| Meet our team | Team page |
| GitLab.com | @gitlab-com/gitlab-ux/cicd-ux |
| Slack channel | #ux_ci-cd (internal only) |
| Youtube playlists | CI/CD UX - Team Meetings |
| CI/CD UX Team - Design Reviews | |
| Ops Section page | Ops handbook |
Hello! We're the GitLab CI/CD UX team. We're comprised of three stage groups that support designing and building the GitLab DevOps product: Verify, Package, and Release.
Our design mission is to bring simple, clean ways to make GitLab the tool of choice for deploying where, when, and how users want. We work to ensure the best user experience for our users of all knowledge levels, allowing them to successfully apply the continuous methods (Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment) to their software with no third-party application or integration needed.
The CI/CD UX team significantly contributes to the UX Department direction for FY22 and Ops Product Section Direction in the following ways:
We have business goals we are shooting for all the time. To understand how we can measure success in the CI/CD area, we collect insights from our strategic counterparts: Product Marketing Managers, Analyst Relations, and Customer Success.
Below you can find information about the all designated counterparts we work with:
We follow the workflows outlined in the UX section of the handbook. In addition, we do the following:
We meet bi-weekly as a team to discuss our work, processes, talk about User Research activities, share knowledge, and raise questions to each other. We are also using session for team retrospectives, as well as sharing useful resources around design and DevOps domains.
The UX DoD lists the activities a Product Designer is responsible for in the Product Development Flow. This list can be applied to an epic/issue, and serves as a tool for describing and tracking the expected UX deliverables, objectives, and the approval process.
To keep the process efficient, depending on the scope of a problem, a Product Designer might not need to check off all of the items in the UX DoD while working through the Product Development Flow.
You can add the following checklist to an issue description to help illustrate the "completeness" of a design proposal:
### UX Definition of Done
1️⃣ **VALIDATION TRACK**
**Problem Validation Phase**
- [ ] Problem is well understood and has been validated
- [ ] JTBD is well understood and has been validated
- [ ] PM has communicated the opportunity canvas to stable counterparts and group stakeholders, including the Product Designer and Product Design Manager
**Design Phase**
- [ ] Document the JTBD and UX goal in the issue/epic description
- [ ] Explore multiple different approaches as a team
- [ ] Discuss the technical implications with Engineering
- [ ] Identify any potential cross-team dependencies and include the DRIs in the discussions
- [ ] Identify a small set of options to validate
- [ ] Document the user story(ies) for the MVC
- [ ] Consider edge cases for each user story
- [ ] Create prototypes or mockups for each user story
- [ ] [Pajamas component lifecyle](https://design.gitlab.com/get-started/lifecycle)
- [ ] Identify component design or pattern update/creation
- [ ] Discuss the technical implications with Engineering
- [ ] Pajamas issue is created (within the scope of the MVC)
- [ ] Update issues/epic descriptions
- [ ] The appropriate [labels](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/ux-department-workflow/#how-we-use-labels) were applied
- [ ] If changes involve copy, add the ~"Technical Writing" and ~"UI text" labels
- [ ] Proposed solution(s) identified and documented in the issue/epic description
**Solution Validation Phase**
- [ ] Validate the solution to increase confidence in the proposed solution
- [ ] Document the solution validation learnings
- [ ] Product Designer has communicated the solution validation learnings to stable counterparts and group stakeholders, including the Product Design Manager
- [ ] Update the MVC proposal with relevant insights from the solution validation
- [ ] Discuss the technical implications with Engineering
- [ ] Update issue/epic description to contain or link to the findings
2️⃣ **BUILD TRACK**
[**Plan Phase**](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product-development-flow/#build-phase-1-plan)
- [ ] Proposal is ready to be broken down and prioritized by PM for development
**Develop & Test Phase**
- [ ] Product Designer reviewed MRs that include user-facing changes, as per the [Code Review Guidelines](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/code_review.html)
- [ ] UX Debt issues have been identified and assigned to a milestone