How do you Decide What UI/UX Changes to Make

[Terry]

I'm interested in your overall high-level process for implementing sweeping UI/UX changes, such as these navigation updates.

e.g., Are you using A/B testing or other types of usability testing to make these decisions?

What types of users are involved in the testing: new users, expert users, novice users, users at all role levels?

I'm asking because in my experience as a long-time, advanced user, changes to the navigation introduce an unexpected learning curve. Sometimes these changes occur when I'm facing a deadline for a large team project.  Like today.

I shouldn't even be taking the time to make this post, but I thought it might be helpful and essential feedback for whoever is listening.

Thanks,

[Shelley Duncan]

I find being on a Cloud instance with rolling updates very disconcerting. There's no version control, and from the official Release notes, I'm reading the same thing every week but I don't know what has and hasn't been installed on our instance. I want to have control to release new features rather than SURPRISE!! especially when that surprise means a degradation of system and functions. 

I'm not looking forward to the new navigation, nor do I have time to test this at this time. 

[Terry]

I agree, Shelly. We have a cloud instance, as well.

I do appreciate the help pop-ups and the help page links. I also appreciated the banner placed at the top of every page. It alerted us to the new navigation and provided resource links to help us learn.

If I had a month of notice to get up to speed rather than the 2 or 3 days I had for this release, I would have been happier.

Even better, as a cloud instance user, I would have appreciated a preview of the new features and an invitation to provide feedback on them.  That's my Mecca, here

[Kate]

@Terry 

I'm also finding the current change/release process with Atlassian fairly challenging, so completely understand where you're coming from.

One of the things our organisation did to make it a bit less painful is utilising the Release tracks option (unfortunately only available to Premium or Enterprise Licensed sites). While it doesn't give you the ability to decline updates coming into your site, you can at least know what day updates will arrive (second Tuesday every month) and have a basic understanding of what it will entail. Even better if you have a Sandbox site receiving the newest changes a whole month in advance of your 'prod' site.

I've had to incorporate a monthly review of our 'bundled' releases the week prior so I can test out the changes and advise our users accordingly. It's annoying, but much better than having "surprise" updates 

[Terry]

@Kate Thanks for the info. Yes, we are on an Enterprise license. I'll check with our admin to see if we can take advantage of the monthly cadence. Still seems like there's a consensus that this update was a bit too much all at once.

[Barbara Szczesniak]

@Terry You posted this question in the New Navigation group. If you look at the main page of the group, there are several articles describing the process/reasoning/etc. related to the new navigation. There have also been articles and discussions in other groups, webinars about the new navigation, and updates to the Atlassian documentation.

[Terry]

Thank you @Barbara Szczesniak 

I wasn't aware of these "featured" posts. My problem is that I am busy enough not to have time to frequently visit these forums and read all the articles as they become available. 

I don't think I'm in the minority of long-time users (I could be wrong) who feel this way. I have numerous software dependencies, and I can only keep up with a limited number of updates and changes without jeopardizing my ability to do my work. 

I imagine there are people out there with more leisurely jobs who can spend a few hours a week reading forums and posts, as well as keeping up with changes to their software.

Unfortunately, I am not among them.

I DO appreciate the information, though.

So, thank you. 

[Kate]

Seconding @Terry comment, 

It probably is a failure of the change management process that admins and users have to actively seek out information about upcoming changes, rather than those changes being communicated directly. The forums are great, but there's a lot of posts and other information to wade through and not everyone can dedicate that time.

[Barbara Szczesniak]

I agree, @Terry and @Kate 

I seem to have become the person in my company that monitors the Atlassian Community daily digest and release notes. This started when I was trying to figure out how to wrangle Confluence to meet my needs for documenting our software.

After attending several ACE events, I also now get emails about a lot of events and webinars.

I pass on things that are relevant for others on my team, so they don't need to monitor all of this.

[James Rickards _SN_]

Also, how does Atlassian measure the level of their customer's "change fatigue", prior to approving changes from the many different product owners? 

In my experience, sometimes users experience death by a thousand cuts where each change is OK in its isolation, but when looked at from further away it is one of a constant barrage of changes that become draining and frustrating.

I have to spend up to 15 minutes each day checking emails from forums for gotchas like the removal of the default renderer with very little notice.