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Adding Guidelines on public discussion of competitor UX features

Dan Rhodes requested to merge dfrhodes-master-patch-24432 into master

Why is this change being made?

Following recent discussions at a UX weekly meeting, it was agreed that Guidelines setting out dos and don'ts for discussing and sharing competitor UX features were needed to guide the UX team.

This MR add those guidelines to the Product Designer Workflow section of the UX handbook.

Original discussion from slack for reference

Becka Lippert 18 Oct at 14:17 Hi! If I post a screenshot from a competitor 's UI that is publicly available (I grabbed it from a demo on YouTube) in an issue, should I turn that issue confidential? (edited) 12 replies

Heidi Loeffert 30 days ago Dan Rhodes can you help with this question? 👆

Dan Rhodes 30 days ago Hi Becka Lippert - yes, please set the issue to confidential. (edited) 👍 1 1

Becka Lippert 29 days ago It's pretty common to look at best practice UI/ UX patterns across websites or other tools so just an FYI that there are probably a significant amount of UX issues that are public and have screenshots like these

Becka Lippert 29 days ago Dan Rhodes Should we be going back and making those private?

Becka Lippert 29 days ago We're having a discussion now about this in the UX Weekly meeting and there's a lot of questions

Becka Lippert 29 days ago Don't know if you could jump in and answer questions?

Dan Rhodes 29 days ago Yep - send me the link!

Becka Lippert 29 days ago https://gitlab.zoom.us/j/92977772461?pwd=R1d4a1U1bVY1VWk4SHZqZkprTVpXdz09

Sid 20 days ago Dan Rhodes can you elaborate on the reason to make it confidential? cc Robin

Becka Lippert 20 days ago clenneville It might help SId here if we post the recording from the UX Weekly call last week when Dan Rhodes joined but I don't seem to have access to that folder. Can you help?

clenneville 20 days ago The context here (from Dan’s response in the UX Weekly) is: This particular issue does not need to be confidential after all. If a screenshot is something that is publicly available (we didn’t get it from using the product ourselves, because that could be a licensing infringement), and we’re using it as an example of industry patterns/standards, then it’s not confidential. Alternately, if the discussion is a “fairly brazen discussion of adopting a feature that’s in a competing product,” then that would be confidential. I haven’t personally seen this kind of discussion in the UX department. This is the video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O4Q5Z5sm3PaG2wkE5L6KPx0Ayj20f5Bn/view?usp=sharing Dan Rhodes Please feel free to correct me, if I misunderstood anything. (edited) Pinned by Heidi Loeffert

Dan Rhodes 20 days ago Thanks Becka Lippert, clenneville. Sid, as per Christine’s note, the concern here is limited to where there is discussion about directly adopting a competitor’s feature and screenshots are shared in support of that discussion. Where the discussion is more general in nature, and provided the screenshots were not taken from a competing product accessed through a free trial (the terms of which tend to prohibit use for competitive analysis), the issue can remain public. I’m preparing a handbook update off the back of the discussion with the UX team last week, which I’ll ensure captures the nuances here so that we are not needlessly setting issues as confidential or being over cautious.

Author Checklist

  • Provided a concise title for the MR
  • Added a description to this MR explaining the reasons for the proposed change, per say-why-not-just-what
    • Copy/paste the Slack conversation to document it for later, or upload screenshots. Verify that no confidential data is added.
  • Assign reviewers for this change to the correct DRI(s)
    • If the DRI for the page/s being updated isn’t immediately clear, then assign it to one of the people listed in the "Maintained by" section in on the page being edited.
    • If your manager does not have merge rights, please ask someone to merge it AFTER it has been approved by your manager in #mr-buddies.
  • If the changes affect team members, or warrant an announcement in another way, please consider posting an update in #whats-happening-at-gitlab linking to this MR.
    • If this is a change that directly impacts the majority of global team members, it should be a candidate for #company-fyi. Please work with internal communications and check the handbook for examples.

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