User testing of new context navigation

All changes are the step further but there are some caveats

Profile

It's confusing that I need to scroll page up to see top horizontal menu. It took too much time to realise where the profile tabs are. I would rather go with a "stick menu"

Group

The dropdown menu in the top right corner does not show my current position and I find it a bit confusing as well. Although it did not take too much time to find it but it has a bad UX I think. Nevertheless I can't suggest a better approach.

Profile

I guess I have a bigger screen so I didn't have a problem finding notification menu, navigation felt easy.

Group

I got a 404 when going to the group page, could not try it out.

Group edit

I had no problem finding the edit button, I expected it to be there. One thing that I did do without thinking though is that I clicked on the group name expecting it to be editable or to take me to the edit page. Similar with the lock icon.

Feels more natural with the horizontal navigation for the second level navigation. On my regular screen it felt easy to use.

mentioned in issue #14838 (closed)

I was easily able to accomplish everything (except for the 404).

I found the horizontal menu intuitive. The only thing slightly confusing on profile settings was that the menu wrapped at my window width. It looked a little odd that way. On groups, it took me a little while to find Edit Group. I expected it to be a menu item, not buried under the cog wheel.

I think it makes navigation easier.

Side-note: found it odd that creating a group didn't ask me for a name, but editing a group allowed me to change the name. I'd expect to be asked to name the group and have the group path auto-generated from what I type, but let me override it at group creation time.

Profile Had a smooth experience with the new navigation. Everything was easy.

Group Clicked the wrong issues button, but when I saw what I did wrong I knew why.

Group edit Initially I missed the settings page as it wasn't part of the horizontal list, took me no longer than 2 seconds to look further and find it.

Profile Nav: No trouble at all, and a very pleasant experience. I immediately knew exactly what was going on.

Group Nav: It was very smooth also and did not have any problems. I had one small tiny itsy bitsy moment when I was on the project page itself, where I said to myself: "If this menu at the top shows the merge requests for this project, what does that merge request button over there (on the left) do?" Then I realized within a split second that it was a global vs local pattern going on. I wasn't 100% sure that was what was going on, more like 90% sure. So still a little confusing but so much better than the double menu from before.

I think the problem is that nothing implies "global" definitively. You are left to assume that. If there was some sort of globe icon somewhere or if they all said "All Merge Requests", "All Issues"... even though I know that is the wrong solution, but something like that. Something that says "This is global" and "This is local".

I just noticed that the global area has the menu highlighted. But it is very very subtle. If I saw that the global menu was highlighted very clearly than I think would have immediately recognized the pattern.

I also noticed that you pull the old switcheroo on me. The top menu was the local menu, when going to the group you made the left menu the local menu. I feel like the left menu should always be the global menu. I now feel like all top gray menus should be the local ones. All blue ones to be global. That's what my immediate thought was.

Did it make navigation easier? Overall yes it did.

Group Edit: That was one of the best experiences so far. I did have trouble finding the group edit. But as soon as I saw the cog I knew what to do. I did think that once I edited the group it would go back to the group page or the page I was previously on but instead it navigated back to the group settings page.

I did not find anything confusing in this navigation except for the split second I could not find the settings menu. I thought for some reason I was going to be able to double click the title to edit it.

Does it make navigation easier? Yes much much easier. It makes much more sense.

I think overall as long as the local menu stays at the top and stays gray it will make sense. Once it moved to the left it stopped making sense. Unless when it moves to the left you are going to make the blue menu gray. Because I now associated gray with local and blue with global.

I feel like the left menu should always be the global menu.

@jschatz1 Thats exactly where we going. Your confusion was because Project page still uses old navigation when local menu is to the left. Once we done with project - it wont be a problem any more :)

Profile Nav:
It was very easy to navigate. I didn't have any problems finding stuff.

Group Nav:
I clicked on the groups menu first when I wanted to go back to the group page. Probably because I'm still used to the old navigation. I don't think that's really an issue. Apart from that there are 2 things that bother me a bit.

on the issues page you now have 3 rows where a user can interact with something. Feels a bit crowded to me. Not sure if that can be improved somehow.
The icon for the rss feed changes position depending on the page. I think it should either always stay next to the cog, or it needs to be moved on the group page so it's in the same place as in the other pages.

Group edit:
It took me a second to find the edit menu, because I didn't spot the cog immediatily on my display. I think that's because on my screen there is such a huge gap between that and the other menu elements.

Navigation on screens with very low height:
When you have a display with a very low height it's possible that the navigation is hidden because it scrolls with the page.
Maybe it would be possible to anchor it to the top like the header? That being said, idk how realistic such screensizes are.

Overall I like the new navigation. just some minor improvements left to do I think :)

Profile navigation

No problem with navigation on profile level. It feels good, but I also like current version.

Group navigation

No problems with navigation on a group level. Feel a little weird that there is no indication which group I'm browsing on a left sidebar, but this may be also a matter for being used to previous version.

Group edit

I had some problems with finding 'settings' button location on the right, below logout button. I expected 'edit group' button to be somewhere in new, top menu, instead of the third menu that is hidden under a settings button.

Thank you everyone for taking time and leaving feedback. This helped us to make few nice improvements to new navigation.

Profile navigation

No problems with finding everything there.

Group navigation

No problems here too.

Group edit

I had to think a little how to edit and rename a group. It was not a obvious thing to do.

Profile navigation

Took me a bit to discover where the notifications tab was (a few seconds), once I realized it all became natural and I liked having the separation between the left menu and the tabs.

Group navigation

No problem at navigating, it was quite natural.

But, it's not clear what's the difference between the merge requests tab and the merge requests on the left at simple sight, I do figure it out by reading the target url though.

Group Edit

All good, I like it. I was expecting to find every button where it was located.

mentioned in merge request !3980 (merged)

Thank you for feeback!

Did you managed to accomplish all steps without significant efforts?

Yes :-)

Did you find something confusing in new navigation?

At first I had to search for the top navigation, but that's probably because I'm not used to it. The only thing that I had trouble finding, was the edit button for the groups.

Do you think it makes navigation easier?

Yeah I think that the sidebar is not changing all the time really helps!

(Sorry for the later response)

@jvanbaarsen thank you :)

Status changed to closed

User testing of new context navigation

Steps

Before:

Scenario: profile navigation

Scenario: group navigation

Scenario: group edit

Feedback

Designs

Child items ...

Activity

Admin message

Admin message

User testing of new context navigation

Steps

Before:

Scenario: profile navigation

Scenario: group navigation

Scenario: group edit

Feedback

Activity