svesselov

Thanks for the feedback @scrollaway. I appreciate that fact you recognize we have made a lot of improvements and that there is a challenge in scaling and keeping the user experience consistent.

"Stuff that is conceptually duplicated. And also there's yet another "Settings" sub-section."

I am curious to learn more about what you feel is duplicated in the sidebar? The 'settings'in the sidebar is specific to the project you are currently viewing. The 'settings' in your avatar drop-down is specific to you. Are there other duplications?

"The CI UI could use some reorganization as well. It still takes me several clicks to get to the current running build log from the project homepage."

We agree! We have an epic to prioritize UI/UX improvements for CI/CD. It is still being updated but you can view it here: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/295. I would love to hear any more specific area you think we should concentrate on.

Hi there!

Thanks so much for the feedback, the UX team here at GitLab is always looking for ways to improve the user experience. It looks like someone else in this thread mentioned that you can choose between a fluid and fixed layout depending upon your preference. Some prefer a fixed width and others hate wasted screen space. We try our best to accommodate everyone.

Given that, we agree that this can be improved. We have an issue here discussing page-width, https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/design.gitlab.com/issues/47. As you can see, in many cases we have decided that we should reduce the width in order to improve readability. I will add a link to your comment in the issue as further data on our user's preferences.

Also, we opened an issue with your suggestions for the project list page. Feel free to jump in and add any more thoughts you have there, feedback is always welcome. Here is a link: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/49504

Keep the suggestions coming!

I did this and am so glad I did. After being with GitLab (a remote only company) for 6 months, I took the leap and bought a 5-acre hobby farm in rural Florida.

Pros: Quiet! No traffic sounds or screaming neighbors. The owls get a little crazy but I'll take it. Beautiful dark skies at night with no light pollution. In general, things feel more peaceful and slow, even if I am dealing with work deadlines.

Cons: Satellite internet (ugh). I had to supplement with a hot spot which has proved to be a lifesaver. There is a lot more upkeep with 5-acres to mow. I also have 2 rescue horses on the property but I consider that a pro :)

We completely agree with you here. We want TODO to be meaningful and useful to everyone. The UX team is working through an exploration issue to address this, we would love to hear your thoughts on the issue: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/43474

Thank you for the feedback! Keep it coming as we improve the admin area :)

This isn't nitpicky at all @Karunamon, this is UX gold! I have created issues for some of your major points here, I would love to get further input from you as we work through them.

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/47400 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/47401 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/47402

We have a couple of issues open to address downloading individual files/artifacts.

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/24704 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/23705

I am going to add your feedback on both of those and see if we can get some attention in this area.

These may seem like small, insignificant problems but they can easily roll up into larger UX issue. Keep these insights coming!

Ouch, that's a rough comparison @hunter23. We hear you though, there is a lot packed into that Merge Request area. I would love to hear what you think about this updated design https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/37479#note_71....

"While their company has invested in design resources, it feels like every designer is focused on a specific feature. When you group those features into a page (like merge requests) you get this jumbled mess."

Thank you for the honest and direct feedback. We work together as a team and try to keep a holistic view even as we iterate on specific features. We know we can do better here and are actively working to make things consistent and understandable. We have opened several epics dedicated to this, you can see them here: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics?scope=all&utf8=...

Under your profile settings/preferences, you have the ability to set your layout to 'fluid' This will allow the application to take up 100% of the width of the screen. If you have more specific UX issues you think we should address, I'd love to hear them!

"I think these are mostly tiny UI things to change, and only with some typeography improvements, some borders and better contrasts, things will be a lot more clear." YES! Couldn't agree more. We (the UX Team) are pushing hard to get changes like this in. I opened up a new issue to capture the comments here https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/42331. I will add your insights to the issue, much appreciated! And...LOVE that you used that example in your 5min tweak <3

Thanks for the feedback. I've created this issue for the UX team to discuss ways we can make this better. We agree, there are a lot of opportunities for improvement here.

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/42331

Hey Dan, Sarrah from the UX team here. I'd love to hear more about your thoughts here. Is there an issue you've created that you can point me to? If not, that's ok. Maybe you can tell me two or three UX changes we could make that you feel would have the most impact on MR and Issues.

We have an issue for that here https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/2004, the UX team is pushing hard to get it scheduled asap. Give the issue a thumbs up!

"New iterations didn't follow a continuous plan-do-check loop; everything was handled more like do something, get feedback, figure out something that you feel addresses that feedback, and then consider it done."

We are never done. We will always be iterating and improving. Much of the feedback we received confirmed assumptions we already had but wanted to test, such as collapsing the navigation, improving breadcrumbs, etc. Other feedback was new and we were challenged to solve those. Everything that was added to this release will undergo a round of user testing and be subject to iteration.

It does not sound like a complaint at all @carussell, thanks for the feedback.

Thanks, Andrew, this is exactly what I was going to point to. We are making sure to base our UX changes on actual user feedback and research. I would also say that GitLab's UX has to evolve in pace with the product. As we add features to support 'idea to production', we need to make them easy to find and intuitive to use.

You can define the default theme for your instance in the GitLab configuration file config/gitlab.yml. Hope that makes it a little less bleghghgh for you!

Thanks, this is a fair point! I made an issue to explore ways to make this better: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/35244

We are glad to hear you like the new design and feel that each change has been an improvement. We value iteration here at GitLab, making the smallest change possible and getting it out as quickly as possible. This allows us to ship, gather feedback, and readjust quickly. You can learn more about our process here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration

There is an issue for that https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/18596. It has not been our priority as we have been working on the navigation but it is something we are keeping in mind for future focus :)

We are so glad to hear that!

" the top gobal navigation bar and sidebar navigation structure are very similar to Bitbucket's, but they take Github's "code first" approach to displaying repositories (the first thing you see when opening a repository in Gitlab or Github is the source tree; on Bitbucket the first thing you see is the readme and a summary of bug reports)."

Thanks for the feedback! Glad you spotted the differences between BitBucket's Design and our own. While we would love to design with a blank slate, we are not. Our users arrive with expectations and deeply implanted ideas of how things should look, feel, and behave. We have to temper exploration with practicality. The downside of that can be that the UI has a similar appearance to other platforms.

Thanks! We would love to hear your feedback as you use the new navigation. Our goal here is to get as much input from the community as possible to make improvements over the next few weeks. You can leave thoughts on the issue here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/34917

"The trick for gitlab will be in finding the UI differences that give the maximum improvement for the minimum change."

This is the holy grail of UI for sure. We are striving for this in all of the decisions we make on the UX team. This change required a lot more change than we would have liked but we are implementing it in a way that we hope will bring maximum effectiveness and longevity.

The third icon from the right is a quick link to "Merge Requests Assigned to Me" and it is the same as in the old version of the menu. The quick link in the hamburger menu was simply a duplicate place to find this action.

To see all "Merge Requests" in a project, you will find that option in the sidebar now, as that is contextual to the Project you are in.

Thanks for the heads up, we are investigating this now.

I appreciate the thoughtful and specific feedback. We are working hard to make merge requests and issues intuitive and easy to work with. Many of your observations regarding merge requests are being worked on as part of this issue: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/33095

"I'm not an UI/UX expert but a back-end developer."

This actually makes you the perfect candidate for giving us good feedback. You may not be able to articulate exactly why UI elements feel off or don't work for you, but you know they could be better. If you are interested, you can join our UX Research Panel to help us pinpoint areas we can improve. We want you to love GitLab too :)

https://about.gitlab.com/researchpanel/

Thank you for the specifics, it is helpful to know what UI elements we can improve on.

The submenu is going away. We have done extensive testing on our navigation and are making significant improvements. Take a look at the issue, I would love to know your thoughts:

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/32794

We have a few issues to address improving the pipelines interface, take a look or create issues with your suggestions on how we can make the UI better for you.

Clicking on the title brings you to the project page which shows the latest activity for that project. I can understand being frustrated as you most likely expected to land on a page with files and a readme. Clicking on the Repository tab will bring you to this view. Project owners have the option to make the repository view the default view. It looks as though this was not enabled on this project.

This is a valid point. We are doing all that we can to balance making substantial UI improvements while not making disruptive changes the flows.

Thank you for the feedback.

> There are couple of bugs open for months, even with existing merge request to fix

Are there specific bugs that you would really like to see fixed? Or specific flows you feel need love and attention sooner rather than later?