Parrit, Pair Programming Startup
Product ManageR & Product Designer
Open-Source Tool for Engineering Pairs
While working at an agile software company the need for streamlined tools is a necessity and if there is not a tool in place, one is made.
Parrit was incepted out of a need to streamline the daily rotation of pair programming project teams. Some teams used spreadsheets to manage their pairs and others an analog board that had manual rotation with sticky notes, however these methods were not entirely efficient. What about something that is automated? And tracks the history of pairs?
With a validated hypothesis in mind the Product Owner, a software engineer at the company, put together a proof of concept demo which led to the formulation of a dedicated project team to help grow Parrit. I led design and product management for this growth including, lean user research, branding, visual design, front-end development, and data analysis to develop the React based app and help gain adoption. Work was/is implemented in an agile fashion and kept in digital format to align with public availability for the open source community.
NOTE: Feel free to use the project name 'test' and psw 'test' to play around with Parrit.
Top Skills: Qualitative Research, Service Design, Persona Development, Design Strategy, Product Design, Product Development, IA/UX/UI, Agile Practices, Project Management
User Research & Testing
Because we had a demo of the app concept we were able to start collecting feedback directly while also seeking to validate personas.
Mapping assumptions about user needs to prepare for usabillity testing
Analysis of usability session feedback to determine feature iterations
Synthesis of qualitative research to help define a validated primary persona
A look at feedback from a survey collected across the company and persona roles
Persona Validation
We were able to validate the needs of our primary persona an Anchor Engineer on project teams.
Sketching User Experience
Once we had a validated strategy and direction for our product we on-boarded engineers and designers to build out the application.
Logo Design
Brand development began by exploring logo design elements that aligned with the friendly appeal of the app's name.
We let stakeholders on the project and a consensus of qualitative feedback determine the design:
Exploring a warm color palette
Exploring a cooler color palette
Wireframes
We had enough information to begin wireframing the MVP experience of Parrit app.
Initial concept:
Refined Iteration for Signup Flow:
Product Management
We used Pivotal Tracker to write priroitized user stories for each of the features to build out the app.
UI & Visual Design
To develop a cohesive friendly appeal we worked to align the user interface with a similar look as the logo.
Data Collection
To validate qualitative research with quantifiable numbers we implemented Google Analytics with basic tracking.
Product Launch & Open Source
We launched the product with a company-wide email blast and recruitment for open source contributors.
After our launch, teams around the World started using it:
Company-wide email blast led to complications:
➡ 333 new users in first few hours
➡ Crashed our free PWS account
➡ Plus attracted legal concern!
Tech Talk
We also held a tech talk to help drive adoption the app. In the Q&A portion people were most interested in discussing the logo design!
Continued Development
Being open-source we hosted the code base on GitHub and review Analytics for continued development on the product.
Recent Contributions
Being able to continually contribute to Parrit has been rewarding especially in seeing the steady growth in usage. There are plans to share the tool more publicly and evolve the product along with open-source documentation for a broader usage. Some recent design contributions include feature updates and developing a work-in-progress design system.
Feature updates
Contributing engineers needed some product and design guidance for recent features.
Design System
To assist in maintaining defined design patterns and assist with growth, a design system is being developed.
