[sarahod]

GitLab’s UX Researcher here. TheCoreh has summed things up well but I thought I’d share my own thoughts.

During usability testing, you eventually reach a point where users start demonstrating the same behaviour. Once that happens, it’s not really worth speaking to more users, as you’re not learning anything new. You’re better to implement changes based on the user feedback you have and then re-test with different users. The navigation has been through 3 rounds of usability testing (24 users in total). Sometimes we tested with more than one prototype at once, hence us testing with a few extra users.

We conducted usability testing to get us to a point where we felt comfortable sharing the new navigation with a much wider audience. There’s still more research to come!

If you’re interested in getting involved with the research, then GitLab has a research panel you can join: https://about.gitlab.com/researchpanel/ or you can just drop us your feedback on: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/34917