Hotjar Insight Loop & UX Clarity Pass
The problem
We had strong instincts about how developers might explore Functory — but instincts are not data.
Some pages performed well, others less so, and we could only guess where users were hesitating, dropping off, or getting confused.
Without a clear view of real user journeys, each UX improvement was a bit of a shot in the dark.
What shipped
We integrated Hotjar across core Functory surfaces to see how people actually move through the product:
- Heatmaps to understand where users click, scroll, and stop paying attention.
- Session recordings to identify friction in navigation and where flows feel longer or more complex than they should.
- Funnel and behavior analysis to highlight bottlenecks in onboarding, function discovery, and execution paths.
All of this is wired into a simple review routine: watch real journeys, extract patterns, and translate them into concrete UX changes.
Why it matters
Every unnecessary click is lost energy.
Every confusing screen is a potential lost user.
By grounding decisions in real behavior, we can:
- Make the first-time experience smoother and more intuitive.
- Shorten the path from “I’m curious” to “I just ran my first function.”
- Respect developers’ time by removing subtle frustrations in navigation.
This update is not about flashy features — it’s about listening more carefully to what users are already telling us with their actions.
How we built it
We instrumented Hotjar with scoped tracking to focus on:
- Key flows like signup, first run, function publishing, and changelog exploration.
- Critical UI elements that guide navigation (menus, CTAs, filters, search).
We also added basic safeguards and anonymization to keep tracking aligned with our values: understand behavior, not identities.
From there, we set up a recurring “insight review” rhythm to turn observations into tickets and UX experiments.
What’s next
Next steps:
- Prioritize the highest-friction journeys revealed by Hotjar and turn them into focused UX improvements.
- Run small, incremental tweaks and measure their impact over time.
- Use insights from Hotjar to shape onboarding tours, empty states, and in-product guidance so Functory feels more obvious, faster.
This is a quiet but important shift: instead of guessing what users need, we’re committed to watching, learning, and iterating — one session at a time.