Improve the usability of epic labels in the epic list
Release notes
Problem to solve
Users expect to see all the labels associated with the epic (if a label is used they want to see it), but at the same time, they expect the list to be cleaner. Users want to be able to quickly scan the epics in order to get to the metadata that matter the most.
For users we talked with in a recent study:
- Displaying labels crucial for performing their jobs.
- Most participants found labels overwhelming when displaying more than four items per epic.
- Users admitted that labels can easily get out of hand.
The job users were relying on labels for within the epic list:
- Ensuring epics are correctly defined
- Identifying epics that need attention
Intended users
User experience goal
Users find value from labels without them being overwhelming.
Proposal
Recommendations from interviews:
Recommendation 1: Ordering labels
Explore the way to order labels on the epics indicating their importance. Display first the labels that matter the most, then display other labels. Among others, this can be achieved by:
- allowing users to define their “important labels”
- allowing users to actively reordering labels (eg. drag and drop)
- displaying labels based on their usage popularity.
Recommendations 2: Grouping labels
Explore the way to group labels (thematically) when there are two or more labels from the same category (theme). Allow inspecting (eg. on hover) the grouped labels in order to view all the grouped labels. For example if there are multiple team involved show only the “team” label. When hovering over the “team” label display “UX team” and “UX Research team” labels.
Recommendation 3: Arrange labels
Explore the way to arrange labels vertically (eg. labels from the same category in the same column) to allow scanning the list.