Issues Right Sidebar Survey: Usage & Preferences

What questions are you trying to answer?

• Which right sidebar components are most commonly used?
  • Why do users not use these components?
• Which components need to be seen at all times (always fixed to the right of your screen)?
• Where do users think the least common components should be placed instead?

Methodology

• Survey sent to GitLab First Look users interested in studies related to ~Plan.
• Analysis of right sidebar tracking events, https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/9703

What assumptions do you have?

• Users are not able to see all the information they need due to the presence of too many items in the right sidebar.

  • There's a decent chance we'll be taking up even more vertical space, just for the Labels section. On a 15" MacBook, I usually don't see any of the sidebar components below the participants list. (source: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/7744#note_131834853)

What decisions will you make based on the research findings?

• Which of the following two approaches would best address this issue?

  • Remove the sidebar components that are rarely used. Those components can go elsewhere on the issue page.
  • Make the sidebar somewhat customizable - for example, an option to remove time tracking https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/26131
  • Maybe we could implement another section in the main body of the issue/MR (under the title maybe) that will hold the items that are useful but maybe not necessary to see at all times.

• Bonus points for testing: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/47466#note_117042312, https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/ux-research/issues/37, https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/40388#note_51866790 (preference between the two mockups)

Progress

• Create an issue for tracking right sidebar events [Deadline: Fri Feb 8th] --> https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/9703
• Draft survey questions. [Deadline: Mon May 20th]
  • Finalize survey questions. [Deadline: Weds May 22nd]
• Import survey questions into SurveyMonkey. [Deadline: Weds May 22nd]
• Test survey logic. [Deadline: Weds May 22nd]
• Distribute survey to a test sample of users. [Deadline: Thurs May 23rd]
• Review answers and make any necessary amendments to the survey. [Deadline: Thurs May 23rd]
• Distribute survey to remaining users. [Deadline: Fri May 24th]
• Close survey [Deadline: Tues May 28th]
• Conduct prize draw and contact winners [Deadline: Fri May 31st]
  • Purchase Amazon gift vouchers [Deadline: Mon June 3rd]
• Cleanse data and analyze survey results. [Deadline: Mon June 3rd]
• Update the Research proposal issue. Create issues in insights repository. Unmark as confidential if applicable. Change status to done and close issue. [[Deadline: Fri June 7th]

Results

• &1411 (closed)

Researcher Recommendation

The research results did not show a strong preference for removing items from the right sidebar. However, prioritizing components is still useful, since the sidebar may become more cluttered in the future, due to new Plan features. My recommendation would be to first explore possible locations for components to be moved to and then use tracking data (after 12.1) to confirm which items are least frequently used.

I think these comments are important for consideration:

• “Epics should be removed for projects that don't use them (for example in free accounts the feature is locked and takes space for no reason in the sidebar). Milestones could probably be removed too for repositories that don't have any”
• “Features not available in the plan. Although I understand that you want to keep them to upsell customers.”
• “Time tracking, due date => Private open-source projects often do not have a fixed schedule Epic => Isn't this basically the same as milestones?”
• “Move issue -> near Close issue. Epic and Milestone -> near Related issues / merge requests. In fact, a lot of this stuff probably makes sense to put there, below issue description. But, I am a frequent mobile user, and this may bias me against having to scroll up and tap the sidebar opening button"*