NodeScript
Designing for Growth During Market Disruption
The NodeScript visual workflow builder in action
NodeScript is UBIO's visual programming platform, powering 300 million monthly automations and facilitating $500 million in bookings for enterprise clients. Over 2.5 years, I led design efforts from initial platform development through growth strategy to strategic pivot, experiencing firsthand how the ChatGPT revolution transformed developer expectations overnight.
Outcomes
0
m
Monthly automations powered by the platform
0
m
USD Annual bookings facilitated for enterprise clients
Role:
Lead Product Designer
Key responsibilities
Designed visual programming interface for complex automation workflows
Created comprehensive user journey from landing to payment
Built onboarding flows and real-time feedback systems
Designed and ran growth experiments across multiple channels
Led user research that revealed market-product fit insights
Drove data-backed recommendations for product direction
30 Second Story
Created: Visual programming interfaces, design system for automation workflows
Optimised: Activation flows through systematic testing and iteration
Discovered: Market disruption through user research and metrics
Outcome: Platform thrives internally, insights enabled AI pivot
01.
The Optimistic Beginning: "Let's fix the funnel!"
The Plan
I kicked off the year with classic optimisation thinking: improving the entire user funnel through research, rebranding, and systematic improvements.
User journey mapping: From landing to payment.
Early design work: from visual exploration to a style tile to early UI ideas.
The Grafana dashboard showed a steady stream of new signups.
02.
The Uncomfortable Discovery: "Wait, let me check cohort analysis..."
The Moment
While planning funnel improvements, I remembered reading about cohort analysis. "Let me just check our retention..."
The cohort analyses in Google Analytics. Uhoh.
The Realisation
Our "healthy" metrics were hiding a brutal truth: we had zero product retention.
03.
The Pivot to Activation: "Maybe better onboarding will fix this?"
Snapshot of the workshop I organised to come up with onboarding improvement ideas.
04.
The Market Revolution: "We got disrupted by vibe coding"
"We started in a different era. ChatGPT didn't exist yet."
— Boris Okunskiy, CTO, UBIO
"We got disrupted by vibe coding."
— Marcus, CEO, UBIO
The NodeScript Paradox
✓ Easy to learn (1 day to proficiency)
✓ Powerful capabilities (300M+ invocations monthly)
✓ Beautiful interface
✓ Perfect for internal automation needs
✗ Developers now expected AI assistance, not visual programming
We'd built the right product for the wrong era.
Reflections
Over 2.5 years, I built something that genuinely works - NodeScript still powers 300M monthly automations. But I also discovered why internal success doesn't guarantee external adoption. We'd created an excellent visual programming solution just as developers embraced AI-assisted coding.
Sometimes the best design decision is recognising when the world has changed around you.
"The thinking process that Sjors delivered behind all of this adds the most value. Design is identifying the problems that everyone seems to be ignoring, and then think structurally about what can be done about them."
— Boris Okunskiy, CTO, UBIO
