Redpanda
NOMINEE OVERVIEW
Redpanda delivers a high-performance, enterprise-grade streaming platform that is Kafka-compatible, performant, reliable, and AI-ready. The Redpanda documentation portal reflects the the customer journey with the products, from general overviews and licensing guidance, to Quickstarts, and then off to development and deployment. In addition to mirroring the customer journey with Redpanda, the documentation portal is AI-centric. Heatmaps from previous iterations of the portal showed us that the AskAI button was the most clicked element. Based on the evidence that users desire a first-class AI solution that enables them to explore content, ask questions, and gain context, we simplified the portal to provide the experience users want, while at the same time maintaining product tabs and navigation trees for users once they are in the context of a specific product doc.
NOMINATION RATIONALE
1) BEST AI-ENABLED DEVELOPER PORTAL
The newly-updated Redpanda Doc portal is designed to provide a seamless, first-class user experience with AI to explore content, ask questions, and get context. Our homepage is designed to provide what our users value most: quick, intelligent, conversational help.
AI assistance is integrated and available on all pages within Redpanda docs, making it easy for users to ask questions. Since implementing, 73% of users report a positive experience (Helpful or Very Helpful) with our doc-AI integration.
2) BEST REFERENCE DOCUMENTATION BEYOND REST APIS
Exceptional reference documentation for enterprise software must do more than just "list out" properties or API calls. It must communicate technical precision, usability, scalability, and instill trust in users. While Redpanda Reference content is auto-generated, it is human-curated, meaning that writers review the content as it is added to the developer source code, not after generating it.
3) BEST ONBOARDING EXPERIENCE IN A DEVELOPER PORTAL
The Redpanda Quickstarts are among the most clicked/viewed docs in our library, and for good reason. Each Quickstart excels at taking users through basic workflows to familiarize users with the product, and altogether, provide sufficient breadth and depth to get you started using Redpanda products.
