B2B dashboards tend to evolve quietly.
New features get added. New data appears. Navigation grows more complex over time.
Eventually, what started as a focused interface becomes a dense surface area that's difficult to extend, harder to learn, and increasingly fragile to change.
At Stream, we recently rebuilt our dashboard from the ground up to address exactly that. More than a cosmetic refresh, we saw it as a deliberate investment in creating a consistent, extensible foundation that scales with our growing suite of products: Chat, Video, Feeds, and Moderation.
Redesigning the dashboard gave us a chance to step back and examine what great UI/UX really means for complex, developer-first B2B products (and where many tools fall short).
When Flexibility Starts Working Against You
Originally, Stream's dashboard supported just two products.
With time and growth, maintaining a cohesive experience across independent yet interconnected tools became increasingly challenging.
We added two additional products that can be used independently or together. Each product evolved at its own pace, while users rightly expected a unified interface across all of them.
"While this flexibility is a strength, it creates challenges, not only at the product level but also in maintaining a consistent, cohesive experience across the dashboard." — Colin van Eenige, Director of Design Engineering at Stream
Fragmented patterns, inconsistent navigation, and a tech stack that limited performance made it harder for teams to move fluidly between tasks.
We believe developer tools should enable velocity, not hinder it. A dashboard that feels fragmented or outdated weakens trust and adds unnecessary cognitive load—precisely what we help our customers avoid in their own apps.
Here's how we solved it.
What Good UI/UX Looks Like
In B2B developer tools, minimal doesn't mean empty.
Our design philosophy embraces high information density while remaining clean and functional. Developer dashboards handle large volumes of real-time data from SDKs, so we lean on proven patterns: feature-rich tables, list-detail views, and predictable hierarchies that let users scan and act quickly.
At the same time, information density only works when it's intentional. Thoughtful UI/UX requires deciding how much belongs on a single page and when splitting things up improves clarity and discoverability.
Key principles guiding our decisions:
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Consistency and predictability: Navigation, components, and interactions stay uniform across products. When you're configuring a chat channel or monitoring a video session, the mental model remains the same.
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Real-world usability: Every view is deep-linkable, enabling teams to share exact contexts without extra steps. No more "click here, then here, then scroll."
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Extensibility by design: The architecture prioritizes reusable patterns, making it straightforward to introduce new features or support emerging product capabilities without breaking familiarity.
These choices reflect broader truths in B2B SaaS design. Technical users value efficiency and control over flashiness. Great UX here means removing friction so users can operate at full speed.
Our Design Engineering Approach
We executed this through close collaboration between design and frontend engineering from day one.
The process started with defining a clear, minimal visual language rooted in functionality. We then conducted a full audit of existing features across all products, mapping out user flows and identifying opportunities for unification.
This wasn't about making visual tradeoffs for the sake of aesthetics. Instead, we optimized every element to serve a clear purpose, recognizing that the dashboard is a tool teams rely on every day (unlike a website).
This audit surfaced reusable UI patterns that could span chat analytics, video diagnostics, feed configuration, and moderation workflows.
Perhaps most valuable: the exercise forced us to deeply re-engage with our own SDKs. We uncovered capabilities that were powerful for users but previously buried or underexposed in the interface. These insights directly shaped new features.
We optimized for core journeys, including onboarding new teams, installing and configuring SDKs, monitoring live usage, and troubleshooting issues.
"Equally important, the new dashboard was architected to be highly extensible, allowing us to add new features and support evolving products without compromising usability."
The result eliminates common friction points like hunting for API keys, piecing together documentation, or navigating disjointed sections.
Standout Improvements We're Proud Of
Some of our favorite updates:
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A clearer, more intuitive navigation structure that makes it easier to find what you're looking for across products, even as the dashboard grows in scope.
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A streamlined login and onboarding flow that guides new users through organization setup, key details, and team invitations. This reduces time-to-value dramatically.
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For Video, SDK-specific installation guides with instantly visible API keys, ready-to-copy code samples, embedded documentation links, and built-in demos. You can now configure call types and test them live without ever leaving the dashboard.
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Besides faster performance and a more coherent overall experience, the biggest advantage of our new stack is that we can ship new features more quickly.
Product Design Takeaway
Multi-product platforms reveal a universal challenge: Flexibility for customers shouldn't come at the cost of coherence for users.
Thoughtful audits, reusable patterns, and early alignment between design and engineering are force multipliers. The dashboard should let teams focus on crafting exceptional experiences rather than fighting their tools.
If this redesign does its job, users won't think about the interface; they'll think about what they're building.
And that's the point.