{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-tag-jsx","path":"/blog/tag/design/","result":{"data":{"prismic":{"allFeaturedblogs":{"edges":[{"node":{"featured_blogs_enabled":true,"heading":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"Featured posts","spans":[]}],"featured_blog_1":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Blog","_linkType":"Link.document","blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":790,"height":395},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/6d8d81b1-971a-4313-b033-b4e125cb14a0_MondoDB-blog-header-790x395.PNG?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Introducing DigitalOcean Managed MongoDB – a fully managed, database as a service for modern apps","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2021-06-29","blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"MongoDB is one of the most popular databases, and it’s ideal for apps that evolve rapidly and need to handle huge volumes of data and traffic. It offers advantages like flexible document schemas, code-native data access, change-friendly design, and easy horizontal scale-out.","spans":[{"start":22,"end":44,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://db-engines.com/en/ranking","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"However, building and maintaining MongoDB clusters from the ground up can be a huge undertaking. Developers often complain that they have to spend their valuable time and resources on database management. Well, we’ve been listening and have some great news: accessing and managing MongoDB on DigitalOcean just got a lot simpler!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We are excited to announce that DigitalOcean Managed MongoDB is now in General Availability. Managed MongoDB is a fully managed, database as a service (DBaaS) offering from DigitalOcean, built in partnership with and certified by MongoDB Inc. It provides you all the technical capabilities that make MongoDB so beloved in the developer community. Together we have ensured that you will get access to all the latest releases of the MongoDB document database as they become available.","spans":[{"start":32,"end":91,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/managed-databases-mongodb/"}},{"start":230,"end":241,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.mongodb.com/","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Managed MongoDB simplifies the MongoDB administration. Developers of all skill levels, even those who do not have prior experience in databases, can spin up MongoDB clusters in just a few minutes. We handle the provisioning, managing, scaling, updates, backups, and security of your MongoDB clusters, allowing you to offload the complex, time consuming –yet critical – database administration tasks to us. This empowers you to focus on what really matters: building awesome apps.","spans":[]},{"type":"embed","oembed":{"height":113,"width":200,"embed_url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvHQSV7jnKA","type":"video","version":"1.0","title":"Create a MongoDB Database on DigitalOcean","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_url":"https://www.youtube.com/c/Digitalocean","provider_name":"YouTube","provider_url":"https://www.youtube.com/","cache_age":null,"thumbnail_url":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NvHQSV7jnKA/hqdefault.jpg","thumbnail_width":480,"thumbnail_height":360,"html":""}},{"type":"heading2","text":"Benefits of Managed MongoDB","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Easy set up and maintenance: We create the database clusters for you. Simply choose the cluster configuration (e.g., memory, disk size, number of nodes, etc.), and the data center in which you want to host the database. Follow a few simple steps and your database cluster will be up and running in a matter of minutes. You can spin up clusters using the cloud control panel, CLI, or API.\n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":28,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Automatic daily backups with point in time recovery: Data is one of the most important assets of an app, so it’s critical to backup your database. We take backups of your entire clusters automatically on a daily basis, for free. We also provide a point in time recovery for 7 days, that way if things go wrong due to human error, machine error, or some combination of both, you can easily restore the database as it was at any point in the previous 7 days. \n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":52,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Automatic updates and access to latest MongoDB releases: You get access to MongoDB 4.4. This is the latest release of MongoDB and comes packed with numerous enhancements like hedged reads, rust, and swift drivers. Since we have developed Managed MongoDB in partnership with MongoDB Inc, you will always get access to new releases as they become available. With Managed MongoDB, the updates happen automatically. Just select a date and time for the updates and we take care of the rest. This makes it easy to stay up to date with MongoDB releases without disrupting your business.\n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":56,"type":"strong"},{"start":148,"end":169,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.mongodb.com/new","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"High availability with automated failover: If your database goes down, it can take down the entire app, leading to bad customer experiences. With Managed MongoDB, you can easily minimize the downtime for your database and make it highly available with standby nodes. Standby nodes add redundancy, so if for example the primary node fails, the standby node is immediately promoted to primary and begins serving requests while we provision a replacement standby node in the background.\n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":42,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Scale up easily to handle traffic spikes: As your app gains traction and the usage grows, it’s important to have a database that can keep up with the increased demand. With Managed MongoDB, you can easily scale up the size of database nodes when needed.\n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":41,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Secure by default: Since data is critical, it also needs to be secure. We encrypt data at rest with LUKS and in transit with SSL. When you create a new cluster, it’s placed in a VPC network by default that provides a more secure connection between resources. You can also restrict access to your nodes to prevent brute-force password and denial-of-service attacks.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":18,"type":"strong"},{"start":178,"end":189,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/networking/vpc/"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"The need for Managed Databases","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"DigitalOcean’s mission is to simplify cloud computing so developers, startups, and SMBs can spend more time building software that changes the world. While databases are a critical component to any application, building, maintaining, and scaling them can be complex and time consuming. For developers that are building apps for their business, database administration is often not a core focus area. But it’s quite common to find developers that write the code and then also roll up their sleeves to maintain databases. Such users would rather offload the tedious database administration and focus their limited time and energy on building and enhancing their apps. ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"With this in mind, we introduced Managed Databases a couple of years ago and are excited to add Managed MongoDB to our portfolio. With this release, DigitalOcean Managed Databases now supports the following engines:","spans":[{"start":33,"end":50,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/managed-databases/"}}]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/87745cc1-1c5f-4463-b104-104b7fc30dc7_managed-databases-logos.png?auto=compress,format","alt":null,"copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":849,"height":104}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Managed MongoDB launch comes on the heels of DigitalOcean App Platform, a modern, reimagined PaaS (Platform as a Service) that we released a few months ago. App Platform makes it very easy to build, deploy, and scale apps and static sites. You can deploy code by simply pointing to your GitHub and GitLab repos, and App Platform will do all the heavy lifting of managing infrastructure, app runtimes, and dependencies. App Platform, along with Managed Databases, helps fulfill DigitalOcean’s mission by empowering developers, startups, and SMBs to focus more on their apps, and less on the underlying infrastructure and databases.","spans":[{"start":45,"end":70,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"How Managed MongoDB works","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"DigitalOcean provides you with various compute options to build your apps like:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Droplets: On-demand, Linux virtual machines suitable for production business applications and personal passion projects.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":8,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"DigitalOcean Kubernetes: Managed Kubernetes with automatic scaling, upgrades, and a free control plane.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":23,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"DigitalOcean App Platform: A fully managed Platform as a Service.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":25,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"No matter which compute option you choose to build your apps, you can easily add Managed MongoDB to it. In addition to this, Managed MongoDB also integrates with the Node.js 1-Click App from DigitalOcean Marketplace making it a lot easier to build Node.js apps.","spans":[{"start":166,"end":215,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/nodejs"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Simple, predictable pricing","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Just like all DigitalOcean products, Managed MongoDB provides simple, predictable pricing that allows you to control costs and prevent any surprise bills. You can spin up a database cluster for just $15/month, or a highly available three-node replica set for $45/month. Click here for more information.","spans":[{"start":270,"end":301,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/#managed-databases"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Regional availability","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Managed MongoDB is currently available in the following regions:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"NYC3 (New York, USA)","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"FRA1 (Frankfurt, Germany)","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"AMS3 (Amsterdam, Netherlands)","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We will be making Managed Mongo available in other regions soon. Please check out the release notes for most up to date information on regional availability.","spans":[{"start":86,"end":99,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/release-notes/"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Join us at deploy, DigitalOcean’s virtual user conference","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Today we have deploy, DigitalOcean’s signature user conference, which focuses on celebrating, educating, and connecting awesome builders from all over the world.","spans":[{"start":14,"end":20,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://deploy.digitalocean.com/home"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Check out the keynote session from DigitalOcean's CEO, Yancey Spruill, in which he talks about where we're headed as a company and shares some exciting product updates. His keynote will be followed by sessions from community members, engineers, customers, and other experts that are building technologies and businesses powered by the cloud. With live Q&A and an active Discord server, there’s ample opportunity to engage and learn something new. Click here to attend the deploy conference.","spans":[{"start":14,"end":69,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://deploy.digitalocean.com/agenda/session/552806"}},{"start":347,"end":384,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://do.co/deploy-discord"}},{"start":461,"end":489,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://do.co/deploy"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We are also launching a hackathon for DigitalOcean Managed MongoDB. Learn how you can participate, submit an app and get a t-shirt.","spans":[{"start":24,"end":66,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/mongodb-hackathon"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We hope you will give Managed MongoDB a try. Here are some sample datasets and sample apps that you can use to kick the tires. Check out the docs and let us know what you think!","spans":[{"start":22,"end":43,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://cloud.digitalocean.com/databases/new?engine=mongodb"}},{"start":59,"end":90,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/do-community/mongodb-resources","target":"_blank"}},{"start":141,"end":145,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/databases/mongodb/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you’d like to have a conversation about using DigitalOcean and Managed MongoDB in your business, please feel free to contact our sales team.","spans":[{"start":120,"end":142,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/company/contact/sales/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Happy coding!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"André Bearfield","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Director of Product Management","spans":[]}],"tags":[{"tag1":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Tag","tag":"Product Updates","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"product-updates"}}}],"author":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Author","author_name":"André Bearfield","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":553,"height":547},"alt":"André Bearfield","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/fdc7c85186f0a850b04083e1d4306bd1c19772e8_andre-bearfield.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"andre-bearfield"}},"_meta":{"uid":"introducing-digitalocean-managed-mongodb"}},"featured_blog_2":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Blog","_linkType":"Link.document","blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":790,"height":400},"alt":"Droplet Console","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/710499ae-78cc-4179-afc1-15793637b200_DODX3727-790x400-logo-2.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Securely connect to Droplets with SSH key pairs using a new Droplet Console","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2021-08-10","blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"The famous author Ken Blanchard once said, “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.\" This is something we truly believe at DigitalOcean, and we always strive to enhance our products based on customer feedback.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"With this goal in mind, we are excited to introduce a new Droplet Console that will make it much easier to connect to your Droplets securely. The new Droplet Console provides one-click SSH access to your Droplets through a native-like SSH/Terminal experience. It also eliminates the need for a password or manual configuration of SSH keys. Starting today, we’re pleased to announce that the new Droplet Console is now available to all Droplet users.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Why you should be using Secure Shell (SSH) ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Password-based security is notoriously insecure due to password fatigue and the overuse of passwords such as ‘123456’. Secure Shell or SSH is a network communication protocol that solves this by using passwordless solutions for encryption, enabling two computers to communicate and securely share data. At a high level, SSH works by creating cryptographic key pairs consisting of a public and private key, which are computer generated and stored separately to ensure their security. ","spans":[{"start":80,"end":117,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://cybernews.com/best-password-managers/most-common-passwords/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"SSH has become the default encryption protocol for many industries, but it was difficult to use SSH keys with DigitalOcean’s current Recovery (VNC) console, which is why we developed our new Droplet Console. The new Droplet Console is backed by an agent that security supervises the key pair, while also providing one-click SSH access to our users. You can see the full list of features below.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"The new Droplet Console: More time saving, less time wasting ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The new Droplet Console is for everyone who is looking to build fast, secure apps and avoid hassles with SSH access & usability issues.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"In addition to easier SSH access, the new Droplet Console comes with:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Copy/paste text: Instead of typing lengthy key pairs and text manually, you can use copy/paste to save time. ","spans":[{"start":0,"end":17,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Multi-color support: Multi-color support makes the console more useful and intuitive, and breaks the conventional standard appearance which is black text on a white background. ","spans":[{"start":0,"end":41,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Multi-language support: DigitalOcean’s new Droplet Console supports multiple languages, meaning you can now type and view any content in any language that is supported by UTF-8","spans":[{"start":0,"end":24,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"OS/images supported: Linux distributions (Ubuntu(16.04 - 20.04), Fedora (32 & 33), Debian (9), CentOS (7.6 & 8.3), CentOS 8 Stream, Rocky Linux and Marketplace images.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":20,"type":"strong"},{"start":148,"end":159,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The new Droplet Console is available by default on any new Droplets you spin up. You can also enable it manually on older Droplets. Click here to learn more!","spans":[{"start":132,"end":157,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/how-to/connect-with-console/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Check out this short walkthrough video that shows the new Droplet Console in action: ","spans":[]},{"type":"embed","oembed":{"type":"video","embed_url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt7QihVuxiE","title":"Access Your Droplet Terminal Through the Web Console","provider_name":"YouTube","thumbnail_url":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Qt7QihVuxiE/hqdefault.jpg","provider_url":"https://www.youtube.com/","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_url":"https://www.youtube.com/c/Digitalocean","height":113,"width":200,"version":"1.0","thumbnail_height":360,"thumbnail_width":480,"html":""}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We hope you’re excited about the new Droplet Console. You’re welcome to spin some Droplets up right now, and try out the new Droplet Console – why wait?","spans":[{"start":72,"end":103,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://cloud.digitalocean.com/droplets/new"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Happy coding!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Harsh Banwait, Senior Product Manager","spans":[]}],"tags":[{"tag1":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Tag","tag":"Product Updates","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"product-updates"}}}],"author":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Author","author_name":"Harsh Banwait","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":399},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/e83ff690-b20c-4d88-a2b6-57e562558cd6_download.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"harsh-banwait"}},"_meta":{"uid":"new-droplet-console-ssh-support"}},"featured_blog_3":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Blog","_linkType":"Link.document","blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":790,"height":400},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/588e28d3-d41e-480b-937b-8c3b19201f6e_DODX3568-790x400-Blog.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"How to scale your SaaS product without breaking the bank","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2021-06-22","blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"These days, if you are in the business of software, chances are you are delivering or plan to deliver your services using a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. A combination of internet-based delivery, subscription-based pricing, and low-friction product experiences have made SaaS solutions valuable tools for their users, and an excellent vehicle for software builders looking to distribute their products.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"These factors have made SaaS solutions ubiquitous; SaaS is the largest segment in the public cloud market, and is used to provide functionality ranging from personal finance apps for consumers, to productivity software for businesses, and even tools and services for software developers themselves to compose their applications and simplify their workflows. It is also not uncommon to find micro-SaaS applications being built for specific industries such as retail, job functions such as accounting or marketing, or tasks such as event management. ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The best thing about this SaaS wave has been that it has allowed a new generation of software builders to build and monetize applications and participate in the digital economy. Previously, you had to be a big company with lots of resources, name recognition and distribution networks to successfully sell software products. Now, irrespective of whether you are a single person working on a passion project, a small team of developers in a startup, or a small and medium-sized business (SMB), the SaaS model enables you to express your ideas in the form of software and deliver them to customers anywhere in the world.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"The unique challenges of building SaaS solutions","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Despite the opportunities that come with the widespread adoption of SaaS products, software builders still have to answer key questions in their journey to building successful SaaS products. Understanding what customers to target, features to prioritize, how to price your product, and how to acquire customers are all critical questions to figure out while you are also doing the important job of actually building and operating the product. ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Writing the code, testing, deployment, monitoring the usage in production, and ensuring that your apps are able to handle the additional demand when customer base and usage grows are all essential and time-consuming tasks.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Additionally, being able to test multiple ideas, pivot, and double down on the ideas that actually work is critical in early stages of SaaS development. Once growth comes, it is equally important to scale up without compromising on performance or reliability. Needless to say, all of this needs to be economically viable as well, since not everyone has the resources of large SaaS providers like Salesforce or Adobe.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Cloud Computing enables builders but also poses challenges","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Fortunately, for the act of building and operating your apps, cloud computing can help take some load off your shoulders. Unless you have the scale and resources of Facebook, chances are you are not going to set up your own data centers to host the computing infrastructure that powers your SaaS company. Public cloud infrastructure providers can bring great value to SaaS builders by providing on-demand computing services with usage-based pricing. However, just like how the legacy software companies weren't built for the SaaS model, the early (and big) cloud computing services were not optimized for the unique needs of small SaaS building teams. ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Smaller SaaS teams face challenges with large cloud computing providers, including:","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"Too many technology options","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"There are just too many options for tech stacks on which to build your SaaS - programming languages, application development frameworks, libraries, runtime environments, architectural patterns, and deployment models - and the list is growing by the day.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"Complexity of cloud computing services","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Even when you have decided on a technology stack, there is a lot of cloud vendor-specific terminology you need to learn and heavy lifting you need to do to build on the cloud, not all of which contributes to making your SaaS applications successful.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"Unpredictable costs","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The experimentation necessary in early stages of SaaS development, as well as the scaling of applications required during the growth phase, call for affordable and predictable pricing from your cloud provider. The last thing SaaS teams want is surprising and indecipherable bills from your cloud provider. Unfortunately, smaller businesses often experience unpredictable costs with cloud providers who are busy serving only the large enterprises.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"DigitalOcean provides a simple, cost effective solution for SaaS builders","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Fortunately, at DigitalOcean we have a laser focus on small software development teams, who are trying to build the next generation of applications. Today, DigitalOcean customers are already building SaaS applications which serve all kinds of customers.","spans":[{"start":191,"end":217,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/solutions/saas/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We believe SaaS builders should focus on building apps that power their business, and not spend their valuable time on managing infrastructure. That is exactly what we have been able to enable through our intuitive products that are built for scale and reliability.","spans":[{"start":205,"end":223,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Vidazoo is an advertising technology company specializing in video streaming and serving. It serves video ads to thousands of websites and handles close to 10 billion requests per day. \n\n“We are as much a data company as an adtech company. Our business relies on speedy and accurate data processing at massive scale. DigitalOcean provides us the perfect set of tools to operate our SaaS business profitably, while not making us feel the need to become full time system administrators. We plan to move a lot of our apps to DigitalOcean App Platform and other fully managed products.” - Roman Svichar, CTO of Vidazoo","spans":[{"start":0,"end":7,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://vidazoo.com/"}},{"start":187,"end":583,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We believe in meeting customers where they are. If they already have an understanding of cloud infrastructure technologies, they should be able to leverage that knowledge and get started with our products without any further ramp up.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Whatfix is an enterprise SaaS provider that offers a digital adoption platform to businesses. The company helps enterprises gain the full value of their investments in enterprise applications by providing real-time, interactive, and contextual guidance to users of those applications. \n\n“What we really love about the DigitalOcean platform is the ease of use. We feel like we know infrastructure and can handle most of the configuration and management. What we needed from a cloud was not bells and whistles but efficiency and reliability. DigitalOcean provides us a platform to build our apps and then gets out of the way. Just how we like it.” - Achyuth Krishna, Director of Engineering of Whatfix","spans":[{"start":0,"end":7,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://whatfix.com/blog/driving-the-future-now-were-excited-to-announce-our-90-million-series-d-funding/"}},{"start":287,"end":648,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We understand that scaling while maintaining reliability of applications and profitability of business is important, so we provide robust solutions which minimize downtime.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Centra is a SaaS-based e-commerce platform for global direct-to-consumer and wholesale e-commerce brands. Centra provides a powerful e-commerce backend that lets brands build pixel-perfect, custom designed, online flagship stores. \n\n“How do we enable our customers to create differentiated online experiences? How do we ensure their e-commerce apps stay up and running at all times? How do we scale on-demand when traffic grows or new customers come in? These are the questions that we ask ourselves every day. Thankfully, we have a partner in DigitalOcean that provides just the platform to answer those questions enabling us to guarantee 99.9% uptime for our clients.” - Martin Jensen, CEO of Centra","spans":[{"start":0,"end":6,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://centra.com/"}},{"start":233,"end":673,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"These are just a few examples of SaaS businesses finding success on DigitalOcean. We are constantly amazed by the creativity and innovation that software builders are utilizing our platform for. If you are interested in learning more about product updates, technical deep-dives and best practices for building SaaS products and businesses, please contact us to learn how we can help you get started. ","spans":[{"start":340,"end":357,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/migrate/?utmmedium=blog","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Come build with DigitalOcean!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Looking to migrate your SaaS to DigitalOcean? Leverage free infrastructure credits, robust training, and technical support to ensure a worry-free migration.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":156,"type":"strong"},{"start":0,"end":156,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/migrate/?utmmedium=blog","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Raman Sharma","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Vice President, Product & Programs Marketing","spans":[]}],"tags":[{"tag1":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Tag","tag":"Developer Relations","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"developer-relations"}}}],"author":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Author","author_name":"Raman Sharma","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":512,"height":512},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/497b4b14-d192-493a-8b66-7ae176ba99f3_raman.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"raman-sharma"}},"_meta":{"uid":"how-to-scale-your-saas-product-without-breaking-the-bank"}}}}]}}},"pageContext":{"limit":12,"skip":0,"numTagPages":1,"currentPage":1,"uid":"design","data":[{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"John Gannon","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":188,"height":188},"alt":"John Gannon","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/c168397537fa6de301e8f96c1d3aa74bdd6b8e4b_john_gannon-02f76ff8.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"john_gannon"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":784,"height":418},"alt":"user-interview-header-img","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/00442f8c-7ece-446b-be7f-f20c650670c4_conduct-user-interviews-1.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"How to conduct user interviews","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"As product designers and product managers, we spend a lot of time thinking about developers’ needs. We look at the data and analytics on how they’re using the products we build.","spans":[{"start":66,"end":74,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"But unless we get out of the building, we’ll never get the full picture of how and why developers use our products.","spans":[{"start":14,"end":37,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://steveblank.com/2009/03/20/supermac-war-story-2-facts-exist-outside-the-building-opinions-reside-within-%e2%80%93-so-get-the-hell-outside-the-building/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Our product and design teams speak with developers every single week. But with DigitalOcean’s rapid growth over the last few years, we realized we need to ensure that the whole company – not only product teams – had a consistent view of developers’ needs and their Jobs to be Done. An analytics console or SQL queries weren't enough: we needed to get in front of developers, face to face.","spans":[{"start":265,"end":280,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"So, in 2018, the Product Management, Product Design, and Customer Success teams kicked off a formal research effort called the Developer Landscape project to reach this understanding. The goal was twofold:","spans":[{"start":127,"end":154,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"o-list-item","text":"Deepen our understanding of the needs and “Jobs to be Done” of the developers and teams that use our products, and;","spans":[]},{"type":"o-list-item","text":"Analyze and synthesize what we learn, and communicate that understanding to the rest of the company.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"By accomplishing these two things, we hoped we’d be in a great position in the coming years to give developers products and solutions that help them make their own products and solutions even better.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Today, we want to share one of the processes we developed as part of the Developer Landscape project. It’s the playbook for how we found users to interview for the project – and how we ran those interviews.","spans":[{"start":178,"end":181,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"How to find users to interview","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"There’s a multibillion-dollar market research industry loaded with for-fee tools, services, and consultancies. But if you’re on a startup budget, don’t worry. There are lots of ways to recruit users for interviews – for little or no cost. Here are a few examples:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"People who are conference speakers and panelists are often very interested in connecting with others in the industry (and they often like to talk!). So why not reach out with a nice, personalized email and see if they’ll talk to you?","spans":[{"start":229,"end":232,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Press releases from companies in your space (including competitors) can also be a place to source names of people who might be open to becoming research subjects. If your competitor quotes a VP of Engineering in a press release, and you hypothesize that a VP of Engineering is a potential buyer of your product, this person could be a great interview subject.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Reaching out (appropriately) via social media is always a solid option.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"You can set up a dedicated page on your site for potential participants to opt in and sign up, just like our Research at DigitalOcean page.","spans":[{"start":105,"end":138,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/research/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If your audience is very broad – maybe your product is a social media app or a photo sharing service – and you have a modest research budget available, then tools like UserTesting.com or Lookback.io are easy ways to find participants. Ethn.io is another useful tool for targeting actual site visitors.","spans":[{"start":168,"end":183,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.usertesting.com/"}},{"start":187,"end":198,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://lookback.io/"}},{"start":235,"end":242,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://ethn.io/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you’re targeting a hard-to-reach user base – or you’re looking to rapidly ramp up the volume of user interviews you’re doing – recruitment services like respondent.io might be a good choice. We used this service because we needed to conduct a large number of interviews in a short period of time. We found that it worked well when targeting a specialized international audience (like technical-minded software engineers interested in IoT), but not if screening by specific job titles or roles. If you’re mining your customer database, your CRM or LinkedIn might be the best way to find these folks.","spans":[{"start":156,"end":169,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://respondent.io/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"What worked best for us? Personal connections and connections of our colleagues ended up making up the bulk of our user interviews. The takeaway is that individual tools and methods are only one part of a larger strategy for recruiting users. Even if you have a research budget, you should still ping friends and colleagues for help to broaden your network of participants.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"No matter how you approach recruiting, you’ll need to screen participants if you haven’t prequalified them. Here are some good tips for writing screeners so you can avoid spending time interviewing people who aren’t really your users.","spans":[{"start":108,"end":153,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://uxmastery.com/how-to-write-screeners-for-better-ux-research-results/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Once you source users, you then need to get prospects to actually agree to your request.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"There’s no one way to do this, but we kept these in mind when writing emails:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Make them feel special! Point out that they’re in a select group. (“You were selected from a list of our top customers.”) Or personalize your outreach. (“Hey, I saw that we went to the same university.”)","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Use simple, accessible language and short sentences. Make it easy for them to say “Yes.” This can be as simple as asking the user to reply to your message, or including a link to a scheduling service like Calendly.","spans":[{"start":205,"end":213,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://calendly.com/"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"They’re doing you a solid, so acknowledge that fact. You might also offer them a “thank you” after the interview in the form of cash or a gift. We offer DigitalOcean credits or gift cards – the longer the session, the higher the value.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you’re not getting the participants you need, try increasing the types and/or amounts of your incentives to better entice users.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"How to prepare for interviews","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"You'll have limited time with each user, so careful preparation is essential.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Before each interview, we made sure the user had everything they needed to connect with us on the big day. We issued a lookback.io link via Google Calendar with a reminder configured. Lookback gave us the ability to record the interview, and let our teammates observe and comment in real time.","spans":[{"start":119,"end":130,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://lookback.io/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"At the beginning of the project, we also gave our team access to a short discussion guide we prepared. The guide was stored as a Google Doc, allowing the team to make a copy of the file for each interview and easily add notes.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Here’s a snippet from our discussion guide:","spans":[]},{"type":"preformatted","text":"Intro \n* Thanks for joining the call\n* Intros\n* Purpose of call – to understand tools/solutions/processes you team is using so that we can better serve our customers\n* Reminder recording – internal purposes only, not to be shared\n* Reminder DO credit/incentive after filling out the Google form questionnaire\n\nBackground & Current Infra \n* Company & Role: Tell me about your company and your role. What do you do? Who are your customers?\n* Skill: How did you get to where you are today?\n* How would you describe your current infrastructure? (Scope/State/Scale)\n","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"How to conduct interviews","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Beginning the call informally in nature can help establish a level of comfort with the user. And if there are remote colleagues sitting in to listen, be sure they remain in a listen-only state to avoid overcrowding your subject. When an interviewee is comfortable, they are far more likely to answer questions about their current challenges with their role, team, and company – openly and honestly. This is what that process looked like for us:\n* We started with warmup questions to help build a rapport and put the users at ease with the process. * We avoided leading questions, and instead focused on open-ended questions to solicit deeper insights than pointed questions would. * We didn’t follow the order of questions verbatim. If the participant started deep diving in a specific area, we went along with them. In some cases, we found that certain questions might not be applicable to an individual. In that case, we skipped the question and moved on.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"At every stage, we were careful to ask questions to get the answers we needed.","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/dcd0275b-00f3-4f2e-8e55-b6395ffdb7d8_conduct-user-interviews-2.jpg?auto=compress,format","alt":"user-interview-img-2","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":784,"height":418}},{"type":"heading3","text":"Who are they?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Again, we started with easy, open-ended questions. We asked them to tell us a little bit about their company and their role. We asked how they ended up in this job at this company. And we asked them to tell us about their users and customers.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading3","text":"What’s their day to day like?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We wanted to understand what jobs users are typically trying to do, and how they get those jobs done.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"What’s your process for getting code from development to production?","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"What tools or services do you use to do that?","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"How do you feel about those tools, services, and processes?","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Why did you pick those tools and services in the first place?","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"What was that process like?","spans":[]},{"type":"heading3","text":"What do they do when the going gets tough?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"You can learn a lot about a user by honing in on a difficult situation they’ve faced. By asking them to drill into a specific challenge they’ve recently faced, you can follow up:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Where do you look for solutions?","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Whom do you ask for help?","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Would you have preferred to select a different solution were it not for some other constraints?","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"What were you nervous or anxious about as you were selecting or implementing a solution?","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"How did you feel afterward? How do you currently feel about how things played out?","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Are there more incremental improvements you plan to make? Why?","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/ce6f8a74-bae6-40c4-976b-2143433427cc_conduct-user-interviews-3.jpg?auto=compress,format","alt":"user-interview-img-3","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":784,"height":418}},{"type":"heading3","text":"What does the world look like when things are going great?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We learned a lot by asking users to tell us about a tool, solution, or process that worked really well for them. Knowing what excites and makes them happy is important when trying to figure out how to build a product they’ll love. To dive deeper into these happier scenarios, you can use some of the questions from the previous section as well.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading3","text":"Why? (Why? Why?)","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Ask \"Why?\" as a followup question – frequently.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"“Why is that important to you?”","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"“Can you tell me why you think that?”","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"“Just so I understand, why do you feel this way?”","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Asking \"Why?\" is a great way to demonstrate empathy. And it’s a great opportunity to dig deeper and gain insight into how your ideal user thinks about problems and solutions.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Close the interview by giving a user a floor for aspiration\nAsk what their dream process or solution would look like if money and resources were no problem.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"And, most importantly, ask if there’s anything else you should know.","spans":[{"start":23,"end":68,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"This is a great final question because it lets the customer share exactly what is on their mind. Maybe there’s something they wished you asked them, or something else they want to share. Either way, you might be surprised by what you learn when you cap off the interview with this open-ended question.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"After interviewing","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Send the participant a thank-you followup as soon as possible after the interview, and give them instructions on accessing the incentive you promised. If there was anything you wanted to dive deeper on from the interview, this is a great time to ask.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We sent a short survey with simple followup questions to each interviewee, along with a note letting them know we’d send their incentive once they completed the survey (which we informed them about prior to the interview).","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Next, share the raw notes from your interview with your team. Don’t worry if they are messy! You might even want to give a tl;dr version in your daily standup.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"How to analyze, synthesize, and distribute interview results","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you’ve run a good user interview process, you’ve completed several interviews, and have notes and recordings from each. Now you need to identify common themes throughout your interviews and synthesize the data into actionable conclusions for your team.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The synthesis method you choose varies by the type of user research you're running. For instance, if you're running a usability test, a list of observed usability issues and pain points prioritized by severity and frequency will be more helpful and actionable to you than a word cloud.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"To get to the next level, present the insights (along with the customer quotes that contributed to them) in your team or company all-hands meeting. And include those insights in the onboarding materials for new hires. In many cases, it’s not hard to convert the customer’s journey into a single slide that’s easy to understand for both new and tenured team members.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Go forth and research!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We hope this helps you start your own user research project – or provides a few tools and suggestions you can apply to existing projects.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you have questions or would like to share how you’re incorporating user interviews into your product development process, please leave a comment below. We’d love to hear about your user research needs and will try to answer any followup questions you might have.","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2020-01-31","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Design","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"design"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"how-to-conduct-user-interviews"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"Stephanie Morillo","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":188,"height":188},"alt":"Stephanie Morillo","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/88c5ec7b08345ce34cc82af6a32619bee69b1dae_stephanie_morillo-abc491ab.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"stephanie_morillo"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":784,"height":418},"alt":"BDT letters illustration ","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/40637c77831e8024beeb48d04f3052a0c9d6fd89_bdt-blog.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Meet the DigitalOcean Brand Design Team","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"As a company, we’ve always cared about contributing to developer culture in an authentic way, and one of the ways we do that is by adding moments of visual delight to everything we do, whether it's a Community tutorial, an interaction in the control panel, or a T-shirt at a conference. That is why, from the very beginning, DigitalOcean put an emphasis on building out a Brand Design team comprised of not just proficient graphic designers, but brilliant illustrators as well.","spans":[{"start":200,"end":218,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.digitalocean.com/community"}},{"start":262,"end":285,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://store.digitalocean.com/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The Brand Designers at DigitalOcean are challenged every single day to transform extremely technical and esoteric content into approachable and friendly touch points. Lead Visual Designer Masami Kubo says, “We believe these technologies should be accessible to everyone, and a part of that is acknowledging and celebrating the diverse and quirky personality behind the humans that build these amazing things. Visuals and branding throughout the cloud computing industry are often disregarded or unconsidered, so it’s a unique opportunity for us as designers to bring that culture to life.”","spans":[{"start":0,"end":35,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://dribbble.com/digitalocean"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We interviewed DO’s Brand (Visual) Designers Kasia Bojanowska, Masami Kubo, Pat Raubo, and Alex Mostov to learn more about their design process, how they illustrate technical concepts, and where they turn to for inspiration.","spans":[{"start":45,"end":61,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://dribbble.com/kabojanowska"}},{"start":63,"end":74,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://dribbble.com/masamikubo"}},{"start":76,"end":85,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://dribbble.com/patraubo"}},{"start":91,"end":102,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://dribbble.com/amostov"}}]},{"type":"heading4","text":"How do you approach technical topics as illustrators?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Masami: We’ve been illustrating technical topics for years, so the challenge now is how to keep it fresh and relevant. However, if we push the imagery too conceptual or meta, we run the risk of none of it making any sense to our audience. My approach now is to identify the primary action or message behind complex concepts, and focus on making that one thing really clear. I like to start minimal, then add elements sparingly to not distract from the primary message.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Alex: I came to the DigitalOcean team without much technical knowledge. In some ways I think this has actually been an advantage in creating conceptual illustrations. I create images that help me understand the concepts. I think and hope that inherently makes them more intuitive to others, too.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"Where do you draw inspiration from for your designs?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Kasia: When starting a new project I definitely try to spend a good chunk of time looking for inspirations. Google image search, Pinterest, Dribbble, Behance are all wonderful resources for that. We have a few shared pinterest boards with stuff we like. I also get really inspired when I see great work being made by others on our team.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Pat: One of the benefits of working with a team of such enormously talented designers is that I draw inspiration from them and their work all the time. Masami and Kasia both do amazing work, and I’ve learned a great deal from both of them, as well as from Alex. I try to seek out inspiration from a number of things. Some have a pretty clear association with the kind of work we do at DO, like design and illustration done specifically for tech, but I also draw from editorial illustration, film, comics, and book covers, among other sources.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Illustrations by Kasia Bojanowska, Patricia Raubo, & Alex Mostov","spans":[{"start":0,"end":64,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/Nzg4N2NmNzgtNTUyMS00OWIyLTlhNzYtZTU3YmE1M2NiM2I0_bdt-socialmedia.gif?auto=compress,format","alt":"Illustrations by Kasia Bojanowska, Patricia Raubo, & Alex Mostov","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":1024,"height":512}},{"type":"heading4","text":"How do you come up with new ideas for similar technical topics?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Masami: I think it actually helps for imagery with similar technical topics to have a common thread of imagery, so as to build a visual association. We have strict style guides for most of our platforms and campaigns, but some of these style guides allow for permutation in aesthetics to avoid looking too repetitive over time.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Pat: I like to first do some research to understand the basic concept of what I’m going to illustrate, and then add to my notes with simple schematics and/or sketches to see if there’s anything I can pull from those for the final visuals.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Alex: I will often try to think about representing a topic in a different kind of space or world. For examples if I create an image for a topic in a 2D space, the next time I will try to figure out how I could represent that same concept in a 3D space or from a different perspective.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"What is one of your favorite projects you’ve worked on at DO thus far?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Pat: I worked on a series of illustrations for our Employee Handbook, which meant drawing a team of cute sea creatures in an office setting. I really enjoyed working on that project, and it was great to see people respond to the illustrations in such a positive way.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Masami: My favorite projects are often also the most challenging ones. And usually the more ambitious they are, the more compromises on vision I’ve had to make. But some of the most exciting stuff I’ve worked on here is the art direction and design of our office spaces, in collaboration with architects, fabricators, and our People team. I was expected to transform the space into a branded and navigable experience. It’s still a work in progress, but I love the challenge of designing for physical spaces.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Murals by Alex Mostov & Masami Kubo","spans":[{"start":0,"end":35,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/MjA4NWI0ZTYtZDU2Yi00YzQ3LWJjODctN2Q3NGE2ZDRjZjcw_bdt-office.gif?auto=compress,format","alt":"Murals by Alex Mostov & Masami Kubo","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":1024,"height":512}},{"type":"heading4","text":"What was one of the most challenging projects you’ve worked on at DO?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Kasia: Redesigning the DO logo was definitely the biggest challenge for me. The process was pretty high pressure but I was allowed enough time to really let myself explore and dig in deep. In this case having a supportive team to brainstorm and keep motivation high through all of the iterations was essential.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Masami: We did a design refresh of the marketing site a year ago, and it went through a lot of changes and push backs. The task was simple—refresh the designs and clean up the performance—but it involved approval from every department and stakeholder in the company. I was doing everything from art direction, web design layouts, and spot illustration. I learned a ton about project management and designing within web accessibility standards, thanks to Una Kravets. I felt creatively drained after the project was finished, and didn’t think it would be possible to revisit it with new ideas. Surprisingly, I am now leading a complete design overhaul for the marketing site, and I feel more equipped than ever to tackle all the challenges and make something more beautiful and smart than last year.","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/MTVjMDg5OTEtYWM3YS00ZWE4LTkwM2UtNjliYTkxMTNiMzM5_bdt-website.gif?auto=compress,format","alt":"Illustration by Masami Kubo","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":1024,"height":512}},{"type":"heading4","text":"Sometimes you create visual assets that are targeted at a very specific audience, and you have to balance things like humor with cultural sensitivities. How does localization factor into your designs?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Masami: Part of our job is being aware and sensitive to any imagery that might have harmful or negative impacts to our community. We are fortunate to have a diverse employee base that cares about these things, so the more opinions we can gather, the better. We try to treat branding the same in any other countries as we do here. However, we do want to highlight our growing global coverage, so one way we approach this is to celebrate the unique design culture local to these countries. For example, the Frankfurt datacenter launch campaign featured designs inspired by Bauhaus Constructivist design. For the Bangalore datacenter launch, we created stylized renditions of local architecture. Being a developer from another country doesn’t necessarily mean you have vastly different tastes or interests, so it’s important for companies and designers to address these things authentically.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"How do you create different kinds of content while maintaining brand consistency?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Kasia: For illustrations, we keep a consistent color palette. We have a list of prompts to help us throughout the process, but we do not have a very strict style guide when it comes to editorial illustration. We tend to have more fun and variation with all of our community and conference designs. However, we are definitely more strict about stylistic consistency when it comes to our website design.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Like much of DO, the Brand Design team is distributed across the world. What systems or processes do you have in place that allow for open communication and collaboration?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Pat: One of our team members, Kasia, is based in Poland, so we have a time difference of six hours between us. We started to make a habit of doing our daily stand ups and critiques early in the day to make sure we were all able to benefit from them. We have a private Slack channel which we use to stay in contact, to brainstorm, and to share ideas on projects.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"Where do you see the DO brand going?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Masami: When I first joined DigitalOcean in 2014, the company was breaking into the cloud computing world by differentiating itself as friendly and accessible. At the time that meant being extra illustrative and bubbly with our designs. We wanted to let the developer community know that their content and culture deserves this kind of attention. That attitude and core value is still what drives every decision, but our aesthetics have matured and evolved just as our products and features have grown. The brand now has a diverse voice ranging from playful and young to mature and sophisticated, all under the same goal of enabling the developer community. I think this range directly reflects the diversity of users we want to speak to.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Alex: I really like DO’s brand evolution because I feel like the changes are made based on need and effectiveness rather than just trying to make a splash. I think the brand will continue to change in this deliberate way as the community and product develop. I also hope it will always maintain the sense of playfulness that I think makes DO special.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"What is your best advice for designers just starting out?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Pat: I would encourage aspiring creative folks of any stripe to always stay curious (as cliched as it may sound, it’s advice I’ve followed that I feel has served me well) and seek out inspiration from a range of sources (museums, books, online communities, whatever floats your boat!), because you never know what’s going to be the seed that becomes the root of a fantastic idea. Feeding your mind will give you perspective and enrich your work.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"That said, don’t wait around for inspiration to strike, either! It’s best not to be too precious about your work. Just sit down, make the thing, and make it to suit your standards. Then, when you think it’s done, work on it just a little bit more. Keep learning, and push yourself a bit more with each new project.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Do you enjoy our designers' creations? Download desktop wallpapers from some of their favorite illustrations.","spans":[{"start":39,"end":66,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://do.co/wallpapers"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2018-02-20","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Culture","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"culture"}}},{"tag1":{"tag":"Design","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"design"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"meet-the-digitalocean-brand-design-team"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"Dave Malouf","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":1829,"height":1926},"alt":"Dave Malouf","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/3b42971769309a31b5fdf915b034e347486e10ce_headshot-of-dave-malouf-1.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"dave_malouf"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":900,"height":480},"alt":"Developer planning illustration","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/1d9dac39205dd7f74db7e5b91a32bf3480da689a_designops_blog_pat.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"An Introduction to Design Operations","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you’re reading this post, chances are you’re aware of the term “DevOps”. The term “DesignOps”, however, is probably not as familiar. You might try to connect DesignOps to DevOps in order to help you decipher its meaning. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but you’d only be looking at the tip of the iceberg.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Design operations (“DesignOps”) is a growing area of concern for design teams seeking to help their teams increase the value they produce for their host organizations and that organization’s customers. As this is a burgeoning area of interest, inconsistencies in the usage of “DesignOps”, both as a term and as a practice, still exists.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"In this blog post, I present my own thinking around DesignOps, which has been highly influenced by growing conversations among design peers from organizations like Autodesk, Uber, Airbnb, Pinterest, Expedia, and even non-technology companies like CapitalOne, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), and GE.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Developer and Designer Tools Aren’t (Always) the Same","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you’re a developer, you code. You might write code in TextEdit or Notepad and use FTP, or you might prefer editors like Emacs and vi. You can then start to add in other tools like an IDE, version control, or data repos. And you can eventually layer in a CI system and add issue tracking and automated testing. Each one of these layers of tools is meant to somehow make you better as a coder and more valuable to your organization. The choice of tools one uses is an operational decision.","spans":[{"start":469,"end":489,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Operational systems, which are made up of processes, practices, and tools—like Agile, project management software (JIRA, etc), and quiet spaces and collaborative spaces—exist to make you as a developer more productive, thereby improving your output. All of these things aim to make you better at doing your craft: coding.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"In the design world, we contemplate similar things. Some operational systems support the design process itself; others support cross-functional collaboration with engineering to ensure design intentions are executed as closely as possible to what the design team had in mind. The last point in particular is the driving force behind design operations: how we collaborate, communicate, hand off deliverables, and partner with engineering has become a central part of how DesignOps evolved.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"While many organizations have operationalized their design teams by adopting the same tools developers use—JIRA, GitHub, or Confluence, for example—these decisions don’t account for the different tools and processes unique to the designer workflow. As design teams scale, using development tools and processes for design has the unintended consequence of diluting design value. Designers don’t use IDEs; they use graphic tools, and not even a singular graphic tool. Designers don’t share or collaborate on code via text files in open-source environments; they use a mix of vector and raster graphic formats that are often created in closed, proprietary systems. Designers don’t iterate the same way developers do (well, not all designers, and they shouldn’t). They'll explore multiple options at almost every stage of the design process. The concept of “forking” won’t scale when looking at 10-20 alternatives of a single microinteraction in the same file where 5-10 alternatives of a layout are managed.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"At the same time, the growing trend of creating design systems sometimes forces designers to work in files where they might have to interact with code on some level. These are usually meant to be points of interaction between designers and developers. As design systems are made up of components written with a mix of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, using standard version control, issue management, and even Agile project management tools starts to make more sense.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"This creates a new type of complication for designers, where some operations use one type of system and another part requires something else entirely. The good news is this pushes designers to be more cognizant and intentional about how they use those systems, especially those within the direct lines of sight and communication of developers.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Organizing Design Teams","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Using different systems to manage assets is but one aspect of design operations, and operations as a whole is but one aspect of making individuals and teams get better at their craft. Human resource management is another important consideration for teams who want to amplify their value. And similar to the asset management areas of operations, different organizations will find different ways of managing and organizing their design teams.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"For example, many design teams centralize their workers in a single design group, assigning members to projects while still directly reporting to a single design leader. Other organizations do the opposite: designers are hired to work directly within project teams, and “guilds” are created to help manage their specific design needs.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"In summary, different organizational and team cultures require different solutions, which depend on many factors. And when accounting for other aspects of operations such as running design systems, design processes, and even research practices, DesignOps gets significantly more complex.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Resources","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We’ll share more insight into DigitalOcean’s specific DesignOps philosophy and processes in future blog posts. In the meantime, you can read more about DesignOps at Amplify Design.","spans":[{"start":165,"end":179,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://medium.com/amplify-design"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you’re in NYC, join us for the first-ever conference on the topic of DesignOps this November 6-8 at the Museum of the Moving Image, called the DesignOps Summit. DigitalOcean will be there and your team might find value in meeting with a broad group of people who are interested in cultivating an operational mindset to amplify the value of their design teams. We hope to see you there!","spans":[{"start":146,"end":162,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://designopssummit.com"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Dave Malouf is the Director of Product Design at DigitalOcean. Dave’s 25+ year career in design includes enterprise, agency, and consumer spaces. He is a founder of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) and has founded the Enterprise UX and the Design Ops Summit conferences. ave writes, speaks, and teaches around the world. You can find Dave talking about design, design leadership, and design operations on Twitter @daveixd, LinkedIn, and on Medium.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":456,"type":"em"},{"start":422,"end":430,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://twitter.com/daveixd"}},{"start":432,"end":440,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://linkedin.com/in/davidmalouf"}},{"start":449,"end":455,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://medium.com/@daveixd"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2017-10-31","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Design","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"design"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"introduction-to-design-ops"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"Una Kravets","author_image":null,"_meta":{"uid":"una_kravets"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":1568,"height":836},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/dc692094-7bc8-44f6-a13d-1f3cf9d8edc3_faster.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Faster and More Accessible: The New digitalocean.com","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"It's here! The new digitalocean.com launched last week, and we're so excited to share it with you.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We unified the site with our updated branding, but more importantly, we focused on improving the site's accessibility, organization, and performance. This means that you'll now have faster load times, less data burden, and a more consistent experience.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"This rebuild is a nod to the values at the core of our company: we want to build fast, reliable products that anyone can use. So how did we make our site twice as fast and WCAG AA compliant? Read on:","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/4b758198-33fb-4972-8475-1b095bd41067_site.jpg?auto=compress,format","alt":"website","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":1999,"height":1008}},{"type":"heading2","text":"Accessibility","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"One of the biggest concerns we had for our website redesign was making it accessible for users with low vision, people who use screen readers, and users who navigate via keyboard. Our primary focus was to be WCAG 2.0 AA compliant in terms of color contrast and to use accurately semantic HTML. This alone took care of most of the accessibility concerns we faced.","spans":[{"start":208,"end":216,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We also made sure to include text with any descriptive icons and images. Where we couldn't use native HTML or SVG elements, we used ARIA roles and attributes, especially focusing on our forms and interactive elements. The design team did explorations based on the various ways people may perceive color and put our components through a variety of tests to make sure these were also accounted for.","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/895ff693-06c1-4e94-9787-adb87b232e12_visionview.png?auto=compress,format","alt":"control panel color palette","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":1570,"height":1370}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We keep track of our progress on an internally-hosted application called pa11y, and when we uploaded our new site to the staging server initially, seeing the drop in errors and warnings made all of the audits worth it:","spans":[{"start":73,"end":78,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://una.im/pa11y-dash/"}}]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/cde90e03-3642-4ab4-9197-5089b6399958_pa11y.jpg?auto=compress,format","alt":"pa11y dashboard","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":1570,"height":823}},{"type":"heading2","text":"A Unified System","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The old digitalocean.com CSS had thousands of rules, declarations, and unique colors. The un-gzipped file size came out to a whopping 306 kB.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"For the redesign, we implemented a new design system called Float based on reusable components and utility classes to simplify and streamline our styles. With the Float framework, which we hope to open source soon, we were able to get the CSS file size down to almost a quarter of its original size: **only 80kB!**","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We also dramatically reduced the complexity of our CSS and unified our design. We now have:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"978 rules, down from 3200+","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"26 unique colors, down from over 100","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"5 unique background colors, down from 59","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"7 media queries, down from 61","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"This framework allowed us to have a reference to existing code contained in a map that we referenced instead of creating new variable units. This is how we got reduced the size of our media queries by 89%. We also used utility classes (such as `u-mb--large`, which translates to \"utility, margin-bottom, large\") to unify our margin and padding sizes, which reduced the number of unique spacing resets previously sent down to users by 75%.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Not only is the CSS more unified throughout the site, both visually and variably, it is also much more performant as a result, saving users both time and data.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Front-end Performance","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The largest pain point in terms of load time on the web in general is easily media assets. According to the HTTP archive, as of July 15 of 2016, the average web page is 2409 kB. Images make up about 63% of this, at an average of 1549 kB. On the new digitalocean.com, we've kept this in mind, and had a higher goal for our site assets: less than 1000 kB with a very fast first load time.","spans":[{"start":83,"end":89,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.keycdn.com/blog/web-performance-advice/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We use SVG images for most of our media and icons throughout the site, which are generally much smaller than `.jpg` or `.png` formats due to their nature; SVGs are instructions for painting images rather than raster full images themselves. This also means that the images can scale and shrink with no loss of quality in their designs across various devices.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We've also built an icon sprite system using `` and `