Group overview UI: Implement UX research into designs

Placeholder issue

In ux-research#113 (closed), we did a user research related on a vision mockup for the future Group overview page. We now have results that should inform additional steps to work out further iterations of this page.

Let's explore how we can improve this page based on the feedback.

UX research was done on the following mockup:

Feedback

Most relevant feedback from UX research done on the mockup vision:

  • Would the pinned projects still show up in the list below? Or would they be removed? Is it a better use of screen space to somehow highlight the pinned projects at the top of the list?

  • (7 days overview) Would like to see the number of resolved issues. He feels that simply seeing the number of new issues isn’t helpful in itself. Acknowledges that number of new issues could be seen as an indicator of problems arising. He thinks it'd also be useful to see number of MRs. Overall, thinks it should be a configurable 7-day overview so that he could add or remove metrics. He'd remove new team members so he could see issues filtered by some parameter (closed, resolved, certain label, etc).

  • Feels concerned that for many users, teams are not dynamic to the point where you need to constantly see the number of members. He also feels that top contributor doesn’t matter for personal group and companies.

  • Sees new members as not very relevant. Total number of members may be better, but says it's a vanity metric. Says that a corporate project may not expect very many members to change within a 7 day period.

  • Sees the 7-day overview as very helpful for any open source project. Seeing this data will help him know if it’s an active project.

  • He really likes the 7-day overview because it adds more value and it is not just a list of projects. Feels that it’d be interesting to see information at the group-level for open instances, in order to see whether the group is active or not. Says he is not sure if he’d need a view like this in his personal workflow. But seeing this kind of overview would be useful when moving exploring groups.

  • Thinks Epics overview and 7-day overview are very good ways to be introduced to the group, especially if you know nothing about it. However, he showed some concern that while it looks great as an image, it may be a lot of information to see at once. He is not sure what information could be removed to make it shorter. He may like to see something related to pipeline jobs or code commits but also points out that number of commits alone may not communicate anything important.

  • Likes the fact that this design reduces the amount of whitespace. He would like to see the data represented in a more relevant and useful way. Worried about how this design would fit other types of projects such as internal use or smaller projects. Points out that we will need to account for blank states that occur when users do not have data to show.

  • He’d love to see CI stats and be able to customize the page (configurable).

Second iteration

Changes in the second iteration:

  • 7 days overview:
    • removed 'Top contributor'
    • removed 'New members'
    • added 'Issues closed'
    • added ' Merge requests merged'
  • Updated the subgroups/project lists with the latest designs: gitlab-org/gitlab-ce#52365
  • Moved pinned projects/group to the 'Subgroups and projects' section, changed the styling
  • Removed epics from the main iteration (kept as additional exploration separately)
  • Added percentages of closed issues to the epics overview
  • explored the possibility of disabling 7 day overview and epics sections in the settings
  • explored empty state for epics section
  • explore the barebones version of the overview
2nd iteration Overview settings 7 days overview details
2nd-iteration--desktop 2nd-iteration-settings 7-days-overview-links

With epics

With epics section Overview settings Epics empty state
2nd-iteration--with-epics--desktop 2nd-iteration-settings_copy 2nd-iteration--with-epics-empty-state--desktop

Barebones

2nd-iteration--barebones--desktop

Recommended next steps:

  • Get more feedback on the 2nd iteration (with and without the epics section)
  • Plan the 7 day overview MVC, get more feedback on the 2nd iteration of it
  • Plan the pinned groups/projects MVC (both: project & group overview)
    • A detailed product discovery issue
    • A separate implementation issue
Edited by Matej Latin