GitLab UX Scorecard, 13 Sep 2021

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From YouTube: UX Scorecard - Global Search

Description

Issue: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-design/-/issues/1679
Slide: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1e-Swfn97pY1LkvK9FvJPzCdj0U8j3KjKWWqt8pXvnN0/edit?usp=sharing

UX heuristics: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/heuristics/#scoring

A

Hi, I'm sanjong, I'm a senior pro product designer on the animalman team and today I I'd like to walk you through the result and summary of the ux scorecard on the global search area.

A

The goal for this exercise is to evaluate the experience using a certain set of heuristics and also to figure out opportunities to improve usability.

A

I performed this evaluation in partnership with nick brandt on the global search team, and we have followed some process like this, so, firstly, you need to find the jobs to be done and also the target personas and also the user scenario, and secondly, as a ux36 body, I reviewed experience and about the whole journey and third, I evaluated the experience by using our heuristic and also the creating group.

A

So um I performed the evaluation in partnership with the friends on the global search team and we followed some process like this. Firstly, nick defined the jobs to be done and the target personas and secondly, as a ux heuristic body, I reviewed the experience and also met about the whole journey.

A

And thirdly, I evaluated the experience by using our heuristics and also the creating referee, so I'll just dive into the details.

A

So this is the main main jobs to be done that we are focusing on. So when I need to work on a specific item, I want to be able to locate it so that I can get my work completed.

A

And the main target personas was parker, who is a product manager and parker, is fairly new to gitlab and haven't used the top global search bar before, but they manage multiple teams and projects and they need to jump across different issues or in mars and make some modification inside the issue.

A

Details, for example, and parker tend to remember the issue title or who created those things, but rarely remember its id, meaning the url at the end of the issue, slash and numbers or mr slash those numbers and other target personas that we consider was development, team lead and the product designer, and also the software developer.

A

And this is the very, very high level view of the user journey map. um There was roughly two big user flows, so the first thing was to locate the issue that parker recently worked on, but they just remember to modify some details inside the issue, so they need to locate the exact issue and the second user flow was to find an mr that parker's colleague, recently merged and parker only remembers who created those merger, crafts and also a keyword, but not the details of them are so.

A

This is the um journey map and also the emotion changes during this journey, and you can check the detail here in this slide. If you hit the mural board link here,.

A

And I would like to just walk you through the very.

A

And I would like to walk you through the summary of this journey as a highlight, so while parker needs to find their their issues that recently they worked on only keyword that parker remembered was display and elasticsearch, and just after typing in this there was this menu under this drop down like recent issues like display and elasticsearch, and this was what they needed. So it was great. It was a great shortcut that they don't need to go through this in project gitlab.com and go through the details inside the search result. So that was really handy.

A

And other things that parker might love is this, so I saw that we offer several diff different filtering options in the left rail side um when parker is reviewing the issue tab. There are two different filtering options and in the merge request tab there is like one when filtering option of status and also on the right top of the area. Parker could also sort by most relevant and also created date and also last updated, so that they could locate the exact issue or the mr that's probably top of the list or on the.

A

A

And yeah filtering and sorting options could be also the part that parker would love. um I noticed that we offer different filtering options um per different data like under the issue tab. There were two different filters like status and confidentiality and in the merge request tab. There was a status filter on the left side and the sorting option on the right top, which we offer like relevancy and creation date, and also like last updated.

A

This would be really useful for parker to make the exact issue or exact mr they're. Looking for on the top of the list.

A

But on the other hand, I could see some opportunity so, for example, when parker was looking for an mr that his colleague, their colleague created so parker mentioned like scorecard and just by pressing, enter it just somehow went into this page and the merge request. That was pre-selected.

A

I mean in this case it was good, because parker was looking for a merge request, so that was good, but it was not easy for them to understand like why the merge request tab was pre-selected and why the group and project was pre-selected like this.

A

As we mentioned in the persona's description, parker is pretty new to gitlab and haven't used the top search part bar before.

A

And probably for parker, it would be not easy to understand why this tab or why sometimes issue tab is pre-selected, or even it's hard to notice like why this group and project is pre-selected, as we already defined in the details. Personas parker has different group and project to manage, so probably it's important for them to notice like okay. I want to specify this search result into this certain group or certain project, but for the first time user.

A

It might not be easy to understand how this logic works, and we have very, very small feedback on this like why we're showing this result in this ui.

A

And also um while I went through the documentation of the global search, I noticed that we even have a shortcut to moving cursor to top of the global search bar. That was really cool, but I I didn't notice at all like until I go through the documentation.

A

So probably we could also make this more visible on the ui, like hey, like we have this shorter shortcut. So if you press this key, then it'll just make your cursor go up to the top. I think that'll be really handy, and while I went through this process, I just have some ideas popped up in my mind like maybe it could be better.

A

Of course, I'm pretty sure that the team already considered this option but like having more filtering option per different data type and also having more variety and offering more option in the keyword search. Like I don't know, maybe supporting some logical expression like and and or something like that, and also probably it could be good for users to provide a way to search for special characters could be useful for the code search and also maybe we could um have some empty results.

A

Page with some illustration and some search position that, like hey like actually were you looking for this if they make some typo or something like that, we could just make some suggestion based on their their keywords.

A

So this was just ideas popped up in my mind and as I say earlier, I used the ux heuristics while evaluating this experience and in conclusion the the experience in general was good.

A

The test completion was super successful, but there were some errors in between, like, for example, I made a mistake because I couldn't find a way to um find like okay. I know who created this, mr, but I don't know how to search for that. So I mistakenly just typed like the keyword with the person's name, but the result didn't show up, so that was some unnecessary staffs, but everything went successful in the end and in terms of certain heuristic, the user, control and freedom was great.

A

The contextual filters on the left rail help users a lot and also minimal set of requires. It's.

A

Time to only and.

A

So in terms of heuristic, the user control and freedom was great. The contextual filters on the left rails helped user a lot. And, oh sorry, I I made a mistake here: it's not the minimal setup required. um It is really efficient that we already offered some shortcuts, something like recent issues or merge requests that was great, and that was really handy tool for user to just quickly locate the exact issue or merge requests that they need to find and also the workflow have very, very clear calls to action.

A

So it was. It was great, but some opportunity would be some visibility of some status like why users are seeing this result pre-selected.

A

Something like why issue tab is pre-selected in a certain context or why merge request tab is pre-selected or why they are seeing this result within this project or within this group, and also would be better to have some some small guidance on the ui or just general boarding flow for the new user that they could also get used to this global search.

A

And I think it would be really useful, especially someone on gitlab, like if they're not used to this type of tool.

A

And some opportunities that I could see is like the visibility of system status, meaning like if we could just better explaining why you're seeing the results, something like pre-selected, like issue is pre-selected or merge, request is pre-selected or why this results is just finding within a certain scope of project or or group, and also the learnability and support for new user could be better like if we have some guidance on the ui or some some small and very quick onboardings for for the new user. It would be very useful.

A

So, thank you very much for your time. If you're listening to this and I'm really happy to discuss, if you have any further questions or comments, please slap me or just send me an email if you have better idea and yeah. Thank you for your time. I hope you have a great rest of your day.