GitLab UX Team, 14 Apr 2023

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From YouTube: Tufts Capstone Project w/ GitLab: Week 8 (03/29) meeting

Description

As part of https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-design/-/issues/2178, this is week 8 of the Tufts / GitLab Capstone project. Gina Doyle, and Ben Leduc-Mills meet with the Tufts students: Calisa, Claudia, Emmeline, Melinda, and Alex, to review student questions and deliverables.

A

Okay, so just to say that again for the recording, um we were doing user testing feedback last night, a review of it, and we noticed a few things uh we saw in writing, but couldn't really find on this. The get lab site, specifically with test cases on the left side panel. It was like the fifth option underneath cicd and now it's not showing up.

B

My guess is, and so I don't. This is why I was asking for you to share their screen. Is I, wasn't sure if you were looking at a project or a group, if you're in a project, it exists in under CI CD, but if you're in a group it does not I see okay. That might be why.

B

A

Problem is what's happening.

A

um Yeah and for the replace function, it was similar that we, like just couldn't figure out where it was but um I'm I'm sure it's the file replace function, but could do you mind showing us like where that is yeah? The editor.

B

um Do you mind, can you give me access to share the screen? Yes, yes, please.

A

Okay, you should be able to.

B

Now, okay got it. Thank you I'm thinking. This is what it is. If you go into like if you're in a project, and then you go into the repository, you can see all of the files that are in that project and then, if you go into a specific file, I don't know if I need to be uh no I, don't I.

A

Think it's this. The reference.

B

Button and then you can upload and it it's almost the same thing as if you're um like locally a lot of people will use Visual Studio code, and this is similar in the way that it will, if you add the or, if you replace that file here, it will send the commit that you made up to an MR, and this will do the same thing. So you can create it on a different branch and then it will create an MR to replace the file.

A

And Mr stands for merge, request.

B

I'm, sorry yeah, so it would bring you here. Let me show you an example: just using I have a personal project. I can do okay, great.

B

I, don't know why that's going so slow, so I'm gonna, oh.

A

B

We go okay, so if I wanted to um I, don't want to replace this one. Let me just make it um okay, like if I wanted to replace this I'm, just gonna upload a random file.

B

I guess a PNG would work.

B

Okay, so if I upload it through Target Branch main, which is like the master Branch, so anything that you make changes to there will just it will go in directly because um it's like the main branch that is showing in production so because I just made that change to with the main branch it automatically showed up here now, I have to download it, which is annoying for whatever reason it doesn't preview.

B

But if I were to open this in, like the web IDE, which is similar to the Visual Studio code, it's just on the web. I can replace it here as well.

B

B

Okay, apparently, that's the text of the image.

A

B

Okay, so then, whatever um changes I'm using here, if I were to commit these I can commit them to a new branch and then whatever that's my change and then this will create an MR, which is the merge request thing that I was saying, and so now, when I, whatever that's the description when I create the merge request, you'll see I'm like asking the maintainer to its building so but I'm asking the maintainer of this project to. Let me update that existing file to something new with a merge request.

B

Does that help make a little bit more sense? There.

A

Yeah I think that makes sense. I feel like um we had a few comments about kind of going through that process on someone's files locally um and I. Think we did determine that. That was like outside of the scope that we were focusing on, but that helps to like put that in that category. Yeah.

B

I would definitely say it's outside of scope, that that seems more like creating code rather than the pipeline.

A

Stuff gotcha. That definitely helps, though thank you um yeah. So those are the two questions for that little area, um and then our professor wanted us to like just start conversations about um usability testing for, like the prototypes we're gonna make. We have not made any yet, um which is something I also wanted to mention like just our progress is we were working on some like initial ideation last night and kind of going through like our design requirements and really like focusing in on what we want to get done in the next few weeks.

A

um But we just wanted to make sure that we're on the same page for the timeline um of making sure we have dates and times that work for scheduling participants and recruiting um and like when, like that, would all need to be done. I guess.

B

Yeah um so I would say depend it would be great if you could give us your availability for that, because really, oh, all, we would have to do is set up a recruiting issue or Ben will do this with you again. I'm assuming well recruit participants which I would say if you were to prepare for how long that would take I'd, say maybe like one week at the most um and then I'm getting the sessions it again.

B

That depends on your availability, but if you run them, if you have like an entire week where you're free, for example, you could run them all in one week, so it really just depends on your availability. At that point,.

A

Okay, that sounds good, we'll try to keep you updated um on like what we have and when we would actually get to that point and I think I will like create a I. Think a calendly, you I think said in the past was the best to do that.

A

So maybe, since it's I think a lot more times, potentially in like more people, that might be easier to try to figure out so we'll discuss that separately and come back to you um yeah so and then for the next week on Saturday, we have like our initial prototype. Do it's like a document that we can share with you once we get it started? We're gonna have to like meet again this week and then on Tuesday we're going to be doing um like a little design review test with like participants from our class. Oh.

B

Okay, nice um yeah. Whenever you have deliverables for that like, if you want feedback, you can just send them over to me and I'll take a look or if you want to meet you know whatever I'm here.

A

Perfect, thank you um and Emma line. Do you wanted to discuss the document you were? We were working on a little bit.

C

Oh yeah, just about the deliverable I wanted to update you on the progress that we have so far. I think Melinda. You covered a lot of it, but um for designs right now, they're not really in a presentable stage. We kind of took it our own way and then we sketched out like what we would want to do.

C

But before that, what we, the main thing that we did was we summarized what we found from usability tests and then test and then Revisited the pain points that we had recorded before, given the discovery, research and some of them weren't issues that we thought were going to be big issues, but might have been just significant for us or something that other competitors did but gitlab didn't.

C

But then usability testing showed that, oh, it wasn't a problem whatsoever and then we added a few more points based on the usability testing and then made a prioritized list of pain points that we wanted to address.

C

um One thing, though, that we found out is that redoing, the entire UI I think we knew this before, but having what we needed to do in front of us really.

C

Let us know that redoing everything would have been really tough, so we're going to focus on individual pain points and addressing it, and the first thing that we're trying to tackle is finding the yaml template in a more effective way, because that was a hang up for some folks, even though they had experience um I'm trying to think of what the other ones were, the other one was um Let's see.

C

We had I think two more big ones that we wanted to address, Melinda or Alex, who might have it at the top of your head in ways that I didn't don't.

A

um The three were improving the system for importing and selecting a template file with really big, like the browse templates area, um the redundancy of like the jobs and pipelines tab we wanted to work on and those were the big top two and then. Finally, there was a lot of like interest in the visualize tab. People really liked that, and they wanted to see it more um in a functional way or maybe just like more centralized um for especially for users that were new.

A

They thought that it was like a really good way to understand how CI CD worked. Okay,.

B

Yeah, that's that's great and I think the fact that you listed all the pain points out and then prioritize them as big because, like you said it takes a while to redesign especially for gitlab, because there's so much stuff on the screen.

B

um I would still if it I mean, depending on what you want to do for your presentation, but I think all of the pain points that you found are still relevant to us. If you still want to give us like the full list, and just so, we we understand like learn what you learned and then, even if you don't have time to like design them all, that's fine.

B

um What was the other thing? One thing that I just want to give you a heads up on when you're designing the whole uh I think it's the left nav. So everything that's on, like the I'm going to share my screen to make sure I'm super clear here.

B

This whole navigation over here, where um our foundations team, which is the team that like works on the navigation they're, redesigning that right now so I would stay away from making any updates in that area. Because there's like so much change going on and we kind of want to limit the things that happen. If you have changes like you want to remove something from there, that would be cool to hear, but yeah I would not try to add anything into that navigation.

B

A

Do whatever yeah I think just the only thing was under the cicd, maybe removing the jobs, because people thought it was like confusing that they thought you should go through pipelines to get to the job, since it is kind of like a category within yeah um that, like seeing all of the jobs at once, wasn't like helpful to certain users um so like we'll. Definitely keep that in mind when okay, in that aspect, yeah sounds good. Oh and I was gonna, say something else to to what you just said. But I forgot sorry.

C

I think maybe we're thinking of the same thing, but we did separate to like the point pain points that we are going to be able to address, hopefully with our solution, and then we made a separate list at the bottom of things that users mentioned, but we won't be able to do so. We do still have them in the document, but we push them aside to be like okay get loud, do what you will with these? We.

B

Will yeah no that's great, and let me also send you um something that we do at gilab, which is very specific to our company. If we find a pain point, we rate it like a severity number and there's these different definitions that you could use. You don't have to do this again, but it would um I don't again not sure if all companies do this, but you would be able to like kind of learn about how bugs are rated at least for development. So we do this for ux and I'll just send you.

B

The link and I'll also share my screen right now.

B

Okay, so in this I sent you the link to this table. But when you look at this, you could just look at the user experience problem here and so for each one like there's severity, one two three and four, and each one gives a reason of like y- would be rated that so one would be that they can't figure it out the user's fully blocked and they can't move on through the task.

B

So maybe if these definitions like fit those different pain points, you're welcome to throw them in there, um it would be definitely more relevant for for us, rather than like your professor but yeah. It's up to you.

A

Yeah, that would be really awesome. um Can you send that link in the chat and I'll save it in our yes, um our files or in the gender yeah I put in that agenda too, but yeah perfect, oh gotcha! Thank you! So much yeah, um okay, great yeah. We definitely have a lot to do and and we're graduating pretty soon, which is exciting, but we like are really excited about getting the rest of this done and really moving on after spring break.

A

Obviously it's like we just had a big break and now we're getting back into it. So we're trying to stay focused and um do a lot of meeting this week to really get into it.

B

Nice yeah, so send me like whenever you want feedback, feel free to just send it to me through email or slack and I can take a look and help.

B

um One other thing that I had from our side is I shared a little bit about what you've all been doing in this project with the ux Department uh last week, and um a lot of people are really interested in it and they're. They want to hear, like your final presentation and everything so I checked with your professors, and they said as long as you all would be comfortable with attending a meeting with us. You, like you're, welcome to I, was wondering if you'd be interested in that.

A

Yeah I think that's an amazing opportunity. Thank you.

B

Yeah, okay, so I'm gonna just uh propose like some random dates. Would it be better for this to be after you present to your class rather than before,.

A

um Our final presentation is on May 7th um Maybe, look I think around that time would work. Does anyone have a preference.

C

I think around that time works for me too. I think that I like the idea of having it after so we have a practice run in class, but I will be out of town pretty shortly after that I think I leave on the 10th okay. So like the eighth and 9th work for me, but I don't know about the rest of the team.

B

I know you have finals that whole week too right pretty.

A

Much yeah I. This is like my only final, really other than like art classes, so I'm I'm like pretty good, um but we can like make a note to ask the other two girls, because obviously they're not here right now um and I was assuming I wanted to ask. Also I, don't know how long our presentation is for class, but I'm sure like we would have to shorten it for the team call.

A

So if you could, let us know like how much time um we can even do like a shortened version of it um right to the point um because, like obviously, we don't want to take up so much of your time and we can like provide all of the um like the full slide deck and whatever also so. People can look into it more if they want to. After.

B

Okay, yeah I'll get that information and then I'll look for like times that would match around 8th 9th Time range, maybe seventh two and we can just go from there: I'll post in Slack, okay, sweet yay. Thanks for doing that, we're.

C

B

C

I'm excited too that's awesome that they're interested in this yeah.

B

Cicd is like a it's a big topic here, so we're we're pumped that we get some help in that area, because we just haven't had time to like look at it in the way that you are doing it.

A

Yeah we're so happy to help.

A

um Okay, so I, don't think, there's anything else that we wanted to speak about right now. We do have a lot of work to get done behind the scenes, so um we'll definitely be updating you and I hope you have a nice vacation also going away um and then we'll speak next. Friday I'm sure we might send you a few like deliverables or updates before then, but.

B

Sounds great all right! Thank you.

A

Wonderful, thank you have.

B

C