To-Do List & Notifications user research - solution validation
Simplified research plan
Business goals:
This research aims to inform the roadmap for 2 convergent initiatives:
- Plan:Project Mgmt: Make It Easier To Manage And Complete My Work Within GitLab
- Manage:Analytics: &3061 (closed)
Figure out the UX direction for the following JTBD (and relative insights):
- Stay up-to-date: Stay up to date on relevant items within GitLab.
- Triage notifications: Triage incoming notifications and take action on the highest priority items.
- Manage to-dos: Organize and manage a list of to-dos I need to complete within GitLab
Our research objectives are:
- Get user feedback on a range of solution ideas (using task-based exercises) and co-create new solutions around the following JTBDs:
- Stay up-to-date: Stay up to date on relevant items within GitLab.
- Triage notifications: Triage incoming notifications and take action on the highest priority items.
- Manage tasks: Organize and manage a list of tasks I need to complete within GitLab
- Create a prioritized list of the most important insights questions related to each JTBD (to inform embedded analytics)
Participant profile:
- People who experience To-Do “inbox overwhelm” and aim to get to “inbox 0”
- Heterogeneous in our participants’ roles because this is an overarching feature which touches many personas:
- Use To-Dos
- Mix of devs, scrum masters, product managers, designers
- Any GitLab version
- Enterprise customers
- N = 5 or 6 (we can also include some internal interviews outside this number)
What timescales do you have in mind for the research?
- Plan & prepare in 13.0
- Conduct research 13.1 - May 18, 2020–Jun 17, 2020
Who will be leading the research?
Reference
See previous research plan description
What's this issue all about? (Background and context)
- We are looking at adding contextual analytics insights to the most popular parts of the product (e.g. MRs, Issues, To-Dos)
- This issue is part of the broader theme, Embedded Analytics: To-Do & Personal Pages
- To-Dos are the domain of groupproject management in GitLab overseen by @gweaver with whom we will confer as we work in this area.
What are the overarching goals for the research?
This research aims to understand:
- User JTBD & needs around task/queue management (Problem validation)
- How To-Dos are used today in GitLab & pains (Solution validation)
- How metrics influence user behaviour in this space (Problem validation)
- What additional functionality could be useful for users (Solution validation)
We will combine UX Research insights with data analysis on anonymized To-Do usage data.
What hypotheses and/or assumptions do you have?
1. Task/queue management JTBD
- There is lack of functionality to satisfy JTBD on notifications & following issues
- Helping users will personal queues will help to improve the entire team's productivity
2. Current To-Do usage
- To-Dos are primarily used by developers as a notification list
- Bulk mark done action in To-Dos is most commonly used when the number of To-Dos has grown to the level the user wants to start with a clean slate.
3. To-Do metrics
- To-Do burndown
- To-Do metrics will be more useful when shown in combination with personal Issue & MR data
- Personal issue velocity (vs team)(vs project)
- Personal MR throughput (vs team)(vs project)
4. Additional To-Do functionality
Users want additional To-Do functionality such as...
- Different states (e.g. to-do, doing, done)
- Create To-Dos from the list page
- Additional notes
- To-Do metadata
- Grouping/nesting To-Dos
- Task sharing with other users
- Different visualisations like Kanban
- Ranking/prioritising
- Due dates
- Snooze & reminders
What research questions are you trying to answer?
User research
- How widely are To-Dos used by our customers? Are there specific usage patterns we should be aware of in different free / paid tiers?
- What do people love/hate about the To-Do List today?
- What assumptions are we making about To-Do usage based on PM usage of these features vs developers, team leads or even personas we wouldn't expect to use them? Are expectations about response time different across personas or companies, for example?
- Which metrics best influence user behavior (so as to improve cycle time) and promote understanding? What is confusing or counter-productive to share? What layout works best?
- Can we find users who have tried to use To-Dos and given up? Why did they quit?
- How many users don't know To-Dos exist? How can we help them find the feature?
Data Analysis
- How frequently do To-Do lists of various users spin out-of-control?
- How do our projections for likelihood to complete compare across different users? Similar distributions?
- How would we characterize usage of To-Do lists across different usage patterns? Does it go from many times a day to never or are there active users who use the page less than daily?
What persona, persona segment, or customer type experiences the problem most acutely?
Primary focus
Secondary focus
What business decisions will be made based on this information?
- Future To-Do feature direction
- Embedded analytics feature direction
What, if any, relevant prior research already exists?
- n/a
What timescales do you have in mind for the research?
- Plan & prepare in 13.0
- Conduct research 13.1 - May 18, 2020–Jun 17, 2020
Who will be leading the research?
Relevant links (opportunity canvas, discussion guide, notes, etc.)
Edited by Jeremy Watson (ex-GitLab)