From Zero to One: How Coda Designed a Publishing Platform
Helena Jaramillo joined Coda's design team just as they began building a publishing platform, a project aimed at letting users share best practices and discover documents. Unlike redesigning or optimizing an existing product, this effort meant building from scratch. Going from 0 to 1 is tough, and Jaramillo says it's about cultivating expertise so you can rally the team around a shared vision, even at the very start.
Building context without existing users
In previous projects, Jaramillo could lean on data to support her decisions. This time, there was none. "You don't have existing users’ behavior, you don't even have users that you can interview for research," she says. To bridge the gap, the team researched competitors and adjacent products. They annotated screenshots in a Figma file to share inspiration and flag approaches that wouldn't fit Coda.
Develop a strong point of view
With a ground-up build, articulating a clear vision matters. Jaramillo asked foundational questions about the nature of publishing on Coda: Would it feel more like publishing a blog post, a no-code app, or a website? She drew on her own experience as a publisher and workshopped ideas with the team. Two priorities emerged: make the process easy, and ensure publishers would be proud of their work. Those priorities translated directly into product decisions—a flow for publishing interactive docs and the ability to add a photo, subtitle, and byline so publishers could take credit. Without user insights, the team trusted each other's instincts and built that POV together.
Telling the broader story
When it came time to align the broader product team, Jaramillo didn't just share features and mockups. She created a "tl;dr page" in Figma: a flow with a handful of mockups that narrated the story of what they were building. "The tl;dr page was helpful for when someone wanted to understand what I was doing but didn't have all the details," she says. It wasn't about how every feature worked; the goal was simply to show the story they wanted to create.
Stripe's "City Planner" Approach to Design at Scale
Connie Yang, Tayler Atiken, and the rest of the design team at Stripe work to make complex financial infrastructure feel simple for businesses. Their process is guided by four principles.
Think in long time scales and lay strong foundations
Connie calls this a "city planner mentality." "We're not thinking about how we build individual buildings or cars, but we're thinking about questions like: how wide should the streets be? Where and how should traffic flow? What connects to what?" Ultimately, the team asks, "How do we move with urgency and focus while also building for the year 2030?" That means investing in infrastructure that scales rather than short-sighted fixes. As a concrete example, Stripe's design system includes color tables with built-in contrast and accessibility ratings.
Rigor, quality, and inspiring confidence
Because businesses depend on Stripe to accept payments and send payouts, trust is paramount. "A user interface that is perfectly polished and works exactly as you would expect is critical to earning and keeping the trust of our customers," says Connie. Even with complex technical infrastructure that must remain compliant, the team avoids over-simplifying concepts. They prefer to talk "up" to users while guiding them through challenging situations. When a merchant disputes a charge, for example, helpful tips explain what to expect in a straightforward way. "We guide users towards specific solutions and try to lighten their cognitive load so they can get their work done," she says.
Finding the right processes and systems takes time. But the payoff is a foundation that grows and evolves with your team—whether you're designing a new product from scratch or preparing an existing one for the next decade.
