Redesigning the GitLab Start page for logged in users
Problem to solve
When a user is logged in, every time they navigate back to gitlab.com, they will see the list of projects they are a member of, sorted by a certain criteria they chose the last time they visited the page, unless they specified another view as their Default dashboard in their preferences.
| GitLab.com "homepage" | Settings default dashboard
|
|---|---|
 |
 |
It's good that we offer the users flexibility in what they want to see as homepage of their GitLab instance, but none of these pages were designed to actually be shown in these spots and actually each serve a different purpose. Having this the only content to provide the user on what is one of our most frequently visited pages is a wasted opportunity where instead we could offer them better ways to navigate to the place they want to go to, educate them about new features, or keep them up to date around what is happening in their projects and groups. This could be a prime spot for our Growth teams to showcase the advantages of our premium features and another way to push users into new stages to increase SMAU.
GitHub solves this a bit better by showing a short list of repositories together with a search box, a call to action to create an organization, activity from users or projects they follow, a pro tip to highlight new functionality, and a collection of currently popular repositories.
| GitHub | GitLab |
|---|---|
 |
 |
Proposal
To understand the current situation better, we should first investigate how many users currently use the default view of Your projects as their homepage. My assumption is that the number will be somewhere around 98-99% as most users are not aware that there actually is a way to change that preference.
-
Set up data tracking of default dashboard
As next step, we should collect information and flows from different teams that might be important or helpful to show at this location.
-
Brainstorm with other designers what information a GitLab homepage should includeMoved to later in the process, check the Strategy section.
Afterwards, we can either try to get these assumptions verified and collect more outside opinions by doing research, or push a first iteration of a new homepage out as another option for the Default dashboard, set this as default for new users and push existing users into switching to it.
-
Decide path for first iteration
Strategy
Next steps:
-
Launch the banner experiment -
Run the survey -
Analyse the results and review existing research findings -
Define JTBDs -
Brainstorm with other designers what information a GitLab homepage should include -
Rapid prototyping & feedback -
Launch an MVC experiment