic recommendations and design artifacts to boost adoption, ensured our insights were actionable for Google and the wider community, and planned to share our findings at key conferences to drive industry-wide impact.
- Conduct qualitative research to understand Open Source documentation challenges.
- Develop strategic recommendations and design artifacts to drive adoption.
- Ensure findings were actionable for Google and the broader Open Source community.
- Present insights at key conferences to foster industry-wide improvements.
RESEARCH
Approach
To understand Open Source contributors worldwide—from newcomers to documentation champions—we conducted remote ethnographic interviews. This let us see how they work in their real environments, without location getting in the way.
Our approach combined:
- Ethnographic Interviews to uncover behavioral insights.
- Competitive Analysis to benchmark Open Source documentation practices.
- Journey Mapping to visualize contributor experiences and pain points.
- Experience Workshops to align stakeholders and prioritize opportunities.
Talking to people remotely gave us authentic insights into their behaviors and challenges, while video calls and digital tools helped us capture rich details without disrupting their workflow. We interviewed 9 open source contributors and 6 non-contributors to capture a full spectrum of experiences and perspectives.
Stakeholder Interview Findings
Context
Documentation
- Should rightfully be considered a “first-class citizen of engineering”.
Project Health
- Documentation creation & governance is a core part of “project health”, yet it is hard to find volunteers to do this.
Contributors
- Getting people to contribute & maintain documentation is an ongoing problem that hasn’t been resolved.
Social Barriers
Value
- Code is more highly valued than documentation.
Recognition
- Writers are not as revered as code contributors.
Insider VS. Outsider
- Implication that Google employees get preferential treatment in contribution process.
Lack of Incentives
Employers
- Employers incentivize employees to submit code, rather than documentation.
Community
- Code contribution is incentivized more than documentation contribution in the community itself.
Unclear Path
Opportunities
- Process of contributing and opportunities are not clear.
Workflow
- The contributor workflow is not clear: involvement, definition, required skills, etc.
Process
- Complicated process from initial contribution to publication.
Contributors
- Who are the ideal “Could Be” documentation contributors?
Expected Outcomes
- Agnostic guidelines to drive processes.
- Develop best practices for fostering documentation contribution.
The plan
- Conduct qualitative research to understand Open Source documentation challenges.
- Develop strategic recommendations and design artifacts to drive adoption.
- Ensure findings were actionable for Google and the broader Open Source community.
- Present insights at key conferences to foster industry-wide improvements.
RESEARCH
Approach
To deeply understand contributors’ experiences, we used a mix of qualitative research methods, including:
- Stakeholder Interviews
- Strategy Workshop
- Remote Ethnographic Interviews
- Research Analysis
- Customer Modeling
- Experience Workshop
Key takeaways
Talking with users, we discovered that our original web app plan just wouldn’t cut it in a fast-paced, low-connectivity world. Key learnings include:
- Limited to no cellular reception during power shutdowns.
- Excessive handoffs between teams for dividing, assigning, and inspecting work.
- Ground inspectors often arriving after helicopter patrols had already completed their inspections and reported back.
- Communication gaps between teams leading to duplicated efforts.
- These inefficiencies significantly delaying the reenergizing process.
- Inspectors were already streamlining part of the process with Maps+, an offline mobile mapping app that’s highly adopted in low-reception areas.
Proactive Communication
With multiple stakeholders involved, alignment was key. We maintained regular syncs with Google Cloud, the Apache Foundation, and internal teams. I worked closely with our Project Manager and Information Architect to ensure our findings resonated with both business and user needs, iterating based on ongoing feedback.
Proposed flow
We shifted to helicopter inspections—cutting handoffs, streamlining roles, and reducing inspection times by 60%. By refining an already effective process discovered by aerial inspectors, we empowered our teams and refocused our strategy from ground to aerial inspections. The proposed flow minimized handoffs, optimized existing processes, and empowered the most efficient inspection methods.
Flow showing the efficiency of the proposed flow, which helped build the case for the strategy pivot
Cross-functional collaboration
Although it was challenging at times to prioritize the design process and conduct user research, involving users and stakeholders early on paid off. By integrating cross-functional teams early and ensuring we understood their needs, goals, and motivations, we secured buy-in and minimized pushback. This collaborative approach actually accelerated the process, as everyone was aligned and invested in the new strategy from the start.
Define
Meet Alex, an inspector tasked with covering vast areas under extreme conditions, often with poor visibility and no cellular reception. Despite these challenges, he relies on a trusted mobile mapping app to navigate and mark assets. To support him better, we enhanced the app with features like hazard marking, a crossing buffer layer, and circuit highlighting—streamlining his workflow, improving safety, and helping him work more confidently under pressure.
Ride-alongs
We took our design prototypes on helicopter ride-alongs for real-world testing and quickly discovered a critical need: a map layer that highlights power lines. With factors like weather, sun glare, and clouds affecting visibility—and with two helicopter crashes occurring in just two weeks—this feature became absolutely critical for inspector safety.
Inspector pointing out the lack of visibility of some power lines due to low contrast
Visibility challenges with power lines
Key takeaways
Our testing and conversations uncovered several key insights—especially after two fatal accidents over the past two weeks during aerial inspections, both linked to visibility: challenges.
- Hazard Identification: Inspectors need to reliably identify hazards, static lines on towers, and third-party assets on the map.
- Visibility Challenges: In low-contrast situations, power lines can nearly disappear, making them hard to spot.
- Safety Risks: Relying solely on word-of-mouth and personal experience poses significant safety risks.
- Collaborative Tools: Users require the ability to mark hazards on the map and share that information with fellow inspectors to boost safety and efficiency.
These insights drove us to prioritize a dedicated map layer feature to keep our teams safer and more effective during inspections.
Design Explorations
Evolution of the crossing buffer based on user feedback
Our research revealed that aerial inspection teams operate under extreme conditions and need precise tools to navigate safely and efficiently. To ensure success, we empowered them to seamlessly highlight circuits for flight planning, efficiently track safety-critical zones, and access a crossing lines layer visible up to two miles for enhanced power line detection.
Principles
Contributed towards increasing community open source contributions by 20% for projects like Apache Airflow.
In collaboration with Rachel Price, I led a project for Google Cloud through a critical User Research study that successfully identified barriers to Open Source contribution. This was a 9 week project I worked on in 2019, at Guidea – an award-winning Design Strategy firm.
Challenge:
The main challenge was motivating developers to contribute to open source documentation, as many faced barriers like lack of time, uncertainty about where to start, and limited support from employers.
Role:
Documentation creation and governance is core part of project health, yet it is hard to find volunteers to do this. Motivating users to contribute and maintain documentation is an ongoing problem.
Challenge:
Documentation creation and governance is core part of project health, yet it is hard to find volunteers to do this. Motivating users to contribute and maintain documentation is an ongoing problem.
Solution:
We provided our client with a holistic strategy to effectively address and improve the 'Journey to Open Source Adoption'.
Approach:
- Stakeholder Interviews
- Strategy Workshop
- Remote Ethnographic Interviews
- Research Analysis
- Customer Modeling
- Experience Workshop
Remote Ethnographic Research
Behavioral Archetypes & Journey Maps
Impact:
This study resulted in the implementation of processes that effectively optimized the adoption of Open Source documentation for projects including Apache Airflow. Findings were presented at Google Next and other Open Source conferences.