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Redesigning GitLab's navigation

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Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#51

Post by samsolomon »

tnolet wrote: post #44
_pmf_ wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed; changing business software for change's sake is plain evil and will cost you customers. People still use the Bugzilla UI with 76 mandatory input fields and like it that way.

Salesforce is a great example. It is amazingly "old fashioned", tiny and uses non of the UX paradigms of the last 10 years. However, it gets work done really, really well. I'm disregarding the Lightning-UI versions for now.

I think Salesforce's advantage is its ecosystem and integrations.

However, I would not cite Salesforce as a reference for good UX. It is very labor intensive to get where you need. It takes a ton clicks to get places within the CRM—simple places like to find a contact profile. The Lightening UI makes the click areas for buttons and fields larger, but does not reduce the time or effort it takes to get places within the CRM.

My previous company, Trustfuel, built a business off of Salesforce being a pain for customer success managers to use. Note taking also sucks in Salesforce—Get Pattern's business is building a better note taking tool for AE's.

Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#53

Post by beejiu »

btown wrote: post #30

Is it really accepted best practice for UX testing to use a sample size of 12? That sounds remarkably low to draw product conclusions.

On the other hand, you do not need to run a scientific study to make every UX decision. There is a lot of "information" (in an abstract sense) in a person's intuition, experience and common sense. Using a small usability group to validate is quite sensible.

Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#54

Post by drdaeman »

Layout is nice, but the header color... uh... it's like a bike shed, but a header ;)

GitLab should consider adding an option somewhere, that lets users override a few primary theme colors to their liking. Not a full-fledged theme engine - that would be awesome but would take a lot of time to implement - just a few light CSS overrides that are persisted in the account settings, don't require browser extensions and more tolerant to the layout changes.

Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#55

Post by eknkc »

wolfgang42 wrote: post #29

My first thought on seeing this headline was "what, again?" Don't get me wrong, the new design looks great, but it feels like every six months they switch between having side navigation and putting everything on top. Every time they change there's a definite improvement, but you'd think they'd be able to come up with a design that works for at least a few years.

Same here, each time they change it completely, I need to learn using it efficiently back again.

GitHub does ui changes too but they seem to have a decent structure to work on, not changing stuff dramatically.

Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#56

Post by Bromskloss »

StanAngeloff wrote: post #41
wolfgang42 wrote: post #29

My first thought on seeing this headline was "what, again?" Don't get me wrong, the new design looks great, but it feels like every six months they switch between having side navigation and putting everything on top. Every time they change there's a definite improvement, but you'd think they'd be able to come up with a design that works for at least a few years.

My thoughts exactly. We've used GitLab since version 6 [1] and things have always felt like they are in a state of flux ([2] [3] [4]). For an open source project this is tolerable. I do wonder what enterprise users make of this constant UI change? Now that the navigation is back on the left, we'll probably see it collapsible in 9.5 and then morphed into a horizontal bar by version 10, rinse and repeat. [1]: https://a…

> For an open source project this is tolerable. I do wonder what enterprise users make of this constant UI change?

That's interesting to think about. What is the difference between the two types of users? Is it that the open source project is in no hurry and can accept a delay due to interface hassles? Is it that enterprise users are less capable and need a stable environment to function?

Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#58

Post by StanAngeloff »

bshimmin wrote: post #46
StanAngeloff wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. We've used GitLab since version 6 [1] and things have always felt like they are in a state of flux ([2] [3] [4]). For an open source project this is tolerable. I do wonder what enterprise users make of this constant UI change? Now that the navigation is back on the left, we'll probably see it collapsible in 9.5 and then morphed into a horizontal bar by version 10, rinse and repeat. [1]: https://a…

As someone who has never used GitLab, it is perhaps interesting to note that I would have literally no idea of the chronology of those images you've linked; if I had to guess, I would say the grey one (1) looks older than the purple one (4), but the other two look almost entirely unrelated.

The images 1…4 are in chronological order, the URLs contain the version if interested. However, should you look at them in any order or sequence, it goes to show how different the UI has looked throughout the life of the product.

Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#59

Post by StanAngeloff »

Bromskloss wrote: post #56
StanAngeloff wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. We've used GitLab since version 6 [1] and things have always felt like they are in a state of flux ([2] [3] [4]). For an open source project this is tolerable. I do wonder what enterprise users make of this constant UI change? Now that the navigation is back on the left, we'll probably see it collapsible in 9.5 and then morphed into a horizontal bar by version 10, rinse and repeat. [1]: https://a…

> For an open source project this is tolerable. I do wonder what enterprise users make of this constant UI change? That's interesting to think about. What is the difference between the two types of users? Is it that the open source project is in no hurry and can accept a delay due to interface hassles? Is it that enterprise users are less capable and need a stable environment to function?

From my exposure to enterprise users, they are usually the sort of environment where hundreds, if not thousands, of employees work. Can you imagine how one "angry" of UI changes person in a team of a dozen scales set against that? With open-source users, it's more decentralised IMHO.

Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#60

Post by mi100hael »

bau5 wrote: post #2

You can tell someone is copying someone else's work when they copy the bad stuff. The search box on GitHub and now GitLab wastes space with "This repository" spelled out. It's also odd that you get more space to type when you're not searching inside of a repo, and that backspace is how you switch to a more general search. Pity. I thought that GitLab had learned their lesson and stopped copying GitHub. Aside from that…

> backspace is how you switch to a more general search

I actually love this feature on GitHub and wish it was a universally-accepted UX pattern so I could do it places like Amazon to remove the pre-selected category in their search bar. The convenience of the backspace outweighs the space the label takes in the search bar IMO, though GitHub could have made it smaller by shortening it to something like "this repo"

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