Redesigning Stardog's Documentation Site
[ Graduate Capstone / B2B + Web / 8 months / IA + Content Structure Redesign / Team: Hannah, Akshay, Hansika, Jennifer, Sohaya ]
Redesigning a B2B technical documentation site to support a variety of user backgrounds.
Stardog is an enterprise knowledge graph platform that helps organizations connect, query, and reason across complex data.
As part of our HCIM Capstone at the University of Maryland, my team & I are redesigning Stardog's documentation site to improve discoverability, navigation, and usability across a diverse range of users: from new to experienced, and non-technical to technical.
[ PROBLEM ]
Where things start to break down
Stardog's documentation holds deep, valuable technical knowledge, but users struggle to find what they need quickly and without friction.
[ GOAL ]
What a better experience needs to do
Make documentation feel navigable and human by improving content findability, establishing consistent structure, and tailoring the experience to users with different goals and technical backgrounds.
[ DISCOVERY ]
Valuable information that's hard to find
The issue with the docs is access. Users often arrive with a specific task in mind, but the current site makes it hard to orient themselves, find the right page, or know when they've found the answer they need.
For new users, they begin overwhelmed and don't know where to start.
Different types of users have different needs — but all experience difficulty locating information they need.
[ METHODS ]
What We Did
User Interviews & Survey
Conducted 8 interviews and a survey with internal and external Stardog users to understand how they approach the docs and where they encounter friction.
Usability Testing
Observed 4 users navigating the current documentation site to identify where they hesitate, backtrack, or struggle with tasks.
Competitor Audit
Analyzed leading technical documentation sites to identify navigation patterns, content structures, and conventions that support diverse user needs.
IA + Content Audits
Mapped and examined the current information architecture and content structure to surface deep nesting, unclear hierarchy, and inconsistent page templates.
[ FINDINGS ]
What We Discovered
Research highlighted three core friction areas shaping our design approach:
Content Density
Pages are long-form and dense with minimal visual hierarchy, making it hard to scan for relevant information quickly.
Inconsistent Structure
Inconsistent formatting and hierarchy across pages means users struggle with building a reliable mental model of where information lives.
Navigation isn't Role-Aware
The current navigation treats all users the same. New users exploring the platform have very different goals than experienced engineers debugging a specific workflow — and the docs don't account for that.
[ HOW MIGHT WE ]
How might we help users with varying levels of technical expertise quickly find and understand the information they need — without requiring them to already know how the docs are organized?
[ EXPLORATION ]
Ideation, iteration, and more ideation
Guided by our three friction areas, the team began sketching and wireframing early design directions, including role-based navigation, intent-aware search, and an expanded glossary.
Low-fidelity iterations were reviewed in team critiques and refined through stakeholder feedback sessions with Stardog.
Early explorations surfaced an important tension: how do you personalize a documentation experience without adding friction upfront or making assumptions about who a user is?
[ DESIGN DIRECTION ]
One of my primary design focuses addresses the navigation problem directly — utilizing the Jobs To Be Done framework.
Rather than presenting every user with the same flat structure, this concept lets users select a context that matches their goals — then shapes the documentation experience around that context.
Each user type has a dedicated view containing relevant paths for the workflows they're most likely to need/the Jobs (JTBD) they're most likely coming to do.
This is still early — more iterations are in progress based on team critique and client feedback.
[ WHAT'S NEXT ]
We've moved from research and synthesis into active design. Over the coming months, the team will continue iterating on wireframes and prototypes, with ongoing usability testing and stakeholder reviews at each stage.
This case study will be updated as the project progresses.
Built from curiosity, shaped by empathy.