//Problem
Editors drowned in 500+ fields with no focus, no role separation, and no navigation beyond endless scroll.
//FYI
Entry Editor is the Nucleus of Contentstack user's workflow.
Product Designer
Role
6+ months
Duration
//Goal
Reduce cognitive load and improve navigation speed without disrupting established editorial workflows.
//Team
PM: Martin
Design: George
Engg: Harshal, Abhijit
There were signs. We dug deep.
Research & Pain points
Authors want to keep the starting page entry open and if they want to see a specific reference entry, upon clicking it should open in a new tab so they can navigate back and forth.
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Customer Quotes
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Whenever you click the reference entry, it opens in the same entry window it would be useful for this to open in a new tab.
//Summary
I noticed that Pain signals had been arriving since mid-2023 from customer success managers, direct support tickets & engineering performance analysis. I synthesised these into four root-cause pain points that anchored the entire design brief.
//Research
Direct feedback from key customers like Air France-KLM (key=Large usecases, extensive workflows)
Internal feedback from Customer Success managers
//Scope
eg. KLM=7,00,000 entries, Lego=1500+ stacks each with >1000 entries
500+ fields in a single scroll with no way to isolate role-specific work. //Cognitive Load
Pain point #1
SEO, asset and content teams shared one undifferentiated flow //Role Fragmentation
Pain point #2
Rendering thousands of fields made the product feel slow //Perceived Performance
Pain point #3
Teams created content types small to avoid UI pain //Model fragmentation
Pain point #4
Pain Points
How I shaped the solution; from blank brief to production
Solution, iterations & Execution
Protecting the Process from day 1: I started structured bi-weekly syncs as Engineering POC was running before design had aligned on a direction.
May 2025
Exploring before deciding: 3 Figma make prototypes with distinct end-to-end flow proposals were explored. Decisions & feedback documented.
June-July 2025
Direction reversed: An executive called happened and outcome reversed the previously aligned direction. I named what happened & escalated formally to our VP to push for initial approach.
July 2025
Formalizing & defending design team's approach: I authored the Design Team Approach doc on Confluence.
Aug 2025
Executive decision; disagree and commit: Fixed tabs finalized, my approach was documented alongside. Crucially, dynamic tabs were explicitly scoped for v2, preserving the architecture I had proposed. A direct result of holding the line.
Aug 2025
Full execution ownership: I ran the Venus 2.0 compliance audit, advocated for tabs components over blocks for design system consistency.
Aug-Oct 2025
Eliminated a 500-field rendering ceiling that had blocked enterprise authors for 3+ years, by redesigning the entry editor into a model-driven tab system shipped, demoed to a client within 24 hours, and pushed to GA the following quarter.
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Impact
Kaustubh as Product Designer
Qualitative feedback from enterprise customers is being collected post-GA. Quantitative usage data to follow.
NOTE