23 comments

  • Robert Dietz, 5 years ago

    Yes, Scott, we have to admit that, as a design team, we missed the mark on this one. The reasons are many and varied. I’m sure people on this thread who have shipped products in the past can probably guess them :). The short story is that we optimized the collapsed sidebar as a way to help people quickly move around Jira. We're currently exploring ways to reduce the complexity you’ve addressed here. We have a couple of early solutions in the hopper, and will be rolling them out over the coming weeks and months. We very much appreciate the feedback and are working quickly to improve the new experience to help our customers get the most of Jira. Robert (Head of Design, Jira + Confluence for cloud)

    49 points
    • Florian GrauFlorian Grau, 5 years ago

      Great answer and I wish you guys all the best! :)

      Although I am not a big fan of JIRA I have to appreciate your work and the effort you are putting into the UI. I think that you are actually doing a pretty good job within the product's limitations.

      3 points
    • Scott ThomasScott Thomas, 5 years ago

      I'm oddly awestruck that I got a response.

      The reasons are many and varied. I’m sure people on this thread who have shipped products in the past can probably guess them :).

      Been there done that too many times. I know that feeling... I mean we are the experts...

      2 points
    • Ktrn DsrsKtrn Dsrs, 5 years ago

      It is quite nice! I <3 the fact the Head of Design, Jira gave an answer on this thread!

      2 points
    • Phil RauPhil Rau, 5 years ago

      Mad respect for admitting your mistakes and committing to improving them. This is the way companies should operate!

      0 points
    • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, 5 years ago

      Hey, would you be willing to go into more detail about the problems you faced, so others can maybe learn from them? For the record, I think the design gave it a good shot and does some things right, but for a platform as complex as Jira, it wasn't enough.

      0 points
  • Dexter W, 5 years ago

    Jira is usually clicking around randomly until you get to the page you wanted to. The only two icons I remember are the search and add an issue.

    28 points
  • Jonathan ShariatJonathan Shariat, 5 years ago

    Dear all products that try to use icons for everything. Stop. I know localization is hard but so is trying to remember what 3 squares mean.

    19 points
  • Ryan Hicks, 5 years ago

    I'm only counting 15. Scroll bar is induced because of your viewport size. On a desktop, it is not there.

    Their nav isn't the greatest, but I do think it's the best you can do with the complex system they have to do deal with. Luckily these have tooltips on hover so it's not that bad to figure out what is what. It's just at a glance they are pretty horrid; doesn't help that most of those icons make no sense at all.

    And overall I think the new Jira redesign is great. Much more unified vision and style across the entire suite and company.

    6 points
    • Andrew C, 5 years ago

      I agree. Simpler software would not do the job for eng teams of 2+ squads. That’s why simpler ticket trackers haven’t caught on. The redesign has been a welcome one — particularly backlog grooming and general sprint tracking is much easier.

      I wish more designers weren’t so dogmatic about complexity. There’s a lot of design knowledge in those hills.

      That being said the icon nav is probably the least useful of the new UI.

      1 point
  • Jim SilvermanJim Silverman, 5 years ago

    UI isn't the problem, the product is. tries to do to everything, but most users only use a tiny fraction.

    6 points
  • Steve Berry, 5 years ago

    Step 1: Don't use Jira. Step 2: Wipe hands on pants. Step 3: Enjoy being productive and happy.

    4 points
  • Derek Bodily, 5 years ago

    Jira has always been a nightmare. Unfortunately, looks like the nightmare is getting scarier.

    2 points
  • Jitesh Dugar, 5 years ago

    Jira has mostly been very complicated. It's a powerful suite with lot of features and as a result that the design is getting out of the hand. I like Codegiant.io as a better alternative to Jira

    2 points
  • Thomas Michael SemmlerThomas Michael Semmler, 5 years ago

    isn't it funny that when someone officially is answering they always answer in the same pattern?

    yes, #{name}, admit admit, no matter how hard you try, something always slips through the crack!

    jokes aside, I would really like to see the screen in its entirety to be able to judge weather the icons are actually functional or not. So far, all I see are icons in a column.

    1 point
    • Robert Dietz, 5 years ago

      Thomas, I know answers like this can come off as canned or insincere but these things keep me up at night. Like most designers, I do take pride in my and my team's work and when we miss the mark it's not something we take lightly. We can't hunker down and pretend like we nailed it. We know it's iterative and we can and will continue to improve. Jira is admittedly not the easiest problem space as it's highly customized by admins before many users even see the product. In many cases, we'll show up at a customer visit and see the product configured in a way we hadn't even anticipated. The good news is I have a role open on the Jira team in Sydney for anyone who'd like to join the effort to improve it.

      2 points
      • Thomas Michael SemmlerThomas Michael Semmler, 5 years ago

        Thomas, I know answers like this can come off as canned or insincere but these things keep me up at night.

        Robert, they don't come off as canned. They just come off as if all of you attended the same rhetorics course. Because Robert, it is a pattern and I just wanted to point this pattern out.

        It is not natural in a conversation to use the name of a person. So you can deliberately trigger cues in the person by doing that. It will heighten their attention. Its also a very common tool used in NLP. And you can also see that pattern by observing conversations on DN threads.

        When people comment in convincing mode, they place the name in a way that will trigger a cue and heighten their readers attention. When people don't do that, they engage in regular conversation and answer normally, with context in mind. Because of course, they person knows their name and knows that you are answering to them and placing the name is not needed for the conversation.

        So, Robert, sorry if I offended you - I just pointed out an Observation, Robert.

        0 points
  • Scott Liang, 5 years ago

    They should at least chunk those items / apply some sort of hierarchy.

    1 point
  • Tiago FrancoTiago Franco, 5 years ago

    They have been moving their portfolio products in an interesting direction. Improving speed and usability. But it's taking a lot of time to take it to a really nice place... We're still on Redmine because of that, although we use Bitbucket for code repo.

    0 points
  • Phil RauPhil Rau, 5 years ago

    Where can I find a more full screenshot or demo? I use Jira but its a pretty heavily customized version my company has modified. I doubt its the most recent version.

    0 points