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From YouTube: Alexis - Explore design concepts to restructure merge requests

Description

Alexis Ginsberg, Product Designer on Plan, reviews a few ideas on how we could restructure merge requests.

Issue: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/355574

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Alexis here and look at some rough ideas around mr design, based on our selected hypotheses, so the first idea is basically just reconfiguring our the mr navigation based on the job to be done, or you know what the user is trying to do while they're. Looking at this. Mr so, for example, maybe there's an overview changes in a review area, and you know the mr is kind of sectioned in this way.

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So, for example, maybe, when they're in overview section they're wanting to do kind of these things like just get a general overview of the mr what's happening, what's happened since I last looked at it, learn about you know the purpose of the mr kind of just a tldr on it. You know I just want to quickly give someone a status report or you know. I don't really want to know about the details too in depth. I just want to know what this is about.

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Maybe there's the changes tab for those who want to go in and understand. You know what are what's. What are the commits um more about like who is doing what? uh What are the status of the pipelines, things like that and then um maybe a section on review, so I want to actually review this. Mr give me everything I need to do that review. Tell me what maybe I've missed or who's pinged me who needs what is there some kind of task list that I need to complete?

A

Who am I blocking stuff like that? All in that area, the next idea could be sort of repurposing what we have now for our um mr review request and just kind of our mr review area and kind of combining it- I guess, with almost a to-do area, so just putting more context here. So instead of just saying you know, here's mr that needs to be reviewed, give some more details in this area more context, kind of surface. Some of that information, maybe tell me more about why someone needs this review.

A

uh Give me a kind of a timeline or activity view in this to kind of better understand, what's been happening or what I missed. uh What is actionable to me? Maybe even surfacing some kind of um data around this. Maybe, like you know health of this. Mr almost or some kind of um just like almost like the vsm or analytics around it, the third idea here would be something I think that was brought up a few times just kind of having a reviewer workspace for the person.

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Reviewing the mr and surfacing some of the information here, I'm once again like a task list, so you know john asked for the review at this time and here's a few other things.

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I need to do and checking them off as you go, so you kind of understand um what you've done and what you need to do, and you can also you know, mark things as done so that would let let's say john know that I completed something idea for this is something also that I think was brought up a few times so putting the comments in maybe a drawer, something like this.

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That can be opened at any time and it can be viewable uh while the user is viewing other information in the mr, so they can get contacts on maybe requests or just you know, background information users talking about details within mr without scrolling up and down. They could just be maybe side by side and then also you know they could navigate around the mr and have the the conversation. Stick the thread stick and then they could also maybe leave a comment at any time.

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um Well, while they're viewing them or scrolling around, maybe navigating to different sections, but they have this always viewable to them. They can comment at any time without losing context.

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Idea, five, um maybe less relevant, really a lot even more feature scope, but allowing the user to configure the mr in a way that makes sense to them how they and their team use. Mrs, maybe there's certain attributes that they don't use, and they don't want to include that in kind of the mr template.

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Ids 6, this kind of goes back to a prior idea that I talked about, but basically allowing users to set reminders or notifications that will show up in the mr, and this would be user specific or, like you know, the user's instance- and um this could perhaps also show up in that kind of to-do or, like mr review to-do area that I talked about idea. Seven. This is related to the last thing I talked about as well.

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um Basically, any item in the mr could be set as a task for either you know the person viewing or someone else. So maybe I see something in a um mr.

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Maybe it's like a checklist item, for example, and I can just highlight it or you know even a comment- and just say you know set this as a mr review task for so and so and it pops up either in the mr or in that mr review to-do area or wherever would be appropriate, maybe like a drawer, that's again kind of what I talked about before, like the reviewer tasks, something like that, but having a attention request, I guess for for the person reviewing or the reviewer. Maybe they can even set these for themselves idea.

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Eight would be giving the user kind of a dashboard to understand their reviews like what they're up to review-wise some analytics around that uh you know what they need to do. um What tasks are remaining for them, who's, ping them like everything again kind of like a to do section but consolidated it could even be you know instead of having just merge requests like have you know a merge request area. That's like the list. I guess for lack of a better word and then also like my dashboard, something like that either here or again.

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Maybe it's within the top level navigation, but this would allow the user to just kind of like understand everything they need to do um understand kind of how they're trending over time right like get better understanding of like how they review how they can improve.

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uh Maybe you know how they're devoting their capacity stuff like that, like everything here, we could research what would be important to view over time or if it's important to view over time idea number nine would be surfacing.

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I guess what we would call our widgets to the top of our mr view, so and kind of um making them more of, like a report view so having related merge requests, for example, laptop or reset comments at top and like calling them out um and putting a count and then maybe the user could click on this and see the recent comments or uh configure this in some way and that just kind of it's another way to navigate through the mr, instead of scrolling around to find these these items, perhaps they would also be within the view, or they would just be consolidated here or maybe the user could, you know, say, uh expand and it opens in a different view.

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For example, um you know recent changes, maybe that opens in a drawer, um maybe emerge status. um For example, you see it's blocked, there's three issues and you can jump to one of those, the issues that are going on, but that's a different view, so maybe not necessarily like they're scrolling. You know this is way to scroll down and view it. It's just uh opening it in another context. Without making the user navigate around idea. 10 is just um kind of a navigation tweak.

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So, instead of having the changes, I believe and the commits kind of consult consolidating that into one view so like a compare mode in a view mode um when you're, comparing that's kind of like our current changes, view where you can compare to, for example, like maine and the latest version, you see all that information or you're, just viewing um the commits, and instead of having to go to a commit tab, you're just viewing them here so kind of like you're, viewing one thing or you're reviewing two and um comparing them and then, instead of having the sort of settings or preferences like you know, do I want to view this in the tree mode, um though, and if you inline et cetera, you just have a settings area, perhaps like a drawer, and you can go in and just kind of configure your preferences here instead of having you know those kind of actions all over the page just to consolidate and um leave a little bit more room to focus on what they're trying to do here.

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10. It's a really simple one that I think came up. A few times, but allowing users to search comments or threads or activities, so you know, maybe I just want to see everything I've written so I'd say author is alexis and you know maybe we could have a better filtering experience here as we improve this, but allowing the user to you know not just sort but also kind of filter. All the comments- and you know maybe it's something that's like actionable to yourself, so you can better understand again. What's actionable to you.