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Why does Atlassian struggle so much when creating a user friendly UI/UX?

Dan Casler

I'm very curious why Atlassian, even after so many years, still produce user interfaces and experience that are complete and utter garbage? Are they simply that incompetent as a team?

This is not a troll post, it's a legitimate questions. Over the past 10 years, five of my businesses have used JIRA/Confluence, and although the UI/UX today is better today than it was back then, in my opinion, it's still one of the worst and poorly thought out UIs of any management system available today. My current business has 32 projects, all with custom configurations.

There are SO MANY inconsistencies everywhere. If you click the wrong option, you'll be taken from project settings to JIRA wide settings, with no intuitive way back, configuring workflows, issue types, screens, etc. is probably one of the most overly complex and poorly designed process/flows I've ever seen.

The left hand menu feels like some novice hacked it together. Every time you click something, the entire page reloads and moving around can becomes beyond frustrating as new windows are spawned and getting back to where you were is insane.

I could write a small paper on all the defects in the JIRA UI.

I really feel that Atlassian should fire their entire UI team and replace it with a competent team that understands UI/UX and can create an experience that is actually user friendly and quick to use.

Accepted answers

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JP _AC Bielefeld Leader_

OK, Dan

Let's write that paper or offer alternatives with a better, cleaner UI/UX AND the same amount of flexibility and reusage of defined objects & templates. The UI is far from perfect & often not suitable for non-IT staff, but stilI I'm lacking alternatives...

Still seems a bit like a troll post as the question cannot be answered by the community. It seems to me that you would like to consult Atlassian on Jira UI/UX ;-)

Best

Dan Casler

@JP _AC Bielefeld Leader_,

First off, I did not state that I could write a small paper on alternatives, I said I could write a small paper on the overwhelming list of defects within the JIRA and confluence UI/UX. Defects that result in a poor user experience and an overly complex and convoluted process.

Lets be clear, I have no interest in consulting with Atlassian on any of their products.

I was hoping that someone from the community might be able to offer an explanation why a company I've spent many thousands of dollars with over the last decade, still cannot produce a quality user experience in over a decade?

Cheers

Sebastian Beyer

@JP _AC Bielefeld Leader_

I think this gentleman @Dan Casler) has brouht up a very fair question, actually.

Micheal Planck

Here's an example of one of the many, many, many issues with Atlassian.

In Confluence Cloud, to add a label to a homepage, you click on the three dot menu and select "Change labels." These labels cannot have capital letters.

On any other page, you cannot find "Change labels" under the three dot menu; instead, you click on a button at the bottom of the page to add a label (or, if you mis-click, remove one). These labels can have capital letters.

One action (add a label) = two entirely separate methods that are dependent on a context invisible to the user. And they have different constraints!

How is this not rank incompetence? How does Atlassian pretend they understand ergonomics, or workflow, or user experience, or UI design, or process, or common sense? How are we supposed to let these people organize our workflow?

And the fact that they have not fixed this issue shows that they don't consider it important. There is, after all, a way to add labels to pages; simply memorize every context-dependant hack and you're all set!

This reveals either a staggering level of contempt for their customers, or even an more shocking failure to understand what a customer even is. It's like all of this is some codathon hack contest, with high school kids tossing in whatever they think is neat and could get to work in an afternoon.

Except we're paying for it. And, as a poster noted, there are no better alternatives!