New Relic

The world’s best engineering teams rely on New Relic to visualize, analyze and troubleshoot their software.

problem

Technical Debt and fragmented info-architecture. After a decade of market-leading growth, New Relic’s platform had become a visual representation of Conway’s Law. Products were built in functional silos and "bolted on" to the interface, resulting in a cluttered, flat navigation hierarchy. High Cognitive Load: A saturated top-level menu forced users to parse through internal product names rather than their own goals. The lack of cross-experience definitions meant users "hit walls" when moving between products, failing to see New Relic as a unified platform. New customers struggled to understand the platform’s value proposition due to a navigation structure that prioritized product catalogs over user intent.

solution

A Task-oriented, scalable framework. We moved away from a product-centric navigation to a Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework. This strategy focused on two key structural shifts: Intent-based information architecture Sidebar navigation & spatial consistency

Design Process

1. Analyze previous research documents, interview key stakeholders

2. User testing with 4-5 sacrificial concepts

3. Product design proposal

4. Proposal user testing

5. Validation and presentations to teams

6. Implementation plannings and project merge with the rest of the initiatives of that year.

7. Work with the rest of the teams, Ui writing, Product marketing, Design system team

Team first month	Team second month	Team for the rest of the project
1 Product Design Manager	1 Product Design Manager	1 Product Design Manager
1 Product Designer (Me)	2 Product Designers	4 Product Designers
1 UX engineer	1 UX engineer	1 UX engineer
1 Researcher	2 Researcher	2 Researcher
	1 Engineering manager	1 Engineering manager
	2 Engineers	8 Engineers
		1 Director of engineering