UX Research at GitLab

The goal of UX Research at GitLab is to connect with GitLab users all around the world and gather insight into their behaviors, motivations, and goals.

The goal of UX research at GitLab is to connect with GitLab users all around the world and gather insight into their behaviors, motivations, and goals. We use these insights to inform and strengthen product and design decisions.

UX Researchers are one of the many GitLab Team Members who conduct user research. Other roles, such as Product Managers and Product Designers, frequently conduct research with guidance from the UX Research team.

Do you have questions about UX Research? The UX Research team is here for you! Reach out in the #ux_research Slack channel.

Below is a full list of our UX Research team handbook content:

Conducting UX Research at GitLab

Research methods we use at GitLab

Finding participants

Data and research insights

Templates

Checklists

UX Research training

Resources for UX Researchers

Resources for UX Research Operations Coordinators

Measures and processes the UX Research team is responsible for


Analyzing and synthesizing user research data
Guidelines for how to analzye survey verbatim
Analyzing survey verbatim
Guidelines for how to analyze survey verbatim
Attending a research event
Best practices when attending a research event.
Choosing a research methodology
How to choose a research methodology: detail vs frequency, user characteristics, and fidelity of insight
Collecting useful data
You can use your research objectives to create categories you can reference as you take notes to make sure you are capturing the most salient information.
Community contributions for Actionable Insights
Engaging the wider GitLab community to get Actionable Insights fixed
Comparative testing for navigation
Comparative, qualitative usability testing enables you to get feedback on 2-3 designs early in the design process to assess the pros and cons of different design directions. This is different from quantitative comparative studies that focus on benchmarking and measurement of the design. The focus at this stage in the design process is to identify what is working well or not working well with different designs and provide insight on which one to move forward with.
Creating a first click study in Qualtrics
This page details how to set-up first click tests in Qualtrics.
Creating and managing a research participant panel
How to create and manage a research participant panel
Defining goals, objectives, and hypotheses
Conducting user research takes a significant amount of preparation before you even begin asking users anything.
Diary studies
What are diary studies and when to use them
Doing UX research in the AI space
How to conduct UX research in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) space, including research guidelines.
Evaluating navigation
When proposing navigation changes, it's important to proceed with high confidence. We evaluate how changes perform compared to our existing experience using a set of defined methods.
Facilitating user interviews
Tips and tricks for succesfully conducting user interviews.
Finding SaaS users
How we target SaaS research participants to meet specific criteria
First click testing for navigation
What is first click testing? First click testing is used to determine if participants are able to find something they’re looking for in an interface within their first click. Assessing the first click is important because it is much more likely that a user will succeed in completing a task if they’re able to click on the right path initially. First click testing will be able to tell you if participants are clicking the intended area for a given scenario.
Foundational research
Foundational research (also referred to as generative research, exploratory research, pathfinding research, or discovery research) attempts to identify and solve a real human problem. This problem should center on a topic or area that has not been clearly defined or explored in the past. This type of research is not necessarily focused on answering questions about the product, but is more about answering deeper questions from the user perspective (for example: how do users search for information within their roles?
How the UX Research team operates at GitLab
How we decide what to research, spend our time, measure our success, and more
How to Conduct UX Research Workshops
The UX Research workshop process at GitLab
How to find existing research
Ways to find existing research insights.
How to recruit UX Research participants
How to find the right participants for research studies at GitLab
How to write an effective screener
How to write an effective UX research screener at GitLab
Interview Carousel - Becoming a better interviewer 15 minutes at a time
A lightweight and fun training to improve your user interviewing skills
Kano Survey for feature prioritization
Kano model provides a simple and powerful way how to think about the features that we plan to build.
Longitudinal studies
What are longitudinal studies and when to use them
Mental modeling
A brief overview of how we do mental modeling research at GitLab
Preference testing
How to determine which design your participant prefers.
Problem validation and methods
How to conduct problem validation research at GitLab
Problem Validation research for single-stage-group initiatives
Problem Validation research for single-stage-group initiatives usually focuses on specific behaviors relating to one stage group, such as: How do Release Managers do their job?
Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation (RITE)
Using the RITE methodology at GitLab
Research insights
Research insights are the collective findings and learnings that come from a research study.
Research prioritization
How UX Researchers priortize projects
Solution Validation and methods
Solution validation research critically assesses if the product/feature/design has indeed solved the problem that was initially intended to be solved
Strategic research at GitLab
What is Strategic research? Strategic research is focused on answering future facing questions about users that help inform the long term product direction and roadmap. This kind of research can consist of one or more connected projects to better understand a larger topic area. Usually, the topic is broad enough to cover multiple stage groups and/or stages. Thus, strategic research can be high impact for the product teams and company as a whole.
Surveys
Using surveys as a UX research method
Testing navigation: early Solution Validation
When considering navigation changes, it's important to test ideas early and efficiently. This is a guide to support early solution validation projects in the Foundations team.
Tracking actionable insights
How we track actionable insights derived from UX research studies.
Tracking gold, silver, and bronze UX research projects
How we track research research projects, by service level.
Tracking research velocity
How we track research velocity.
Unmoderated usability testing
Using unmoderated usability testing at GitLab.
Usability benchmarking
The usability benchmarking process at GitLab
Usability testing
Conducting usability testing at GitLab
User story mapping
User Story mapping is a powerful way to visualize how people are using your product or feature holistically and organize individual stories to that journey.
Using quantitative data to find insights
This page defines quantitative data, describes the primary advantages and disadvantages of using quantitative data in UX research, describes best practices, and provides examples for quantitative analysis.
Using RITE to test navigation
Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation (RITE) is a usability testing method in which you evaluate a prototype multiple times in a rapid and iterative manner. The goal is not to determine statistical validity, but to observe behaviors, learn insights, and iterate rapidly. This is different from traditional usability testing, because you iterate during testing rather than waiting until the end to make changes. This method is intended to identify and fix as many usability issues as possible while verifying the effectiveness of changes made within testing.
Using the UX Research Google Calendar
How to use the UX Research Google Calendar so that others can attend your research sessions.
UX Bash
A quick and efficient way to identify bugs and improve the user experience
UX Cloud Sandbox
How to sign up and use the UX department's cloud sandbox for usability testing.
UX Research growth and development
The UX Research team has added two exercises in addition to GitLab's Career Developement process
UX Research shadowing
All new Product Managers and Designers at GitLab should complete research shadowing as a part of their onboarding before conducting independent research.
UX Research tools/applications
Tools we use, how to find existing research, tracking research findings, and more.
UX Researcher pairings
An opt-in offering for UX Researchers to pair up with another UX Researcher where they can provide and receive feedback from each other.
When to conduct UX Research
Learn when it is appropriate to conduct UX Research for your team.
Writing a discussion guide for user interviews
A discussion guide is a set of questions and topics that you would like to discuss with a participant during a user interview
Writing a website usability testing script
How to create a usability testing script at GitLab