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Draft: Improving usability in CI/CD Settings

Draft document

Why is this important?

GitLab’s CI/CD pipelines are one of the most critical features for our users. The settings for CI/CD are spread across three levels — Admin, Group, and Project. Currently, these CI/CD settings differ in their designs, interaction patterns, and terminology. These inconsistencies create confusion and increase cognitive load for users moving between levels.

As GitLab continues to scale, ensuring a consistent user experience will help make the platform more approachable and easier to maintain, especially for large organizations with multiple layers of CI/CD governance. By aligning the visuals and interactions, GitLab will provide a clearer path for users to configure CI/CD pipelines correctly at each level, minimizing misconfigurations and improving efficiency across the board.

JTBDs

Positive impact to customers

  • Users will have a clearer mental model of how CI/CD configurations cascade from the Admin level to Group, and then to Project. This reduces friction when managing settings at each level.
  • Consistency across the settings UI and terminology ensures users know what to expect, reducing the chances of mistakes caused by confusion or inconsistent designs.

Who can benefit from it?

  • System Administrators
  • Group Owners/Maintainers
  • Project Owners/Maintainers

DRIs

  • Product Designer (1): Refines the UX for the overall CI/CD settings and delivers proposals, reducing user confusion and improving the experience.
  • Product Design Manager (1): Provides strategic oversight on the design alignment, ensuring it adheres to broader product goals and standards for a cohesive user experience.
  • Technical Writer (1): Revamp the current UI texts across the CI/CD settings page. Updates terminology and documentation as needed.
  • Frontend Engineer (1): Implements the design changes, ensuring the UX is consistent across all levels of CI/CD settings.

Collaboration

  • Pipeline Authoring, Pipeline Execution, and Runner Groups.
  • Consult with AI settings project

Tasks

  • (UX) Audit the overall settings UI for each level; project, group, and admin settings.
  • ...

Relevant links

Edited by Rayana Verissimo