1.2 General navigation tasks - follow-up testing.

First videos are great - thanks @pedroms for the thorough prototype, it worked really well for testing!

And thanks @sarahod for throwing in some questions we've talked about as a team that were outside of the script Super helpful!

cc @mydigitalself

made the issue visible to everyone

mentioned in issue #4 (closed)

changed title from WIP: General navigation tasks - follow-up testing. to General navigation tasks - follow-up testing.

@pedroms @cperessini @dimitrieh @tauriedavis @hazelyang

I've now added all my findings from the previous round of usability testing. I've attempted to order the findings by priority (with the highest priority items with the most affected users at the top of the table). Where possible, I've also added my recommendation about what we should do next (this is just general guidance and you are, of course, welcome to disagree).

Let me know if reporting the findings in the above format is easier to understand/read or whether you prefer just a list (as per #3 (closed)).

@sarahod the breakdown is great! Amazing job!

I'll go through it when I have a moment and watch the videos I have left. Thanks!!!

@sarahod great job! I think the format of the findings is much easier to understand and parse, good improvement. I'll try to keep this concise and short.

Notes:

Issues icon: This is a tough one as the most common visual symbol for “issues” is an exclamation mark (!) and we use exclamation marks to reference merge requests. Not sure what we can do here.
Creating a new project within a group: How is the problem outlined really an issue?
Creating a new project within a group and + icon: The + icon would need to have a section called “This group” with a “New project” item, but for the prototype, it wasn't possible to include it. Would this solve the problem?
Project settings: We're building the product at a fast pace and changes are bound to happen at some point. I agree that we could be doing a better job of announcing UI changes to the user after an update.
Todos icon: I've talked with @dimitrieh about this and the icon used in the prototype (which is the implemented one) is not the correct icon. Instead of fa-check-circle we should be using fa-check-square. @dimitrieh what do you think about fa-check-square-o to be even clearer about the meaning?
Review GitHub’s use of colour: That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for pointing that out.

Edited description:

Added https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/29045 as related to the Projects 'Memberships' usability problem
Added related issues to the table Progress since last usability testing session

thanks @pedroms!

This is a tough one as the most common visual symbol for “issues” is an exclamation mark (!) and we use exclamation marks to reference merge requests. Not sure what we can do here.

This is where feature flags would be really nice. It would be good to visually indicate to users in the interface when we've added something new and explain what it is. Something like this may also work well for onboarding new users. I guess, for now, we can continue to monitor recognition (which we can do via usability testing) and hopefully, at a later date when we have an improved analytics tool, we could tag the icon and track interaction/clicks.

Creating a new project within a group**: How is the problem outlined really an issue?

I guess if users are happy to take a couple of additional steps, then it isn't really. I thought interaction with the + icon was rather low, which leads to the argument of whether it should it be in the interface if it's not being interacted with? However, we need more data to draw that type of conclusion. Over time, as users adapt to the changes in the interface, the + icon may get more use.

The + icon would need to have a section called “This group” with a “New project” item, but for the prototype, it wasn't possible to include it. Would this solve the problem?

I'm not sure as users don't initially click the + icon so they might never see your solution. It would be better if we could determine where in the interface the user is when they are creating a new project and automatically pre-populate the URL with the group they are in. However, I'm not sure how technically difficult this is to do.

Edited description

Thanks for the edits!

Are we testing the new + dropdown that includes both global and contextual content in the new round of testing? I realize that users aren't even clicking on it to begin with, but would be good to get some more numbers on this.

It would be better if we could determine where in the interface the user is when they are creating a new project and automatically pre-populate the URL with the group they are in. However, I'm not sure how technically difficult this is to do.

I agree here, this should be very doable from a technical perspective I would think. However if we have both options in the dropdown now, I suppose it doesn't matter.

Are we testing the new + dropdown that includes both global and contextual content in the new round of testing? I realize that users aren't even clicking on it to begin with, but would be good to get some more numbers on this.

Yep, we can do. The dropdown is on the prototype.

Thanks @sarahod :)

@sarahod do we need the Create project page? Or is it enough with the dropdown?

@cperessini the dropdown should be enough. We should be able to decipher the user's intent from where they click within the dropdown.

mentioned in issue #3 (closed)

changed title from General navigation tasks - follow-up testing. to 1.2 General navigation tasks - follow-up testing.

mentioned in issue #7 (closed)

Third round of navigation testing can be found here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/ux-research/issues/7

closed

	+	todos	issues	merge requests
User 1	Success	Success	Success	Success
User 2	Success	Partial	Partial	Success
User 3	Partial	Fail	Success	Success
User 4	Partial	Fail	Success	Success
User 5	Task skipped	Fail	Fail	Success
User 6	Success	Success	Fail	Success
Total	3 success, 2 partial, 1 skipped.	2 success, 1 partial, 3 fail.	3 success, 1 partial, 2 fail.	6 success

Area affected	Problem	Number of affected users	Priority	Recommendations / further comments	Related issue number
Groups I am not a member of	Whereas most users passed this task (5/6), it was only by process of elimination. All users clicked back and forth between ‘Your Groups’ and ‘Explore Groups’. Had the group lists been longer and the difference between the group lists not as obvious, I believe more users would have failed this task.	6	High	Users mentioned looking for a “filter”, “label” or “icon”.
Issues icon	Issues icon was mistaken as ‘chat messages’ / related to Slack (out of context). Further emphasised by users typically hovering over the icon to read the tool tip before clicking it (within context).	4	High	Try testing a different icon with users.
Creating a new project within a group.	When creating a new project within a group, users often thought they needed to be located within the group they were asked to add the project to.	4	High	The addition of the + icon has not solved this issue. If we push users to interact with + icon we could aggravate the problem outlined below.
Creating a new project within a group and + icon.	In relation to the above, if the user navigates to the group where they wish to add the project to and then clicks the + icon.They do not realise that they are now creating a project within their namespace (by default) rather than the group they have just navigated to.	1	High	Despite only one user performing this action, I feel this could grow into a large usability issue for the reason outlined above.
Interface as a whole.	Interface looks like a ‘“tablet”, “mobile” or “responsive view” with “wasted space”, rather than designed for desktop.	3	High	Reduce white space. The hamburger menu may be contributing to the users’ perspectives that the interface is designed for a mobile/tablet. The users I tested with generally had large screens, perhaps consider increasing the size of the prototype for future testing.	Related to UX polish issues.
Issues	Users expect to see an issues board view from the Issues page (in the sidebar).	3	High	As I reported in #3 (closed), I didn’t feel that users initially realised that the sidebar navigation was relevant to them. I felt more research was required to support this theory. The behaviour observed in this round of testing provides further evidence to support this theory - i.e users initially visiting Issues to see an “overview of tasks in a GitLab project” demonstrates a lack of understanding that the Issues page is personal to them.	Related to gitlab-ce#29878 and gitlab-ce#29882
Projects	The heading ‘Memberships’ implies that you are only a member of projects which appear under this heading.	3	High	Considering changing this heading and re-testing.	Related to gitlab-ce#29045
+ icon	+ icon was mistaken as contextual, rather than global.	2	High	We should re-test this in the next round of usability testing.
Sidebar	A GitLab user explained that he has the sidebar pinned by default, but comments that the new issues and MRs icons will help alleviate the two clicks he now has to make. He further comments that he uses ‘Projects’ a lot - he typically navigates to them via the breadcrumb (his comments are supported by his behaviour during the testing), but if he can’t find them he uses the sidebar. A non GitLab user comments that it would be nice if the sidebar wasn’t hidden and that the navigation was more exposed on the screen.	2	High	Supports existing data and proposed changes.	Related to gitlab-ce#29878
MRs	When viewing MRs within the sidebar, one user commented that he did not know whether these were just related to the group of ‘Customers’. This demonstrates two problems: 1) Lack of understanding that everything in the sidebar is personal to the user 2) Lack of understanding of where he was in his user journey.	1	High	Already in progress.	Related to gitlab-ce#29878 and gitlab-ce#29882
Hamburger menu	One user overlooked the sidebar. Sarah had to prompt the user to interact with the hamburger menu.	1	High	Already in progress.	Related to gitlab-ce#29878
Project settings	A GitLab user initially struggled to locate Project / Members as he was looking for the gear icon. He described his experience as “unsettling”.	1	High	From the persona work, this is a massive pain point for some of GitLab’s users (frequency of changes to the UI). I’m not sure if there’s anything we can do in relation to this exact change, but I wanted to document this feedback and share it with you all.
Todos	Todos icon was mistaken as ‘builds’. Users stated that it may indicate that a test has succeeded or failed and subsequently show them an error log (out of context). When the icon was shown in context, 3 users still overlooked it’s intended purpose.	3	Medium	Try testing a different icon with users.
Comprehension of todos (non GitLab users)	All three non GitLab users struggled to understand the concept of todos.They all had different ideas about what content they would find within todos.	3	Medium	As reported in #3 (closed), similar behaviour has been observed in previous testing with different non GitLab users.
Using todos (GitLab users)	All three GitLab users which we tested with mentioned that they hardly used todos. 2 out of 3 users commented that they just repeat issues/MRs, subsequently when they visit todos they are no longer relevant (one user commented that his todos are normally closed or merged)	3	Medium	It could be that ‘todos’ become obsolete with the addition of issue and MRs icons.
Todos	When viewing the list of todos, one user mistakenly thought that all issues were ‘Done’, rather than realising that the true intent of the CTAs was to mark a task as ‘Done’.	1	Medium	We seem to be gathering a lot of insight into ‘todos’, perhaps ‘todos’ is it’s own separate project?
Milestones	Users expect to see an issues board view from the Milestones page.	2	Low
Project ‘owner’	Two users commented that they did not understand what project ‘owner’ meant. Both users were non GitLab users.	2	Low	No action required. Sarah will continue to watch for similar comments / behaviour in future usability testing.	Not Applicable
Activity View	Users assume they can change their default project view by accessing ‘Projects’.	2	Low	No action required. Sarah will continue to watch for similar comments / behaviour in future usability testing.	Not Applicable
All icons (colour)	One user thought that the use of grey for the icons implied status, i.e. pending, completed, etc.	1	Low	No action required. Sarah will continue to watch for similar comments / behaviour in future usability testing.	Not Applicable
All icons	One user completely overlooked all icons. When questioned at the end of testing, he admitted that he hadn’t spotted them.	1	Low	Possibly an edge case. No action required. Sarah will continue to watch for similar comments / behaviour in future usability testing.	Not Applicable
MR icon (colour)	The use of orange on the MR icon indicated to a user that it was a list of ‘pending’ MRs (rather than assigned MRs). User mentioned that GitHub uses ‘orange’ to depict ‘pending’ / ‘modified’.	1	Low	Perhaps we can review GitHub’s use of colour in order to gauge what assumptions users moving from GitHub to GitLab might have in relation to colour.
Todos	When attempting to interact with the ‘Type’ filter on the Todos page, one user thought it would show him the progress of the Todos (‘open’, ‘in progress’, ‘closed’)	1	Low	No action required. Sarah will continue to watch for similar comments / behaviour in future usability testing.	Not Applicable
Todos	When attempting to interact with the ‘Action’ filter on the todos page, one user thought it was “what I’m going to do with it”. An action he expected to perform was ‘re-opening a closed todo’.	1	Low	No action required. Sarah will continue to watch for similar comments / behaviour in future usability testing.	Not Applicable
Todos	When interacting with the Todos page, a user commented that by clicking on the avatar of a user he could chat with or message the user. This user may have thought there was a chat functionality within GitLab due to an earlier task where he identified the issues icon as relating to chat messages.	1	Low	No action required. Sarah will continue to watch for similar comments / behaviour in future usability testing.	Not Applicable
Search	The search bar should be smart enough to search by group name. “I want something that lets me type in whatever I want” and finds the appropriate content.	1	Low	No action required. Sarah will continue to watch for similar comments / behaviour in future usability testing.	Not Applicable
Creating a new project within a group	When creating a new project and attempting to change the group name, one user tried to amend the IP address.	1	Low	The heading ‘Group or user namespace’ is above the IP address rather than the group/namespace field, perhaps it needs to be moved?
Groups I am not a member of (icons)	One user investigated the group icons but with no tool tips, it was unclear to her what the icons represented.	1	Low	I could investigate the usability of these icons in a future testing session.
Project labels	One user commented that she would like labels at a project level, so she could quickly understand more about the contents of a project.	1	Low	No action required. Sarah will continue to watch for similar comments / behaviour in future usability testing.	Not Applicable

Area affected	Observation	Affected users	Related issues
Personal projects	All users were able to find their personal projects	6	gitlab-ce#29045
Issues and MRs	Despite some confusion about what the issues icon represents, once users had clicked the icon and viewed the content, they generally understood that these were their personal issues. Similarly, the majority of users who clicked the MR icon understood that the MRs displayed were relevant to them. The new icons are better than the current sidebar at conveying to users that the content is personal to them.	4	gitlab-ce#29866
Issues board	The ‘issues board’ task had an improved success rate due to secondary level items appearing on hover of primary level items.	4	gitlab-ce#22069
Tanuki	Increase in interaction with the tanuki. Users commented that they expected the tanuki to take them ‘home’ to their personal dashboard. Users expected to see the following on their personal dashboard: issues (both issues I’m assigned to and watching), merge requests, projects and recent activity. Basically “everything associated with me”.	2
Number of projects	No users manually counted their projects, following the addition of the badge count to project/group/subgroup tabs	6	gitlab-ce#29798

1.2 General navigation tasks - follow-up testing.

Videos

Findings

Icon recognition and functionality (out of context)

Key

Usability issues and recommendations

Progress since last usability testing session (#3 (closed))

Designs

Child items ...

Activity

Admin message

Admin message

1.2 General navigation tasks - follow-up testing.

Videos

Findings

Icon recognition and functionality (out of context)

Key

Usability issues and recommendations

Progress since last usability testing session (#3 (closed))

Activity