Drupal is the open-source content management system used to power EdWeb and other important University digital systems. I’ve contributed UX knowledge to Drupal for several years and am involved in shaping Drupal CMS – Drupal’s new low-code product aimed at non-developers.

As a Content Management System (CMS), Drupal has a reputation for being quite technical, often considered to be a CMS ‘for developers’, requiring specialist development knowledge to install, configure, operate and maintain. In his Driesnote speech at DrupalCon Portland in May 2024, Dries Buytaert, Drupal’s founder announced a strategic change in direction for Drupal, with a new product (working title: Drupal Starshot) aimed at supporting people in non-development roles (such as content creators and marketing professionals) to use Drupal to build and manage websites. For this new product to successfully engage new audiences and be easy and intuitive for them to use, a mindset shift was needed, to ensure UX was leading development activities.

At the University, many of our staff publishing web content using EdWeb2 (powered by Drupal) are in non-technical roles, therefore I was excited about the potential of this new product because I could see how shaping Drupal for non-developers could positively impact the UX it provides our staff.

For the past two years, I’ve found it interesting and rewarding to contribute to Drupal as a non-developer within the very welcoming and supportive Drupal community. Given the importance of Drupal to the University, I recognised the long-term benefit of contributing my UX knowledge and expertise through the Drupal open-source community to steer the direction, build and release of Drupal Starshot, and therefore pledged my support to help shape the future of Drupal.

Read my previous blog post about contributing to Drupal as a UXer:

Contributing to open-source Drupal as a non-developer reflections and projections

The Drupal Starshot Advisory Council was formed to keep the product on track

The announcement of Drupal Starshot was received positively by the community, and in July 2024, the Drupal Starshot Advisory Council was set up with the aim of steering the progress of the Starshot Initiative. I was proud to be asked to join the Council representing the University in a UX capacity, as an end-user of Drupal, along with other end-users, Drupal Certified Partners, Core Committers and members of the Drupal Association.

Blog post by Dries announcing the Drupal Starshot Advisory Council (on Drupal.org)

Publication of the product strategy signalled the start of Drupal CMS

One of our first tasks in the Advisory Council was to define the strategy for the new product, to detail the goals, the market segments and audience it was for (and who it was not for), and the capabilities it would have. The format of the product strategy was inspired by the book ‘Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works’ by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin. Publishing the strategy was an important milestone as firstly, it established Drupal CMS (to replace the working title Starshot) and secondly it enabled work tracks to be established to work towards the product goals. Within these tracks, issues (the name given to pieces of work within Drupal) could be started to work towards the goals. Collectively, the work tracks were referred to as a META issue.

Introducing Drupal Starshot’s product strategy (on Drupal.org)
[META] Drupal CMS work tracks (on Drupal.org)

We used UX techniques to define target archetypes for Drupal CMS

Drupal CMS aimed to reach new audiences, (collectively referred to as ‘marketers’) therefore to keep the work tracks aligned and progressing in a user-centred direction, it was important to take time to think about the needs and expectations of the people Drupal CMS was intended for and the associated contexts they worked in. Given the broad nature (and the unfamiliarity) of these audiences, it did not fit to define them as traditional personas. Making use of existing Drupal marketing segmentation and persona data, I worked with Cristina Chumillas, Lewis Nyman and others to write a set of archetypes for Drupal CMS, with needs defined in the Jobs To Be Done format. The benefit of preparing these archetypes, and grouping them into broad categories (Marketer, Builder, Content editor) was that it enabled us to collectively focus on the functionality Drupal CMS needed to provide as a product to enable non-technical people to build and manage websites. We were then able to return to these archetypes in ongoing work to sense-check the capabilities being built.

Archetypes for Drupal CMS (on Drupal.org)

We mapped out user flows and tasks to help us move from archetypes to interfaces

Working towards a goal of a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) of Drupal CMS by DrupalCon Barcelona in September 2024, we needed to think about how the target audiences would experience the product through its interfaces. In pursuit of the vision for Drupal CMS to provide an easy, non-technical site building experience, we focused on the design of two key interfaces, the first screen they encountered, to start creating their site (which we termed the ‘installer’) and the screen they would use to manage their site on a day-to-day basis (which we termed the ‘dashboard’). Working out what we needed to include on each screen was done by mapping the different stages we expected a person to move through in user flows, and detailing the tasks they would complete at each stage.

Adopting a framework in the book ‘Better Onboarding’ by Krystal Higgins I found it helpful to list the core tasks a person would complete to set their site up, the routine tasks they would complete day-to-day, and then to think backwards to consider the corresponding onboarding actions that they would need to go through to be able to do the core and routine tasks. With the tasks well-defined, we took part in workshops on visual style and voice and tone which helped us to start to bring the wireframes and interfaces to life in Figma.

I presented on the UX work with other track leads at DrupalCon Barcelona

The shift to a UX mindset represented a change to ways of working in Drupal, therefore the role of UX in the product design of Drupal CMS was not obvious. In my experience, when presenting UX work it is as important to share details of the process as well as to showcase the outputs to explain how things work. When I was asked to present a keynote initiative about the UX work on Drupal CMS I prepared a slide deck to reference the ‘Build, Measure, Learn’ product design process we were adopting, and to illustrate how we were following this process, I included examples of the work done to date, and the work planned going forward. I also used the opportunity to recruit more contributors to the UX initiative. Presenting on the big DrupalCon stage was an honour and a huge thrill. It also gave me the opportunity to meet other track leads in person, to ask direct questions about their work, establish closer working relationships and identify ways UX could support the parallel tracks.

Access the recording of the Drupal CMS Initiative Leads on YouTube

Read my related blog post on DrupalCon Barcelona:

Takeaways from DrupalCon Barcelona 2024 – Notes from a UX professional

In a day-long sprint, we defined a working content model for Drupal CMS

Contribution day at the end of DrupalCon Barcelona was the ideal opportunity to work face-to-face with other community members and make progress within the UX track. The main area we focused on was the definition of a set of content types to be included in version 1 of Drupal CMS. Choosing the content types required balancing the functionality already confirmed with new capabilities that were still being developed. We wanted to include enough content types to give a sense of the new product, without including content types for a future state which couldn’t yet be supported.

Presenting the Drupal CMS v1 content strategy (on Drupal.org)

We started competitor analysis with some benchmarking

Since Drupal CMS was a new product, it presented us with a ‘blank canvas’ when it came to designing. That said, the market research to define the target audience segments had identified comparable competitor products, and we found it helpful to look at these both for inspiration and to keep in mind Jakob’s Law, one of the UX design maxims.

Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all other sites they already know – Jakob’s Law

To make sure we completed a measured comparison of other CMS providers, we set up a benchmarking study to gather data on specific aspects of selected competitor systems that were of interest. Contributors were asked to select a CMS to analyse (for example, WordPress, Wix, Contentful, etc) and to collect screenshots and screenrecordings of the system to illustrate the experience of key tasks, including the following:

• Site creation
• Media management
• Editorial interface layout
• URL structure customisation
• Publishing workflows
• Taxonomies and tagging
• Reusable page templates and components
• Adding features and plugins
• Analytics tracking
• SEO tools
• Privacy and data protection.

The results were collated into a database which has served as a useful resource to refer to and browse when making design choices about Drupal CMS.

Read more about this work:

CMS Benchmarking on Drupal.org

Testing concepts, interfaces and functionality to guide version 1 and beyond

The Drupal CMS MVP was successfully launched at DrupalCon Barcelona, and since then, focus has shifted to version 1 of Drupal CMS, due for release on 15 January 2025 (with first release candidate due 9 December 2024 for DrupalCon Singapore).

I’m currently helping to shape a user research plan with a view to finding out what people make of the interfaces, features, and functionality in Drupal CMS version 1 as well as doing some concept research around ideas on the horizon for future releases. I am particularly excited about testing perceptions and responses to the AI Agents within the admin interface as I feel these have the potential to shape the way people interact with CMS interfaces to manage all aspects of their websites, including how they create, edit and manage their content.

Progress of Drupal CMS is continuing apace

With contributors working on Drupal CMS worldwide, changes and developments are happening all the time – this blog post will be out-of-date already! It is a very exciting time for Drupal and I am proud for the University to be associated with it, playing a part in growing and improving the Drupal of the future.

Read more about what’s planned for Drupal CMS:

Drupal CMS release schedule (Drupal.org)