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Jira 2025 Changes - How User Experience has degraded ? Is Atlassian ignoring User feedback ?

Shanmuga Narayanan Pitchaipillai

Below is a Summary of chatter between power users and communities as summarized with help of AI and additionally added comments from self.

Drastic UI/UX Changes: The new navigation interface (rolled out throughout 2025) has been heavily criticized for being chaotic, reducing efficiency, and forcing more clicks to perform daily tasks. Users have reported that key functions are buried, and the new sidebar is cramped, prompting complaints that it is a "colossal failure on every level" for experienced users.
Forced Migration and "Space" Terminology: Atlassian is forcing users onto the Cloud, and in late 2025, began rebranding "Jira Projects" to "Jira Spaces," a structural change that has created confusion and resistance among teams accustomed to traditional project terminology.
Reduced Admin Control and Visibility: Changes in July 2025 removed the "trusted user role" and altered how administrators manage permissions, creating hurdles for complex, heavily tailored instances.

The Rethink among customers about the usage of the product itself - Large corporations and company users are most affected:
Overall with Less efficient user interface has driven users to look for alternatives for the first time in years, particularly after reports that Atlassian ignored feedback regarding the UI redesign. While some argue the new UI is better for new users, the consensus among power users and admins is that it is a regression in functionality - Can this be rectified by Atlassian for better Enterprise grade users ?

Please like , subscribe and promote, and comment for Jira - Product designers and UX designers and relevant management to get this feedback and address this deterioration of User Experience and usability - Otherwise Jira may become "it was once great back in time" tool gone unusable over time.

Comments

John Funk

Hi Shanmuga - While some of your points are valid, The move of the Status field was the point most people complained about with the UI changes, and they was rolled back several weeks ago.

Shanmuga Narayanan Pitchaipillai

Thanks much for the acknowledgement and comment @John Funk , the status field was a change that we could live with,

the confusion that is getting created between what is a Jira Software Space vs what is a Confluence Space vs what is a Jira Projects which is being used for goals i believe is overwhelming for many of the non technical users - i have tried to champion the use of Jira within my company , but with this dizzying pace of user experience changes and terminology changes is causing distrust of the platform itself for many of my endusers.

If jira wanted to create a grouping of different projects and products like confluence a team or workspace user may want to align together they could have created a additional layer of "Spaces" at parent level grouping for Jira Software projects and Confluence spaces and any other atlassian products in use at that "Spaces" - Workspace level , which would have atleast made sense for me to convey to the end users how to read this.

The abrupt forced change of Jira Software "Projects" - "Spaces" is so very confusing and has been causing enormous distrust among users creating pain for anyone who is looking to promote Jira usage in large corporations

Suzie Ahlers

Hi @Shanmuga Narayanan Pitchaipillai

I want to make sure you've seen and signed up for the research study about the UI experience. It's an online survey and will go directly to the team responsible for design. I think it would be great for your thoughts on this to be documented and shared directly with that team, versus just on the Community.

Thank you for your feedback and consideration!

Matthew Chapman_q99b9o

Hi Shanmuga, I have to say the navigation interface is a complete disaster for frequent screen changes, and a massive step backwards for heavy users, takes up more real estate and disrupts the flow of your work.

I have no idea as to how this was considered a benefit to users over and above many older outstanding feature requests in cloud.

I ended up ignoring the new menu and setting up a collection of most frequently used screens in my browser which I can open and flick between as I need. I use the menu as a last resort only.

Thank for raising,

Shanmuga Narayanan Pitchaipillai

@Suzie Ahlers , thanks much for the acknowledgement and guidance, will provide the same feedback in the research study area as suggested above. So far as a power user and who wanted to recommend atlassian products within our organization for better agile management , the dizzying pace of structure changes and so narrowed interpretation has essentially at this point broken the trust of stability and reliability of the platform for long term continuity of teams to manage their workloads using atlassian jira products.

Chris

Well, it's not only UI changing, but usually, Atlassian provides new feature that only cover 80% of a use case. (introduction of Teams and not being able to use them in JQL or the email log - just to mention two of them)

The longer I have to work with Atlassian cloud products, the more I am against cloud solutions in general. I hate to be alpha tester - and having to pay for it.

Shanmuga Narayanan Pitchaipillai

100% agreed , broken things are everywhere at this point .

I dont see the point of Advanced Roadmaps changing to Plans , - unusable , requires so much query creation to even get basic useful view it goes against the usability of the product

Teams , yes, i dont see the point of it, when its extension is limited to old goals alone and now misplaced Team projects - its an orphan hanging there not knowing what its purpose any more now.

the marketplace apps management - the whole navigation is so much confusing and counter intuitive that it needs a matrix to know where is what

its frustrating , at a corporate level, we want to focus on developing products that add value to our business interests, if i have to ask my users to learn a new navigation and terminology every quarter or every month for a work item tracking tool.. its a colossal waste of time and i as a admin who would recommend this tool would be ridiculed max.

s_gridnevskii

I worked actively with Data Center and after migration to Cloud I noticed that atlassian-hosted Jira works almost 50% slower than self hosted solution on a cheap AWS server. In addition we have downtimes, not often, but they happen. We are on the other side of the globe and they prefer not to update Jira during USA working hours, so we get them when it is night in USA.

Matt Smith

I stated the confusion would arise when it was proposed !

I maintain that these changes are AI driven decisions and not being human sanitised before implementation !

Shanmuga Narayanan Pitchaipillai

quite possible.. just that we cant be the testers of such experiments

michelle_bachmann

Things 'go missing' all the time with what seems like continuous interface changes and tweaks. It's extremely embarrassing as an administrator to have to apologize for delays since I have look for items in new locations on a regular basis. To combat this, I have created a list of URL shortcuts to find things that I reference frequently since navigating to them has become futile.

The 'new features' announcements are also now something I dread. I am always left to wonder...

If or how does it even apply to our license level?
How accurate is the guestimate of when it may show up for our users in our instance?
What got moved and where do I have to go to find it now?

I have been administering Jira since 2012. I long for Jira Server to make a come back. It was a time when we could control what and when the features would be upgraded, and on a regular cadence. I have tried to participate in as many evaluations and feedback sessions. However, there are fewer admins than end users. We aren't being heard. PERIOD.

alexander

Hi Suzie — why not just get this information from the Community itself instead of running studies that 80% of your customers will never attend? I’m curious: what happened to such a great Atlassian company, and how did it turn into a bureaucracy machine?

michelle_bachmann

Anyone noticed that even the recommended training courses still a variety of terms and NONE list spaces. 'Projects' all the way!

And as long as we are talking about strange things that Atlassian pushes to customers, but doesn't adopt themselves...what about their JAC instance? https://jira.atlassian.com/secure/BrowseProjects.jspa

alexander

Wow — I hadn’t noticed that; I’m really curious. Now, seeing their JAC instance, I feel nostalgic for how well it worked before. The new Jira interface feels clunky and less intuitive.

Shanmuga Narayanan Pitchaipillai

if a survey is taken today, between all the work management, agile management tools out in the market, jira would come out to be the worst , i am trying really hard to find a rhythm, its literally the most unintuitive , treasure hunt type experience for finding most required items..

whoever designed the new UI/UX and the leadership who never even bothered if it worked together with existing flow, should be replaced , if atlassian wants to remain a force in the market.

Hugo Mora

I work on a Solution Partner, so take the perspective with that in mind — but I'd push back on the framing of the title, if not on the frustration behind it.

"Ignoring feedback" and "considered the feedback and decided differently" look identical from outside, and they're not the same thing. This thread is actually evidence of the second. The Status field move was reverted after the complaints. @aradu gave a detailed engineering answer on why a layer above project was rejected — configuration association, inheritance, the migration window customers would have lived through — which is a real tradeoff explanation, not a brush-off. Seasonal releases exist specifically to batch change into predictable windows, which is a direct response to the "new navigation every quarter" complaint being made here. Most vendors at this scale don't turn up in a customer forum to argue their design decisions at all.

The other thing worth saying: aggregated complaint threads select for complaints. Nobody posts "the new nav is fine, I adapted in a fortnight." Across the client instances I see, the transition cost is real and it lands hardest on admins and power users with a decade of muscle memory — but end users generally settle in weeks, and occasional users often do better than before. Transition cost isn't the same as permanent degradation, even though it feels identical while you're paying it.

Where I think the criticism lands cleanly: the rollout communication and the documentation lag. @michelle_bachmann's screenshot of training courses still saying "Projects" is a fair hit, and admins finding out what moved by discovering it broke is a genuine process failure worth fixing

Cheers,

--Hugo

s_gridnevskii

Users of our instance usually storm me with requests to return everything back after UI updates. I think Atlassian could try to make them optional. I understand that is much easier for them to have only one branch in git for the code and it is much easier for support, but still I prefer project over space and it is hard to explain to users that space is now not in Confluence but in Jira. Because they ask why.

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