Help us design the next iteration of the "Unsaved changes" button

[Jonny Lu]

Hi Atlassian community,

I'm a software engineer on the Jira Plans team, and I'm seeking some feedback from the community regarding the design of our "Unsaved changes" button that let's you review your changes before saving to Jira.

What we want to know from our community is how important is this changes count to you? Do you always notice when there are unsaved changes? Is there a different way you would prefer for the button to communicate there is unsaved changes, e.g. through changing its appearance?

Thank you,

Jonny Lu | Senior Software Engineer | Jira Plans

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @Jonny Lu,

IMHO there is one extremely important moment to get to know about the existence of the button and its function, this being when you start using plans and may not be aware that your changes are not synced to Jira in real time.

Once you know about the principle and that you need to sync your changes through (and you have done it), I am quite confident that users will quite naturally find it and use it for what it is designed for.

Having said that, I would suggest to stick to the position it is currently in and not make too (many) drastic changes (like giving it another title etc) every now and then, since that is causing confusion to the people that are using it right now, know where it is and what it does.

On the number of changes displayed on the button itself: I do not really use that since I have the habit of committing my changes to Jira every time after I complete work in a plan (either discarding them or pushing them through). But I can relate to the idea that it would create a higher sense of urgency if it was saying e.g. 769 instead of 17).

Maybe one last thing on the button I don't really have a strong opinion on, but find worth mentioning: with the overall unified UI I do feel that the dark blue buttons across the product don't stand out really that well. Not because they are not contrasting enough against the white background, but because they all look the same, even when they are related to totally different functions. (to name a poor redesign example: we recently had a user confused in the new assets app because he did not find the option to create a new asset anymore - the reason being that the button was named create and sitting in almost the exact same place as where the create (work item) button is normally sitting). So if you are planning to make changes, please look at them holistically and also in relation to other design elements.

And even a more, ultimately last thing: the orange rectangle does not contrast too well with the dark blue. A more contrasting option in the color scheme may be better there indeed.

To wrap up a question for you: what is the trigger to investigate how to improve/change the button? And what direction are you thinking about taking it?

Hope this helps! 

[Jonny Lu]

Hi @Walter Buggenhout ,

Thank you so much for the very detailed feedback! It's super helpful!

We don't currently have plans to move it or rename it. We want it to continue being prominent, easy to find and easy to understand. 

We're looking to run a few smaller experiments to see if we can make it easier to understand if there are changes to save or not and make the switch between the two states more noticeable. Very good point you had there about the contrast ratio!

We're uncertain what the role the changes count plays in all this because the number has been there for years and we have no data or feedback to tell us either way. Hence the community post :) 

This was triggered by the data and feedback tickets we have been receiving.

[jengoree]

I agree with not changing the position of the button or at the very least maintaining the prominence of this information. I like to see the count of changes on the button because it gives me an idea of whether I have touched more issues than I intended to. Newcomers to Jira Plans have to get used to the idea that there's an explicit 'save to Jira' step, so we definitely need it to be evident to them when there are unsaved changes.

[Jonny Lu]

Thanks for the feedback @jengoree !

[Prakash Rao]

Not sure if you are looking on feedback on just the button - my feedback goes a bit beyond.

When folks click on the button, one or two of these options would be very useful:

1) Ability to easily select/unselect just my changes, and 

2) Ability to set the above selection as my default (i.e. if I want to always see only my changes selected).

Yes, I know the drawback is that I might sometimes miss others' changes that might impact mine. But that's rare for me.

[Jonny Lu]

Hi @Prakash Rao ,

I believe that is already the default behaviour. "My changes" is selected by default unless you have changes selected on the timeline, then the "Selected on timeline" option would be the default.