What is the New Navigation Being Created?

[#1]

There have been a lot of cosmetic changes across the Jira family of products lately. And I don't really see where this need or ask is coming from. Maybe it's a response from the Monday.com and Asana crowd that Jira's interface is outdated. 

But I think that overall, the people who use Jira are happy with the interface. What they are NOT happy with is that it keeps changing sporadically and without much warning. I realize that is what you are trying to do with giving us a sneak peak right now. But why put all of this effort into this instead of just fixing the myriad of functional requests that are in the JAC? 

One of the most frustrating things you can do to Jira users is constantly monkey with the interface. For awhile there are top navigation menus. Then all of sudden there are side navigation options. Then a combination. Then JWM comes out with a product specific top nave menu structure which is different from all of the other tools. 

And now a different navigation/menu structure is being worked on. Surely, you saw the uproar when the product navigation was changed recently. And the feedback was so bad, there were parts that had to be put back in place. 

Simply put, you can't keep doing this to your user base. If you roll this out, there amount of screaming will be at an all time high. The attitude in the past seems to have been, let them scream for a while and eventually they will get over it. And all of the new customers will see only the new one anyway, so it all works out. 

Please, please, please don't let this be the case this time. Please, please, please, put a hold on all cosmetic changes until there all of the highest JAC requests are fixed first. 

[Ben van den Berg]

Hi John,

I respect your input, and your opinion, and also that of every other Jira instance community.

It is essential to acknowledge that technology is a field that involves different perspectives and opinions, and it is constantly evolving. Although Jira was initially designed for agile project management, it has evolved to be used by various industries and for other purposes. For instance, our company uses Jira Software, Jira Service Management, Jira Work Management, and Confluence to craft and implement Business Operations (BizOps) Solutions that are not related to project management. Hence, the project management-focused navigation options that work for your users do not suit our communities.

We are grateful and excited about having the flexibility to customise the Jira navigation to make provisions for our audience's needs, which are very different from yours. I believe this flexibility will also allow you to control your navigation options in future. Atlassian is working towards providing every Jira cloud instance with this flexibility, which will benefit every community, including yours, as it enables you to decide whether and when to make changes to your user community's navigation without being affected by static and constantly changing navigation.

While navigation improvements may not seem a priority from your perspective, it is essential to consider that different communities use the Jira platform with different needs and wants. We and our user communities desire and support the navigation changes, and we believe they are a win-win solution for everyone involved. 

[arajah]

Hi @John Funk 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts around the new navigation. We recognise that frequent navigation changes can create learning and usability challenges for some users. The last time we worked on improving the navigation was 5-6 years ago . Since then, Jira has grown (Jira Product Discovery and Jira Work Management are now a part of our product portfolio) and has some scaling issues that need addressing via the navigation. Our goals with the nav refresh are to:

• Provide a cleaner top navigation experience with most used utilities and Search\Create to improve the findability of these commonly used menu items.

• Allow users to customise the side navigation for simplicity and context. This is a highly desired feature based on our research so far and an industry wide commonly enabled feature for navigation.

• Solve for some findability and scalability issues, identified via user testing and research.

• Facilitate seamless switching between products - Users can switch between Jira Software, Jira Work Management (Business Projects), Jira Service Management and Jira Product Discovery projects using a single click.

• A persistent hierarchical sidebar is available to assist users in maintaining context and navigating through the product hierarchy.

• Ensure consistent look and feel across Jira Software and Business Project items.

Ultimately, our aim is a consistent look and feel across all Atlassian products, addressing usability issues, promoting co-usage, enabling customisation while announcing and managing the rollout of the nav changes upfront.

We'd like to discuss this further with you and get more feedback , if you are available. Can i book some time in?

Thanks again!

[John Funk]

Hi @arajah  - This is extremely helpful! But we rarely get these explanations when something new is rolled out. Please include these kinds of details when this hits the streets. My only concern is that these solutions have not been long term - at least from where they appear - top or side. This needs to be the "final" solution for many, many years to come. The frustration is not so much with what is in the menu options but that it keeps moving around. 

Second would be the ability to hide or show menu options across the board for all users as controlled by Jira Admins. Items get added that are not relevant to certain organizations and the menu options get cluttered with more important items to an org getting hidden in a More option while lesser ones get displayed. It appears this is getting included in the change. If not, it should not be released until that is available. Of course, all of this is just my opinion. 

And a consistent look and feel across all products is mandatory. One product should never implement a different style/process/location for menu options that other products. Again, my opinion. 

[Haddon Fisher]

Hey all, tossing in my 2 cents.

arajah, it may be true that the last UI change Atlassian considers "major" was 5-6 years ago but users see changes to the UI on a near-continuous basis. I would agree with @John Funk wholeheartedly that change fatigue is a real problem, particularly for admins. I'd also agree with him that most people do not generallyhave an issue with the UI (even in the face of "a growing portfolio") and that the continual focus on chasing this UI dragon instead of addressing basic UX and functionality needs is wearing down customer patience from both ends. To address some thing specifically...

• Provide a cleaner top navigation experience with most used utilities and Search\Create to improve the findability of these commonly used menu items. - The findability in the left-rail is significantly worse; long lists of variably contexted objects on top of each-other is not easier to use. It only looks cleaner when you hide the rail, which negates the entire point.
  
  

• Allow users to customise the side navigation for simplicity and context. This is a highly desired feature based on our research so far and an industry wide commonly enabled feature for navigation. - Some amount of customization would definitely be nice, but it doesn't seem necessary to throw the baby out with the bathwater to achieve that. 
  
  

• Solve for some findability and scalability issues, identified via user testing and research. - I would agree that having a horizontal bar isn't very scalable, but as I mentioned above a super-long vertical list doesn't seem much better.
  
  

• Facilitate seamless switching between products - Users can switch between Jira Software, Jira Work Management (Business Projects), Jira Service Management and Jira Product Discovery projects using a single click. - I honestly don't understand this one...as much as Atlassian protests to the contrary, Jira is already one product, which you can "seamlessly switch" between by changing the project you're working in.
  
  

• A persistent hierarchical sidebar is available to assist users in maintaining context and navigating through the product hierarchy. - This is another one I am not sure I get, because this is only a problem in the new interface. The old pattern kept navigation for different contexts separate: the project context was in the left rail* and the global context was in the top nav....pretty consistent and contextual. Now, it's all jammed in the left rail without either.
  

• Ensure consistent look and feel across Jira Software and Business Project items. - This is the exception to the "left rail" above I *'d, but again...don't get this as a rationale for the redesign. No one asked for the JWM project settings to move into the horizontal bar; indeed, I know you got negative feedback about it before it launched, and you definitely got negative feedback after. The fix I think we'd want would be to....just undo that.

Ben van den Berg, you're absolutely right that there's all sorts of people using Jira to do all sorts of things, and that there is never going to be a change that makes everyone happy. Thinking about the non-dev teams I've rolled Jira out to (HR, library sciences, workforce ops, inventory management to name a few), I am not sure I agree with you that they benefit here. This group in my experience tends to handle visual changes more poorly than more technical teams, so right off the bat this change has them digging out of a hole, but (and I recognize this is only my option) I don't see anything they gain even once they're out. Being able to hide global elements seems like it's going to create as much confusion as anything else, and "unlocking" the ability to cram more stuff in there down the road doesn't seem like a win to me. Finally, I am curious about:

as it enables you to decide whether and when to make changes to your user community's navigation without being affected by static and constantly changing navigation.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be able to batch and control the UI changes we get but I haven't seen anything to indicate this, and it's very off-brand for Atlassian.