Improve UX for applying dropdown selections
Problem(s)
During recent testing sessions with users for the category maturity scorecard Lovability of Issue Tracking, many users struggled with understanding how to apply items selected in the Assignee dropdown. The solution currently is to make the selections, then click outside of the dropdown and it applies the changes, but it created friction in the user's experience and therefore the feature was given a lower score in terms of ease of use. This seems to be the case in any search-related dropdown which has the option for multiple selections.
At least one user also expressed confusion over why there were seemingly 2 search fields when the assignee list was expanded.
Proposals
UPDATE DROPDOWNS IN PAJAMAS TO REFLECT THIS PROPOSAL....
- Functionality is as it currently is, but "Edit" on the right changes to an "Apply" button which technically just closes (and applies) the changes. See prototype here. --
Notice that this prototype removes the following:
which results in a single search
input.
I believe the third option would be simplest for MVC right now. If the removal of the upper dropdown input is too much, even just swapping the Edit to Apply could simplify the experience a bit more by providing feedback that the system is ready for the user to act.