Company
Date Published
Author
Buzz
Word count
807
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

After joining Buildkite, a designer identified a common issue among users struggling to differentiate between passed and failed steps in build summaries, leading to a redesign of the build header with a focus on accessibility and usability. This involved updating the color scheme to comply with modern accessibility standards, adding iconography for conveying meaning beyond color, and creating new shapes to help users with color blindness quickly identify statuses. Testing the changes internally revealed issues such as the poor appearance of emojis on red, prompting design revisions like using borders instead. The redesign aims to reduce the time engineers spend identifying failures, with future updates planned to include tabs for isolating specific issues, thereby enhancing navigation and efficiency in complex builds. The overarching goal is to unblock engineers by improving context and efficiency, with feedback from users actively sought to refine these enhancements.