We support the business of GitLab by becoming experts in our stage group, educating ourselves about the entire product, and staying engaged with user and business goals. We partner closely with our stable counterparts in Product Management and Development.
Each Product Designer is assigned to an area of our product, called Stage Groups. They learn everything they can about users and their workflows to design solutions for real customer problems.
Information about product categories and links to team members and direction pages can be found here.
Some UX teams have documented detailed information about their ways of working and stage groups, and these can be found here:
Product Designers follow the guidance outlined in the Product Development flow while working on stage group work with our stable counterparts.
For specific details:
Product Designer Tools
Are you a new GitLab Product Designer? If so, welcome! Make sure you see the Product Designer Workflow handbook page that will help you get started.
Our design principles can be found with the Pajamas Design System.
In Q4 FY22 and Q1 FY23, we ran an experiment called "Macro UX," in which we paired a Product Designer and an Engineer to make self-directed improvements to a product workflow (Kubernetes Agent). The idea was to empower the pair to make changes they identified themselves and resolved directly with MRs, rather than following our existing Product Development Flow.
The result of the experiment was that the pair was able to resolve low-hanging usability problems, but they ran into challenges when attempting to address larger, more complex problems. However, they did find value in the ability to identify usability problems through heuristic reviews and then quickly partner to fix them. (See the retro issue for details).
In the Beautifying our UI initiative, we'd like to take the best parts of the Macro UX experiment and apply them to making small usability improvements in our product.
Going forward, every milestone, we will ask Product Designers and Engineers to volunteer to partner in making self-directed usability improvements. It is an opportunity to fix the things that have been bugging you or that you've heard from users without worrying about prioritization.
Product Designers and Engineers will
| Milestone Start | Product Designer | Engineer |
|---|---|---|
| 15.0 (2022-04-18) | Annabel Gray | Phil Hughes |
| 15.1 (2022-05-18) | Sascha Eggenberger | Robert Hunt |
| 15.2 (2022-06-18) | Emily Bauman | Jannik Lehmann |
| 15.3 (2022-07-18) | Matthew Nearents | Tom Quirk |
| 15.4 (2022-08-18) | Nadia Sotnikova | Alex Kalderimis |
| 15.5 (2022-09-18) | Katie Macoy | Anna Vovchenko |
If you are a Product Designer or Engineer who wants to volunteer, please create an MR to update the table above by adding your name. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to the VP of User Experience or the Director of Product Design.
Create an issue, assign it to both Product Designer and Engineer and add it to this epic. As you progress through the milestone, make sure to link all merge requests to your issue. This will help other stakeholders quickly understand the reason behind the sudden influx of MRs.
You should also keep track of any needed documentation updates. Work with the relevant technical writers to ensure the documentation is kept as up-to-date as possible.
The team will track total number of MRs merged with the Beautifying our UI label.
