There's nothing wrong with iterating user interface design for better UX, especially when you've made reasoned decisions, based on feedback and user research, as to why the new designs will be helpful to your user base. Read through the links you've listed, and you'll notice that the latest changes are all based on usability testing and direct user feedback.
In my opinion, they're doing everything right here. They're not changing designs because some designer disliked the color or popup animations. They're arranging their functional components to align with what they're finding (experimentally) is most usable for their user base.
Thanks, Andrew, this is exactly what I was going to point to. We are making sure to base our UX changes on actual user feedback and research. I would also say that GitLab's UX has to evolve in pace with the product. As we add features to support 'idea to production', we need to make them easy to find and intuitive to use.
I followed the issue on iterating for the redesign. I wouldn't say they followed any experimental methods very closely for this release. It very much came off as something where they picked a release date ahead of time and decided that's when they'd ship. New iterations didn't follow a continuous plan-do-check loop; everything was handled more like do something, get feedback, figure out something that you feel addresses that feedback, and then consider it done.
I don't know whether this comes off like I'm complaining. That's not what it's supposed to be. (I actually liked the [original] redesign announced over the summer.) I'm just here to explain what I saw.
"New iterations didn't follow a continuous plan-do-check loop; everything was handled more like do something, get feedback, figure out something that you feel addresses that feedback, and then consider it done."
We are never done. We will always be iterating and improving. Much of the feedback we received confirmed assumptions we already had but wanted to test, such as collapsing the navigation, improving breadcrumbs, etc. Other feedback was new and we were challenged to solve those. Everything that was added to this release will undergo a round of user testing and be subject to iteration.
It does not sound like a complaint at all @carussell, thanks for the feedback.
Some decisions feel very arbitrary - how many times has the default state of "Delete source branch" changed (which is visible when you create a merge request)?
They don't load for me either, most likely a problem from when we rewrote most of the about.gitlab.com website last year. I'll look into it, I'm also interested to see what it looked like in 2012 :D
EDIT: It looks like the images are attempting to load from an old Wordpress blog which is no longer around, with a quick search I couldn't seem to find anything with similar file names in the current website repository :(
In my opinion, they're doing everything right here. They're not changing designs because some designer disliked the color or popup animations. They're arranging their functional components to align with what they're finding (experimentally) is most usable for their user base.