Improved group lists UI: Discovery

Problem to solve

Our project lists and group lists share a similar design approach. Both of these are used throughout GitLab in different contexts, e. g. dashboards, groups, users.
The current shown information is rather generic and text-heavy. There is an opportunity to improve the information architecture and structure of the project and activity representation individually, to show the relevant information in a more readable, efficient and delightful way.

Project list	Group list

Proposal

In ~Discussion, we are working on improving the display of issue and merge request lists, see meta issue gitlab-design#83 (closed) and 🔍 design specs. This will drastically improve the usability of issues and merge requests in the context they are shown

Let's explore improvements for displaying projects and groups as well!
As these are core elements in the GitLab UI, the initial approach should be UX research driven to learn which information are most relevant, less important, missing, in the different contexts.
To prepare this, we have to list where projects and groups are shown within GitLab, ideally, define how important they are (usage) and consider planned redesigns. The designs should be consistent with the issue/MR list and activity feed redesign, where applicable.

Further details

Projects
- Dashboard
- Group page
- User profile
Groups
- Dashboard link
- Group page link
- User profile link

What does success look like, and how can we measure that?

Feedback and output of related UX research ux-research#76 (closed) is implemented.

Results of UX Research: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RqxVv_9_3pRWVHw8Ad7vSiMQ9JoQrSLd.

Links / references

Existing issues regarding improvements:

UX research

User Profile view:
- 38% of respondents use it less than once a month, 33% of respondents never use this view, 8% of users use it 1-3 times a month.
- Top 5: Group name, group description, group access level, number of members, last created relative timestamp.
Dashboard view:
- 38% of respondents never use this view, 17% use it less than once a month, 17% use it 1-3 times a month.
- Top 5: Group name, group description, group access level, number of members, last created absolute timestamp.
Group page view:
- 52% of respondents never use this view, 29% use it 1-3 times a month, 10% use it less than once a month.
- Top 5: Group name, group description, number of members, group access level, number of subgroups.

The majority of respondents would like to continue to see these items in each view:
- Group name
- Group description
- Group access level
- Number of members.
Some respondents would like to see the following metadata in various views:
- "Expandable Quick-Preview on contained Projects/People" in dashboard view.
- "Extract of group members or projects i.e. on hovering the people icon" in user profile view.
- Last updated timestamp in all views.
- Links to 5 repos in dashboard and user profile views.
In the dashboard view, respondents prioritized the “last updated absolute timestamp” while in the group page view, respondents voted equally for the absolute and relative timestamps.

The majority of respondents would like to see their own permissions level (e.g. owner, master, etc) within the various groups, when looking at a list of their own groups. Otherwise, they don’t mind seeing the same information.