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In December, we did some internal analysis on what's displayed on both the current Profile and the Developer Story, and found that about 40% of the data is in both places. This led us to wonder if it's unnecessary and confusing to users to have the same data in multiple places, and we started user research sessions to learn about issues with the Developer Story and the current profile page. These sessions are still in progress, but I wanted to provide some insight on what we've discovered so far (or already heard about from you and merely confirmed).

Usability Tests

Earlier this year, we hired a fantastic UX researcher, Kristina Lustig, and one of her first projects was to help understand the issues with the discoverability and usability with the Developer Story. In March, we started meeting with various groups of users to get some answers. The first sessions told us that most users go to other developers' Stack Overflow profiles to do the following:

  • Get context for an answer that they've seen
  • Look at other answers that the user has written

They do this to see what tech they use, what kind of development they do, where their reputation comes from, and they want to know a bit more about who they are. While users went to other developers' profiles, they didn't browse to their Developer Story because "they never really thought about doing it." They did, however, express interest in seeing the stories of other users, especially for higher rep users. When the participants were specifically asked about the possibility of combining the Developer Story and the profile, most couldn't think of a reason for not doing it. Some were even excited about the idea.

After the initial sessions, the team developed a prototype of a single tab combining the profile and the Developer Story to test in subsequent sessions and iterate on.

Results

A lot of what we heard in the research sessions, we had already heard in various Meta posts, and the sessions just cemented that we need to make some changes.

  1. You told us after the launch of the Developer Story that the existing layout was hard for users to parse - the research confirmed it. For example, changing a job from current to former makes the position, possibly, jump down the page and from view, making finding it difficult. Also, the strict reverse chronological order of the timeline doesn't allow for easy scanning of information.

  2. Along with the issues of timeline ordering, we were told by participants that they'd want to display their data by 'category' or 'type', meaning group all similar items together like Stack Overflow activity, experience, and education.

  3. The 'Add a New Item' menu doesn't have enough context around it. We need to make it clearer what items can be added.

  4. Again, you told us that the privacy settings on the Developer Story were not very usable or clear how they worked. It became abundantly clear that this needs to be addressed as this was the most painful area.

Obviously, some of the pain points identified above have been covered by feedback on Meta since the launch of Developer Story, but the research sessions have confirmed that there are issues that need to be resolved.

The next round of research sessions is scheduled to take place on or about June 7th, and we're specifically looking for Meta users to take part in them. If you're reading this and want to participate, then please complete this signup.

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  • 3
    My developer story is private, am I a candidate you're looking for in the June 7th research session?
    – rene
    Commented May 26, 2017 at 19:17
  • 5
    @rene Yup, if you've read this, then you participate in Meta and you are who we want to hear from. It does not matter if your Dev Story is private. Hearing from those with private stories is very important in this.
    – Taryn
    Commented May 26, 2017 at 19:19
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    I've always ignored the Dev Story. In fact, I'd forgotten it exists. But then, I suspect that my usage of these sites is atypical in many ways.
    – TRiG
    Commented May 27, 2017 at 12:07
  • 2
    If you're bringing (or considering bringing) categories back, wouldn't that make it almost the same as the "traditional view" again?
    – Bernhard Barker
    Commented May 27, 2017 at 19:17
  • 7
    Did you check for mobile site use cases? Developer Story is a nice thing, but why is it not visible in mobile web view? , Developer Story looks poorly readable on mobile
    – Kobi
    Commented May 28, 2017 at 4:05
  • "June 7th" sounds very specific, do you need anything to participate? Be in a certain timezone for example?
    – nvoigt
    Commented May 29, 2017 at 15:51
  • @Kobi I know we have more sessions planned after the June 7th date, but I'm not sure mobile is the focus of them yet. I'd take a guess we wouldn't look at optimize the mobile view until we nail down the exact look of a new consolidated profile page.
    – Taryn
    Commented May 30, 2017 at 13:06
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    @nvoigt If you click the link, you'll see that we have session times listed in BST, EDT, and PDT. You don't need to be available the entire day or all of the times, just sign up for the ones that would work for you.
    – Taryn
    Commented May 30, 2017 at 13:08
  • 3
    I have a dev story, but have the privacy option enabled to not show it on my profile. Two questions: 1.) Would I be a good candidate for this? 2.) Can you elaborate on how "the team developed a prototype of a single tab combining the profile and the Developer Story" would change my experience? I prefer to use SO and SOJobs as two separate tools and really don't want my Dev Story easily accessible through my profile.
    – Andy Mod
    Commented May 30, 2017 at 13:08
  • 1
    @Andy 1. Privacy is very important to us when it comes to this, and as I mentioned to rene even if your story is private, we like to hear from you. 2. We're not done with discovery or design yet, but they are testing moving positions, education, open source, etc from the DS onto the profile page with finer privacy controls. If you're curious or want to help, sign up. We're hoping to be done with discovery soon and can post again on MSO with more details.
    – Taryn
    Commented May 30, 2017 at 13:13
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    I find it ironic that bluefeet does not have a publicly accessible developer story and Kristina's is essentially empty.
    – Michael Anderson
    Commented May 31, 2017 at 7:41
  • 30
    Well @MichaelAnderson part of the reason I work on the Dev Story is I'm particular about what personal info I share online. While I have a completed Dev Story the privacy controls only allow me to show or hide it, I have no way to pick and choose what I want to share. This is something we're trying to fix and why I mentioned to both rene and Andy that they can signup and offer feedback even though they have private stories.
    – Taryn
    Commented May 31, 2017 at 9:15
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    I think the developer story is useless. And I'll tell you why. Three larger tech companies I interviewed at could care less. All three asked me for a traditional type resume rather than the developer story. I know both are available and I know you guys keep saying showcase your talent to others...and to be honest..."others" don't really have the time or care to see that I am working in jquery. Nor do I care that you may be working in sql server. If you post a nice answer great, I can essentially thank you and know you are great in technology X. But I won't go out of my way to look.
    – JonH
    Commented Jun 1, 2017 at 19:54
  • 1
    I see that there will be a hangouts session. If I want to participate but I can't do a Google Hangout, is there a way to participate? (Other than future sessions, which may happen again that I'll be working/busy/unable to do a Google Hangout?
    – llrs
    Commented Jun 2, 2017 at 14:47
  • 2
    @Llopis Unfortunately, we only use Google Hangouts to do these sessions. If you're interested in helping but the times next week don't work, then you can sign-up indicating you're interested in future sessions. Maybe we'd have another time that would work for you.
    – Taryn
    Commented Jun 2, 2017 at 14:50

1 Answer 1

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This post worries me a bit. I don't like Developer Story. Both as a job seeker (I don't think it provides a good way of showing my experiences) and as an interviewer (Too much useless data, too hard to read, too much space to print off). In fact I dislike it so much that I don't want anyone ever to see mine.

The profile- I'm sure it can use some tweaks, but its good for what it is. But the key thing here is these are two distinct features with distinct use cases. One is a resume format. The other is an overview of how someone uses this site. The Developer Story doesn't fit this purpose, being too much a graphical, time based format. The profile doesn't fit the resume usecase, as it doesn't list things off the site.

What worries me is that by talking about the two together here it seems like you may be looking to merge the two. That would be a mistake- you'd make it less usable for both purposes. If you want to make it easier to enter some data and have it appear on both, that's fine. But don't remove the functionality from Profile in favor of Developer Story. Which is where I'm afraid this post is going.

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    I agree with the main premise of this answer, and would also dislike it if Dev Story and Profile were merged.
    – Travis J
    Commented Jun 2, 2017 at 19:11

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