I Built a Plugin to Find Out Where Developers Got Stuck

Adobe XD needed more third-party plugin developers. Plenty of people were interested, but nobody had looked closely at the onboarding journey from a developer’s point of view.

The challenge

Find out where developers dropped off or got stuck between “I’d like to build a plugin” and a working, published one.

What I did

• Became the new developer. I built my own XD plugin, following the published steps exactly as a newcomer would, and documented every friction point along the way.
• Paired experience with data. I combined that first-hand journey with what the data said about where developers were looking for help.
• Turned findings into changes. I recommended specific revisions to the API documentation and to the transactional emails developers received along the way.
• Made the first step easier. With an engineer, I helped launch a plugin-building wizard, a microsite and a product page.

What changed

The API docs and developer emails were revised based on evidence rather than guesswork, and new developers got a guided starting point instead of a blank page.

What I took away

The fastest way to understand developer experience is to be the developer. A day of honest onboarding beats a month of assumptions.

Related: the plugin stories I helped tell, like Extensibility in Action.