B2B / WEB / GRADUATE CAPSTONE
Untangling Stardog Docs
Redesigned Stardog's technical documentation platform for both technical and non-technical users — grounded in 9 months of research, 200+ affinity notes, and a navigation model built around how people actually work.
40%
Faster completion rate
200+
Research notes synthesized
20
Usability testing sessions
OVERVIEW
A B2B knowledge graph platform with docs that users couldn't navigate.
Stardog is a powerful enterprise knowledge graph tool — but its documentation platform wasn't built for how people actually learn and work. Users, both technical and non-technical, struggled to find what they needed. Our team of 6 designers spent two semesters redesigning the entire documentation experience from the ground up.
ROLE
Product Designer
Team of 6 Designers
TIMELINE
Sept 2025 - May 2026
4 sprints
FOCUS
IA, Navigation, Research
B2B documentation redesign
THE PROBLEM
Documentation written by engineers, for engineers.
The challenge wasn’t a lack of documentation. It was a mismatch between how the system was organized and how users actually thought, searched, and learned while trying to complete technical workflows. 3 real gaps were surfaced early:
01
Slows learning
Newer team members rely on docs to learn the system. Content assumed they already knew it.
02
Increases support load
About half of customers emailed Stardog staff before checking the docs at all.
03
Blocks adoption
Business users hit walls early, limiting Stardog's reach beyond technical buyers.
DISCOVERY
So, we started by listening.
A lot.
USER-CENTERED RESEARCH
9 interviews, 62 survey responses, and 200+ affinity notes later:
We ran a full mixed-methods research phase — stakeholder interviews, internal surveys, competitive analysis, and heuristic evaluation. Then we synthesized everything using AI-assisted affinity mapping (ChatGPT) to identify patterns across a large qualitative dataset.
9
1:1 Interviews
With 5 internal Stardog employees & 4 external clients
62
Internal survey responses
Across various role and tenures at Stardog
3
Audits completed
Content, IA, Heuristic
5
COMPETITORS ANALYZED
Palantir, Neo4J, Amazon Neptune, Ontotext, Graphwise
What the survey told us:
91%
rely on search as their primary tool
And simultaneously reported that it returns incomplete or irrelevant results.
45%
felt 'lost' navigating the sidebar
The IA didn't match users' mental models or workflows.
7
votes for the worst-explained section
'Troubleshooting' rated lowest. Content quality varied dramatically.
Three audits, 4 angles on the same problem:
CONTENT AUDIT / 16 PAGES
Visual hierarchy weak throughout
Same elements vary in color and style. Notes and warnings appear sporadically. Hyperlinks styled inconsistently.
IA AUDIT / FULL SITE
Sections organized around products, not user goals
Important content buried while niche features are prominent. No clear starting point for any role.
HEURISTIC EVAL / NIELSEN'S
No support for novice users
Help hard to find and non-contextual. Navigation doesn't match user mental models.
JOURNEY MAPS / 6 PERSONAS
Both fallbacks failed at once
When navigation failed, users fell back to search. Search was also broken, so there was nowhere left to go.
THE TURNING POINT
Then the research
changed our course.
THE PIVOT
Role switcher → Jobs-To-Be-Done
Originally we designed a literal role picker: route the user by persona, serve them persona-based content. After client feedback and early usability testing, we reframed it entirely. Users don't think in job titles. They think in tasks. Same outcome, fundamentally better mental model.
BEFORE + AFTER
From "who are you?" to "what do you need to do?"
Card sorting & usability testing told us most users grouped documentation pages by what they were trying to do, not by product or feature name. The persona model was organizing content around a question users weren't asking.
BEFORE — PERSONA-BASED
Who are you?
Business → Business docs
Developer -> Developer docs
Data -> Data docs
Users couldn't find what they needed
AFTER — JOBS TO BE DONE
What do you need to do?
Model my data → data modeling
Query my graph → query tools
Deploy my app → deployment
40% faster completion rate
“Directionally being oriented by role and the work each user needs to accomplish is going to be a huge benefit.”
PARTICIPANT 02 / INTERNAL PRESALES / HOMEPAGE USABILITY TEST
VALIDATION
We tested with the same kinds
of users who started us here.
USABILITY TESTING
20 sessions. Six tests. One anchor insight each.
Mid-process testing happened before final designs were made — 20 internal Stardog sessions covering technical and non-technical roles. Each test surfaced one clear insight that shaped what we built next.
CARD SORTING
Users group pages by task, not product
Most users grouped pages by what they were trying to do, not by product or feature name.
MENU NAVIGATION
No clear starting signal
The navigation didn't clearly signal where different user types should begin.
SEARCH EXPERIENCE
Role filters didn't work
Filtering by role wasn't intuitive. Users responded better to filters by content type or task.
HOMEPAGE
Toggle alone wasn't enough
Users wanted task-oriented entry points, not just a role label.
CONTENT PAGE
Orient before diving in
Tags, callouts, and a visible legend helped users orient themselves before reading.
GLOSSARY
Inline definitions work
Hoverable term definitions made unfamiliar concepts approachable without leaving the page.
FINAL DESIGN
Navigation built around
what people actually do.
WHAT WE BUILT
Seven moves across IA, search, homepage, content, and accessibility.
Every change is anchored to a specific research finding. Here's what we built and why.
MOVE 01
Restructured IA
8 categories across the top nav, grouped by user progression.
MOVE 02
Two-level search
Popup for quick context-preserving queries. Full-page expanded search with four faceted filter dimensions for depth.
MOVE 03
Homepage as discovery surface
JTBD toggle, quick links, tagged task cards, and a guided "Start Your Journey" path for users who don't know where to begin.
MOVE 04
Glossary integration
Lifted to top-level nav. A-to-Z filter, term reference cards, and backlinks to every page a term appears on.
MOVE 05
Content page anatomy + Overview
Breadcrumbs, plain-language overview, page tags, inline term tooltips, and an On This Page TOC on every content page. Overview page for every section providing brief, guided introduction to content without needing to sift through.
MOVE 06
Inline content components
Standardized code blocks with one-click copy, and three distinct callout types: notes, tips, and warnings.
ACCESSIBILITY
Applied WCAG-recommended line height (1.5× minimum) to ensure readability across dense technical content, advocating for this standard during design review when a tighter alternative was proposed.
OUTCOME
Research-validated results
across 20 usability sessions.
40%
faster task completion in usability testing compared to the original experience
7
redesign moves, each anchored to a specific research finding
20
usability sessions validating the redesign across technical and non-technical users
REFLECTION
What I'd do differently, and what I'd do again.
WHAT WORKED
Trusting the research over our initial assumptions. The JTBD pivot was uncomfortable midway through a two-semester project, but the usability data made the decision clear, and subsequent testing validated it.
WHAT I'D DO DIFFERENT
Align with teammates and clients on technical constraints earlier in the process, so we don't spend too much time exploring ideas that can't/won't be implemented.
IF THIS SHIPPED, I'D MEASURE
Search abandonment rate, time-to-first-successful-page, and support ticket volume, which are the three areas our initial research flagged and the clearest signals that navigation is actually working.
AI IN THIS PROJECT
Used ChatGPT to assist in synthesizing and grouping 200+ affinity notes across 9 interviews and 62 surveys, accelerating pattern identification without losing the nuance of individual data points.
Built from curiosity, shaped by empathy.