Launchpad Release Management
A release management portal built from scratch to scale the customer experience.
Product overview
Launchpad is a customer-facing release management portal that helps enterprise users access technical documentation, track product updates, and manage integration versions.
Before Launchpad, release delivery ran without a dedicated product: release managers added everything by hand in a complex internal tool and emailed customers about each change, documentation was scattered, and customers had no reliable way to track what shipped.
As the sole designer, I owned the product end to end — framing the problem, defining the MVP scope with the PM, and deciding what to cut to ship a first version that customers could actually self-serve. The goal: turn a manual, email-driven process into a scalable product where customers stay in control of updates on their own.
Process
I owned design across the full product lifecycle — from framing the problem and shaping strategy through to final UI, delivery, and design QA.
I ran research across the different release-manager and customer roles to understand goals and real work scenarios, then turned it into the key UX flows, the information architecture, and a prioritized MVP — deliberately deferring lower-value features to ship the self-serve core first.
I worked closely with the PM and engineers throughout: pressure-testing scope against technical constraints, defending the decisions that protected the customer experience, and adapting solutions where implementation demanded it — keeping the release calendar and documentation as the non-negotiable backbone.
Problem
Release delivery had outgrown a manual, email-driven process — it didn’t scale with the product and left a visible gap in the customer experience.
- Fragmented information. There was no single source of truth for releases and documentation, which made finding and accessing materials hard.
- Opaque releases. There was no transparent history of versions and changes, so release updates were opaque to customers.
- Manual information handoff. Information was passed along manually and wasn’t systematized, which limited scaling the process.
- Experience mismatch. The customer experience didn’t match the maturity of the product.
Results
The portal became a single customer-facing interface for the product, providing a cohesive context for interacting with it.
Faster releases
0×
Faster release publishing — minutes instead of the hours it took in the old manual tool.
Self-serve
0%
Of release questions answered by clients themselves — without contacting support.
Support load
−0%
Fewer release-related support tickets after moving to the self-serve portal.
Delivered
Discovery & interviewsUser personasUser journeysInformation architectureProcess optimizationUX & UIRelease calendarOnline documentationSelf-serve release trackingHEART metricsUsability testingDesign ownership (0→1)
01
Information architecture
A reworked IA gives clear structure and predictable navigation, so teams find docs and release info fast.
02
Release information, self-serve
Self-serve release tracking with version history and integration updates made the process transparent — without contacting support.
03
Release calendar
A release calendar shows what is shipping and when, replacing manual update emails from the old tool.
04
Online documentation
Online docs replaced scattered materials — always current, searchable, and self-serve.
05
Scalability
A scalable structure and design let the portal grow without losing consistency.
06
Product perception
Improved perception of the product as a mature customer solution.
7 screens
Collaboration
- Product Manager: defined goals and priorities together, translating business requirements into clear user scenarios; joined planning, prepared solution presentations and took part in user-testing sessions.
- Technical Writer: shaped interface copy and content structure, designing the information flow across both the product and the documentation — and we applied the HEART framework together to measure and improve the experience.
- Developers: walked the team through user flows and interactions, discussed technical constraints and opportunities, adjusted designs accordingly and verified the build against the intended design.
- QA: worked with QA engineers through testing to keep the final product true to the design and user scenarios, refining interface details along the way.
- Release managers: the primary users of the tool — I learned how they published releases and notified customers, validated flows against their real workflow, and shaped the portal around it.
Strategy — coming soon
Personas — coming soon
UX artifacts — coming soon
Next project
Artifact box