Solution validation: Pinning pages in group and projects
What did we learn?
Results |
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After completing the unmoderated solution validation, the groupfoundations team feels confident moving forward with implementing gitlab#378547 (closed) for the new navigation. |
Go to Dovetail project → |
Watch the readout → |
See the research report slide deck → |
What’s this issue all about?
This research study is related to the current navigation redesign effort (&9044) in moving towards the north star design we defined in previous research. The goal is to evaluate and make any refinements to the Pinned/Favorites functionality for the new sidebar design. This feature is meant to provide the capability for users to identify various navigation items that they would like quick access to.
What questions are you trying to answer?
Research questions
- What term best resonates with users for this functionality? (“Pinned”/“Favorites”/”Starred”)
- Do users expect/want these items applied per project/group, or across all projects/groups?
- Meaning, if a user Pins an item in Project A, should it also be Pinned in Project B automatically?
- What do users expect happens to a navigation item within a grouping once it is favorited?
- Does it stay within the grouping while also adding it as an item within Pinned/Favorites?
- Do users understand how to add and remove items from this section?
- Do users understand how to reorder these items?
- Do users expect these items to be specific to their user or applied for everyone viewing the group/project? How confident are they in how they believe it behaves?
- How many favorites do users want to add, on average?
- Do users understand what this feature is based on the empty state?
Product questions (not asked directly in solution testing)
- Is reordering features in the pinned section a must have for the beta release?
- Do we need to design for users adding more than just a few features?
What hypotheses and/or assumptions do you have?
- “Pinned” makes more sense as a term for this functionality as it has no emotional aspect tied to it. "Favorite" might resonate more, although it could be perceived as more emotionally charged. “Starred” could also work, but we use this today for Projects so it may be best to avoid that.
- Users may want the ability to apply favorites per project/group, but we should start with this being applied across all projects/groups as this is much easier from a development perspective and still allows us to iterate towards a per project/group level in the future.
- Users may expect that a navigation item would disappear from a grouping after it is Pinned, but because this can have implications on our documentation as well as creates edge cases such as only one or no items being within a grouping, we should maintain items in their grouping for this first iteration.
- Users will expect to be able to add as many Pinned items as they want, with the understanding that it will push the other content down.
- An empty state with a brief message should be sufficient in explaining the feature.
What persona, persona segment, or customer type experiences the problem most acutely?
- Mix of mature and new GitLab users
- Any plan (Free, Premium, Ultimate)
- Any/All Personas – This feature isn’t dependent on persona, but we should aim for a bit of a mix as well as ensure some of our primary personas are involved (Software Developers, Product Managers, etc).
Edited by Austin Regnery