Rebuilding Claude's API onboarding to cut developer time-to-first-call by 71%.
As design lead, I partnered with Product and DevRel to reshape the first hour for every new developer — from signup to the first successful API response.
- Scoped the end-to-end developer journey with DevRel
- Designed a guided workspace with inline code samples
- Ran usability sessions with 18 paying customers
- Shipped v1 in 9 weeks alongside 4 engineers
Mapped every drop-off in the first hour
Logs showed 62% of new developers abandoned before making a single request. We ran 12 diary studies to understand exactly where cognitive load spiked.
Reframed the product as a guided workspace
Instead of a blank dashboard, we shipped a pre-filled sandbox where a real API response is on screen within 90 seconds of signup.
Aligned 4 teams around one pixel-level spec
Paired with DevRel to write copy, docs, and in-product hints side-by-side — every surface pointed toward the same "first call" moment.
A live API response before developers even finish reading.
The old flow gave people keys, docs, and a blank console — then wished them luck. We flipped the sequence. In the new onboarding, the first screen a developer sees already has their key wired up, a working sample request, and a response streaming in real time. Confidence ships before complexity does.
A faster path to "aha" moved four business-critical metrics at once.
Measured against the pre-launch cohort, new developers reached their first successful API call dramatically faster, stuck around longer, and converted into paying customers at nearly twice the rate. These defaults have shipped across every new API product since.
"Stephen's work made the API feel inviting the minute you signed up — we watched the activation curve move that same week. It's the clearest example of design earning compounding returns I've seen."