All Work

Telepresence
IDE Plugin

Moving a CLI-only Kubernetes developer tool into native VSCode and IntelliJ plugins to remove terminal context-switching.

+10% Adoption
↓30% Time to First Intercept
RoleSenior UX Designer
Team2 engineers
StakeholderVP of Product
Timeframe2023
Tools
Figma VS Code UI Toolkit IntelliJ UI Toolkit Quantitative Data Analysis
Problem

CLI Utility requires extra work

Telepresence is a powerful open-source tool that lets developers run local services in the context of a remote Kubernetes cluster. But it was entirely CLI-driven, requiring memorization of commands and context-switching between terminal and IDE. Our belief was that this was negatively impacting adoption.

CLI Telepresence

Sample Telepresence CLI command.

Plugin UI

Easily visible options through the UI made for a better overall experience that was easier to adopt.

Solution

VSCode & IntelliJ Plugins

VSCode and IntelliJ have different interface standards. Understanding the different and common elements in the beginning allowed for a similar design where possible. Due to the highly technical nature of Telepresence, and our desire to create added value, much of the design and features were a result of very close collaboration with engineering, resulting in a product that was quicker, and more convenient than a developers previous method of using Telepresence.

Key Decisions

  • IDE-native conventions over custom UI
  • Zero-terminal path for common ops
  • Cluster topology in sidebar
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