Joao Fernandes

I help high-tech companies cross the chasm by making their products easier to use and learn

I use my knowledge about the market, product, and users to gather requirements, test builds, ensure UI, CLI, APIs are easy to use, and deliver documentation and training products.

My ultimate goal is to put myself out of a job by helping create products that require no documentation.

Work Experience

Docs Lead for Docker Enterprise Edition

Docker (2016 - today)

Docker is the world's leading software container platform, enabling millions of users to build, ship, and run applications that are reproducible and work anywhere.

  • Lead and created documentation for Docker Enterprise Edition, going from zero users to 100k monthly page views, and double digit revenue.
  • Created manual test suite for UCP. This made it possible to organize QA sessions with participants from the whole company, and gave management visibility on product quality metrics.
  • Lead UX research studies for UIs and CLIs. The insights lead to direct product improvements, and helped the PM team prioritize existing issues.
  • Lead dogfooding initiatives and advocated for users when collaborating with PMs, developers, and designers. My efforts lead to an easier to deploy and easier to operate product.
  • Created in-product copy for UIs and CLIs, minimizing context switches and softening the product learning curve.
  • Helped recruiting and hiring for UX design and research, training, and documentation.

I know I can't achieve much alone, so I collaborate closely with engineers, designers, product managers, support, marketing, and end-users to help Docker EE cross the chasm.

Check what I built

Senior Academy Engineer

OutSystems (2011 - 2015)

OutSystems is an enterprise low-code platform that lets you visually develop your entire application and deploy it natively on iOS or Android devices, or to the web.

  • Created scenario-driven documentation for IDEs and ALM consoles. This increased page views by 1.5X, and decreased maintenance costs.
  • Created online training courses for developers, going from zero to 60+ videos, and 500+ monthly active users.
  • Created a customer-facing knowledge base that helped scale internal support and pre-sales processes, minimizing the number of incoming support tickets.
  • Helped define a certification program and created content for the certification exams, creating a pipeline that certified 100+ developers a year.
  • Lead UX research initiatives and advocated for users when working with developers and designers. This lead to an easy to learn and operate product.

Check what I built

Intern Software Engineer

OutSystems (2010 - 2011)

Completed my Master's thesis at OutSystems: Softening the Learning Curve of Sotware Development Tools.

The thesis addresses the problem: "I'm building an IDE (or any other complex software tool), how can I make it easy for first-time users to learn it?"

It discusses several alternatives to guiding users such as: help files, video tutorials, discussion forums, gamification and intelligent tutoring systems. It also explains how each of them can be used to assist the learner transitioning from novice to expert.

As part of the thesis, I've extended OutSystems Platform IDE embedded tutorials, in order to:

  • Capture learning metrics and adapt the level of assistance provided;
  • Present questions during the tutorial to make sure the learner performed a self-assessment.

During the internship I've also participated and led several usability tests, that led to direct improvements on the product.

Check the abstract

Education

MSc, Multimedia and Intelligent Systems

Instituto Superior Tecnico (2009-2011)

Finished with 17/20 a MSc in Computer Science, majoring in Multimedia Systems with a minor in Intelligent Systems.

Majoring in Multimedia Systems allowed me to attend a Human-Centered Design course, and made me understand that Games and UX have so much in common.

I learned what it takes to be a Game Designer and a Game Developer.

In the Intelligent Systems minor I learned the importance of thinking of different strategies to address a problem. Sticking with the first good enough might cost you in the long run, or in AI terms, you might have found a local maximum.

I had read the Mythical Man-Month by now, so I decided to take a course on Project Management (big mistake, since the focus was on waterfall methodologies).

I was also starting to get curious on what it takes to manage and scale a company or team, so I took a course on Organizational Architecture.

Check what I built

BSc, Computer Science

University of Madeira (2006-2009)

Finished with 14/20 a BSc in Computer Science.

This was where my interest for usability was born. Sometime after finishing a course on Human-Computer Interaction, I attended a talk by Don Norman. At first the talk seemed superficial, but looking back, it made me buy the Design of Everyday Things. Reading it was like drinking knowledge from a firehose.