GitLab Settings UX, 19 Nov 2020

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From YouTube: Approaching Settings research for FY2021 Q4 OKR improvements

Description

https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/4513

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Hello, my name is michael lee of the editor group and today I'm talking about how we're planning to approach research for settings so settings at the moment in gitlab is accessible through the settings.

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Link for those who have permissions within their projects clicking on settings takes you to a page that looks something like this, where the settings are listed in the page, as well as having sub and navigation items to get to certain areas, quicker teams have started experimenting with the idea of introducing settings um in features, so these are links within the feature areas and clicking on these would open up a page of settings so that it's closer to where the users are when they're, interacting with the content to change the settings.

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What we're doing right now is taking a look at this holistically through the issue placement of feature settings, ux, research, 331 and that catherine's gonna explore where this is useful and whether we should do this holistically across the whole product and what we should do with the with the settings and nav on the left hand, side that's currently there, while that's happening.

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uh What I'm going to be doing is taking a look at solution, validation for inline search for settings, so this is taking a look at introducing a search element within settings so that people can find the settings that they're used to. So you might see this in such applications like visual studio code or your phone, that has a search functionality.

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So we're going to take a look at that, but as well as that, we're going to take a look at updating some of the ui elements within settings, so standardizing our patterns and then documenting them on pajamas to address current um interactions that we have like these expand collapse, things and how that plays along with search, because at the moment none of these things are searchable when it's all collapsed.

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So that's what we're going to take a look at from that level and all this information will also provide insight to global searching of settings. So that's using search for settings from the top bar itself.

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If we're right about having um settings within the feature, then what we'll start to look at is um contextual access to settings. So this is uxresearch1215, and the idea here is that, rather than opening up a separate page, we start introducing a concept of showing either the full page or a drawer to provide access to settings for that feature.

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This would allow users the ability to manipulate and change their settings while in context of the feature, rather than going to a completely different page.

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Now, if we're right about the need to having settings in feature and having a one settings area as previous shown with the inline search, then what contextual search could contextual settings should look like could look like?

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Is opening up the drawer and having a link to viewing all settings for more complex scenarios or advanced settings and opening that will take you to the centralized settings page potentially highlight and directly to the menu item that has all the necessary settings and having a way to link back to the original page that you are from the reason we're starting off with taking a look at placement of features.

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Settings in the inline search is that if we are confident with our solution, we could introduce a boring solution of contextual search by in standardizing search patterns from the get-go of having feature settings. Jump you to the specific item and having a link back. Each of these elements will provide enough interaction to provide a solution for contextual settings within features, as well as opening the doors towards search for settings as well.