Thread (YC W23)
Timeline: January 2023-May 2023
Client: Thread, https://www.usethread.io/
Team: 3 Founders who are Software Engineers
1 Product Designer (Me!)
Long-Story-Short:
Three former SWE's received $500k funding from
YCombinator for their SaaS product, Thread.
The product is meant to map microservice software
outages for PMs and on-call SWEs
I was contracted to make preliminary designs for them
such that they could actually visualize their product
and obtain further investments
Over the course of 4 months, I met regularly with the
Thread team, making designs and driving ideation +
testing for the founders.
The founders obtained additional funding and a General
Partner using the insights & visualizations generated
from our time working together.
Thread (YC W23)
Timeline: January 2023-May 2023
Client: Thread, https://www.usethread.io/
Team: 3 Founders who are Software Engineers
1 Product Designer (Me!)
Long-Story-Short:
Three former SWE's received $500k funding from
YCombinator for their SaaS product, Thread.
The product is meant to map microservice software
outages for PMs and on-call SWEs
I was contracted to make preliminary designs for them
such that they could actually visualize their product
and obtain further investments
Over the course of 4 months, I met regularly with the
Thread team, making designs and driving ideation +
testing for the founders.
The founders obtained additional funding and a General
Partner using the insights & visualizations generated
from our time working together.
What's the Problem?
What's the Problem?
What is Thread?
What is Thread?
Goals
Goals
User Research
User Research
First Wireframe Iteration
First Wireframe
Iteration
Subsequent Iterations
Subsequent
Iterations
Results and Impact
Results and Impact
Software outages can occur at any given point after the launch of a digital product, and these outages
can have catastrophic consequencesfor organizations of all sizes, from nonprofits to startups to corporations.
Software Engineers responsible for handling outages must comb through multiple files and lines of code on
each file quickly in order to diagnose the issue at hand. This process can be both visually & cognitively
cumbersome, leading to fatigue on the part of the engineer and poor troubleshooting as a result.
Software outages can occur at any given point after the launch of a digital product, and
these outages can have catastrophic consequences for organizations of all sizes, from
nonprofits to startups to corporations. Software Engineers responsible for handling outages
must comb through multiple files and lines of code on each file quickly in order to diagnose
the issue at hand. This process can be both visually & cognitively cumbersome, leading to
fatigue on the part of the engineer and poor troubleshooting as a result.
Thread is a software platform meant to facilitate key tasks related to software incident management
such as On-Call communication with team members, Incident routing that concisely shows the user
which piece of their Software Infrastructure is having issues, & Artificial Intelligence trained on
an organization's specific software infrastructure and needs. With this product, Thread provides an
efficient, concise, and user-friendly way for Software Engineers to visualize, diagnose, and troubleshoot
software outages.
Thread is a software platform meant to facilitate key tasks related to software incident
management such as On-Call communication with team members, Incident routing
that concisely shows the user which piece of their Software Infrastructure is having
issues, & Artificial Intelligence trained on an organization's specific software infrastructure
and needs. With this product, Thread provides an efficient, concise, and user-friendly
way for Software Engineers to visualize, diagnose, and troubleshoot software outages.
1.) Help the founders visualize their product, taking into account all the features, goals, and affordances
of their desired incident management software from a visual design perspective.
2.) Interview Software Engineers to learn their perspectives & call on my own experiences as a former
Software Engineer to design said platform with usability & functionality in mind.
1.) Help the founders visualize their product, taking into account
all the features, goals, and affordances of their desired incident
management software from a visual design perspective.
2.) Interview Software Engineers to learn their perspectives & call
on my own experiences as a former Software Engineer to design
said platform with usability & functionality in mind.
Conducted background research on software incident management, taking note of my own
experiences with the process as well as reading about accounts on social media (e.g. Reddit,
StackOverflow, Quora, etc.)
Researched existing products that had the same function and/or type of function (DataViz &
Software Mapping) in order to better understand the precursors, strengths, and weaknesses
of the type of software that the founding team want to build
The main goals of our user research were to understand the frustration that Software Engineers
face when troubleshooting Software systems on a more granular level & to realize the competitive
landscape and scope of existing products to better understand how Thread could be designed.
Conducted background research on software incident
management, taking note of my own experiences with
the process as well as reading about accounts on social media
(e.g. Reddit, StackOverflow, Quora, etc.)
Researched existing products that had the same function
and/or type of function (DataViz & Software Mapping) in
order to better understand the precursors, strengths,
and weaknesses of the type of software that the founding team
want to build
The main goals of our user research were to understand the
frustration that Software Engineers face when troubleshooting
Software systems on a more granular level & to realize the
competitive landscape and scope of existing products to better
understand how Thread could be designed.
Based upon initial conversations and background research, I was able to drum up an initial vision for
how their product could be laid out and developed.
The keystone function for the service was being able to identify API and Microservice outage locations
within a system based on user input done in plain English.
Based upon initial conversations and background research, I was
able to drum up an initial vision for how their product could be laid
out and developed.
The keystone function for the service was being able to identify
API and Microservice outage locations within a system based on
user input done in plain English.
Based upon continued conversations, I was able to iterate upon that first visualization and incorporate
a smoother, more comprehensive platform as such:
Based upon continued conversations, I was able to iterate
upon that first visualization and incorporate a smoother,
more comprehensive platform as such:
Landing Page with Slots to Enter Outage Information
Landing Page with Slots to Enter
Outage Information
Diagnostic Report with Incident Handling Options
Diagnostic Report with
Incident Handling Options
Software Infrastructure Visualization and Troubleshooting Guide
Software Infrastructure Visualization
and Troubleshooting Guide
Chat Function to Directly Contact Team Members
Chat Function to Directly Contact
Team Members
Incident Reporting Options
Incident Reporting Options
User Research & Competitive Analysis helped drive conversation about product vision, competitive
advantage, & subsequent design/product visualization.
Wireframes & Mockups aided the founding team in deciding upon which features they wished to
prioritize for their product.
The founding team now had a clear flow for how they wanted their product to run from the point
of view of an end user.
The founding team — with $500,000 raised — went on to build upon their initial product concepts
in the YCombinator Winter 2023 cohort and successfully obtain further investment funding as well
as a General Partner.
User Research & Competitive Analysis helped drive conversation
about product vision, competitive advantage, & subsequent
design/product visualization.
Wireframes & Mockups aided the founding team in deciding upon
which features they wished to prioritize for their product.
The founding team now had a clear flow for how they wanted their
product to run from the point of view of an end user.
The founding team — with $500,000 raised — went on to build
upon their initial product concepts in the YCombinator Winter 2023
cohort and successfully obtain further investment funding as well
as a General Partner.