Excellent Internal Platform Design: Master the User-First Approach in 2025

The success of an internal developer platform hinges not on the elegance of its technical implementation, but on its ability to solve real user problems. Yet many platform teams fall into the trap of building what they think users need, rather than what users actually require. Let’s explore how to craft your internal platform design and truly understand your platform users to build solutions that meaningfully address their challenges.

User-Centric Internal Platform Design: The Empathy Challenge

Platform engineering requires a remarkable shift in perspective. As technical experts, we often approach problems in internal platform design with solutions already in mind. We see inefficiencies in how teams use cloud resources and immediately think of implementing sophisticated automation. We notice security vulnerabilities and envision comprehensive compliance frameworks. While these technical solutions might be excellent, they may not address what keeps our users awake at night.

Consider a scenario many platform teams responsible for the internal platform design have encountered: You build what seems like the perfect automated deployment pipeline, complete with all the best practices – infrastructure as code, automated testing, security scanning. Yet adoption remains low. When you investigate, you discover that your users’ biggest challenge isn’t actually deployment – it’s the time they spend configuring development environments or managing test data. Your solution, while technically sophisticated, missed the mark because it didn’t address their most pressing pain points.

Truly Understand Your Platform Users

Understanding platform users requires more than casual conversations (but this could be a start) or periodic surveys. It demands a systematic approach to uncovering not just what users say they want, but what they truly need so you can adapt your internal platform design accordingly. This understanding comes from three key areas: jobs to be done, gains they seek, and pains they experience.

1. Jobs to be done represent the functional, social, and emotional aspects of what users are trying to accomplish. A developer’s job isn’t just to write code – they might need to build trust with business stakeholders, advance their career through new technical challenges, or feel confident that they’re following best practices. Understanding these multiple dimensions helps create platforms that resonate on multiple levels.
2. Gains represent the outcomes users hope to achieve. These might include faster deployment times, but could also encompass less obvious benefits like reduced stress during releases or increased confidence in security measures. The most impactful gains often emerge during conversations where users describe their ideal working environment.
3. Pains are the frustrations, risks, and obstacles users encounter. These might be technical, like slow build times, but often include organizational challenges like unclear requirements or difficult cross-team dependencies. The most valuable insights often come from observing emotional responses when users describe their challenges. Adapting your internal platform design to address these issues is a key factor in the success of your platform.

In Episode 1 of the Platform Stories podcast, guest and platform engineering expert Artem Lajko suggested an easy way to get started: A 2-day-internship – ust observe and feel how your users work and learn about their jobs, gains they seek and pains they have doing it.

Organize Your Internal Platform User Research

One effective method for organizing user research is the customer profile. It’s a method that comes from marketing – but don’t worry, making your platform a market fit is the point here. This framework helps structure our understanding of users in a way that leads to actionable insights.

Here’s how to use it effectively:

Start by identifying a specific user group. Don’t try to create one profile that encompasses all platform users. A data scientist has fundamentally different needs from a web developer, and attempting to combine them dilutes the value of the exercise.

When conducting user interviews, focus on listening rather than problem-solving. The goal is to understand their world, not to pitch solutions. Ask open-ended questions about their daily work, their challenges, and what success looks like for them. Pay particular attention to emotional cues – when do they show frustration? When do they become energized?

Document everything, but prioritize ruthlessly. You’ll likely uncover dozens of jobs, gains, and pains for each user group. The key is identifying the most important ones – those that, if addressed, would create the most value for users.

Finding the Greatest Pain

One of the most crucial skills in internal platform design is identifying which pain points to address first. This isn’t always obvious. Sometimes what users complain about most isn’t actually their biggest problem, and sometimes what seems like a minor annoyance might be masking a more fundamental issue.

Look for patterns in your user research. When multiple users independently mention the same challenge, particularly if they become emotionally engaged while discussing it, you’ve likely found something significant that needs to inflence your internal platform design. Pay special attention to problems that impact users frequently or that have cascading effects on other aspects of their work.

Translating Understanding into Internal Platform Design

Once you’ve identified your users’ most significant needs, the next step is translating this understanding into platform capabilities. This translation process requires balancing user needs with technical feasibility and organizational constraints.

Start with the most impactful problems that you can feasibly solve. It’s better to thoroughly address one significant pain point than to partially address several. This approach not only creates more value but also helps build trust with your user base. When users see that your platform truly solves one of their big problems, they’re more likely to engage with future offerings.

The Importance of Continuous Learning

Understanding user needs isn’t a one-time exercise. As your internal platform design evolves and your organization changes, user needs will shift as well. Establish regular check-ins with your user base, not just to gather feature requests, but to understand how their work is evolving and what new challenges they’re facing.

Create feedback loops that help you understand how users are actually using your platform. Usage patterns might reveal needs that users haven’t explicitly articulated. For instance, if users are creating workarounds for certain processes, that might indicate an unmet need that you should investigate.

Conclusion

Building a successful internal platform requires more than technical expertise – it requires deep empathy and understanding of user needs to get the internal platform design right. By taking the time to truly understand your users’ jobs, gains, and pains, you can create platforms that don’t just work technically, but that meaningfully improve your users’ daily work lives.

Remember that the goal isn’t to build the most technically sophisticated platform possible, but to solve real problems for your users in ways that make their work easier and more productive. When you achieve this, adoption and engagement naturally follow, creating a virtuous cycle of platform evolution and value creation.

The most successful platforms aren’t necessarily those with the most features or the most advanced technology – they’re the ones that best understand and address their users’ actual needs. By putting user needs at the center of your internal platform design, you create not just a tool, but a genuine enabler of productivity and innovation in your organization.

This post originally appeared on meshcloud.io