The Problem I Solved

One of the core sites to the Teradata Developers Portal is Downloads, which is essential for users to be able to access and understand the latest available downloads. The site was showing its age in many ways, it had the same design for over 10 years, the copyright in the footer of the page hadn’t been updated in 5 years, and it fed into the perception of some in the field that Teradata was an old, outdated company that was out it’s way out.

How I Solved It

While this may seem like it would be the simplest site to redesign with how outdated it was, that was far from the truth. Since the users of the site had been very accustomed to the layout of the site, I initially took a slow approach to the redesign. The first thing to change was the navigation, which adopted the same navigation that was found on developers.Teradata.com, Getting Started Guides, and Documentation sites.

Then began the even more difficult work of meeting with key stakeholders, users, and the development team that would be working on the bigger redesign. Through many iterations we were able to modernize the interface and make it even easier to understand and locate the downloads that users needed.

Why It Mattered

Downloads has always been one of the most popular sites used by Teradata Developers, and letting it go untouched for so long was sending the wrong message - that Teradata was falling to the wayside. We wanted to reassure users that we still cared about them, and invested the time and energy to provide an updated look and feel, with better responsive design and a stronger focus on the core tasks of the website.