Jira
Evaluating an existing tool and prototyping improvements
Jira is a project management and issue-tracking software developed by Atlassian. Widely used in software development, Jira supports agile methodologies and provides comprehensive tools for tracking tasks, bugs, and workflows.
MY ROLE
UX Researcher
UX/UI Designer
Deliverables:
METHODS
Cognitive Walkthrough
Contextual Inquiry
Interactive Prototyping
Project Background
Key Findings
The Jira interface is complex and unintuitive for the average user. It includes many options that a typical developer does not use on a daily basis.
It is difficult to sort through all of the extraneous information to find exactly what a user needs in that moment.
In order to get the most out of Jira, a user has to spend a significant amount of time and money to customize the interface to their liking.
Solution
I developed an interactive prototype in Figma to introduce two enhancements:
Project template creation and reuse
Comment search and filter functionality
We evaluated the functionality and user experience of Jira for software developers and project managers. The goal was to address key pain points that we identified through contextual inquiry research in order to enhance efficiency, usability, and overall user satisfaction with the platform.
As a 3-person research team we performed a cognitive walkthrough of Jira's existing interface to identify any usability issues and areas of improvement. We then conducted contextual inquiry interviews with software developers and product managers to understand their workflows, pain points, and overall experiences with Jira.
The Problem
Cognitive Walkthrough:
What improvements can be made in the functionality of Jira in order to better serve project managers and software developers in their workday?
Jira is a powerful and highly customizable tool that has become an industry standard in software development and technology companies. However, my research revealed that this flexibility often leads to significant user frustration and a decrease in desirability to use this product. Many users find themselves overwhelmed by all of the features, which creates confusion and negatively impacts workflows.
“A good day using Jira means having to use it as little as possible”
To get a high level understanding of Jira's functionality, we performed a cognitive walkthrough to simulate user interactions with Jira. This purpose of this evaluation was to identify any glaring usability issues and areas of improvement that could be the focus of the coming contextual inquiries. From our perspectives as a non-Jira users, we did not find any glaring usability or functionality issues with the product.
Snapshots of my cognitive walkthrough including screenshots of each step required to complete a task. There were no usability issues found with creating project boards in Jira (left). There was a potential issue in the visibility of the correct action required to finish creating and editing issues. (right)
Understanding the Users
“It’s unusable without superpowers and endless patience”
To gain a deeper understanding of the user experience with Jira, our team performed 3 contextual inquiry interviews with 1 product manager and 2 software developers.
Our research revealed a common theme of frustration among the users with the current state of Jira. One of the users we interviewed had 8+ years of expert experience in Jira and expressed their frustration that Atlassian limits the functionality of the product on purpose in order to force users to spend large amounts of money on plugins to make their experience more usable, functional, and desirable.
Considering that Jira seems to be an industry standard, it was surprising that there seemed to be a such a vast mutual distaste for using the product.
“Yes, unfortunately, I have to use Jira for work”
“How is Jira sold to make products when it’s such an awful product?”
The Findings
Key Findings:
Software development companies use Jira in order to enhance project management, streamline workflow, and improve collaboration and communication. In contrast, our research revealed several insights into inner workings of Jira, which highlighted a consistent subpar user experience. In order to maximize the use of Jira, project managers would be required to spend hours customizing the product for their developers, involving purchasing many plugins writing internal code,
Repetitive project setups:
Users often find themselves repeating the same setup processes for similar projects. Customizing Jira for each project is time-consuming and inconsistent, causing a desire for a feature that allows saving and reusing templates.
Inefficient comment searches:
Teams primarily communicate through the comment threads in Jira projects. Developers noted that it was a constant struggle to sift and filter through these long comment threads to find what was relevant to their task at hand. This inefficient process leads to delays and potential miscommunication on projects. There is a desire for enhanced search and filter functionalities.
Complex navigation and visual clutter:
The interface is cluttered with numerous features that are often unused, redundant, or outside of the permissions scope for developers. This redundancy contributes to cognitive overload and distracts from core tasks. There is a desire for a simplified, customizable navigation that would help users focus on the most relevant information.
Jira landing page when entering a project. Issues are organized into a workflow based on the development cycle. The left sidebar includes many planning views that users had not ever explored before participating in our contextual inquiry.
Pop-out view of an issue. Users can see the description, comments, and fields to that issue. Many fields are irrelevant to developers, and comment threads get lengthy and difficult to sort through.
Solution
User Stories:
User Story 1:
As a software developer, I would like to easily choose which planning views and functionalities I see so that only the relevant information for my role is visible and I can find my issues more quickly without the extra distracting visual noise.
Low-Fidelity Sketches:
User story 2: A screenflow of an added functionality to enable a user to search and filter through comments.
User Story 3:
As a product owner I want to save stories that I use frequently so that I can quickly set up new projects that have a similar structure and avoid having to re-do pieces of work that are common across many projects.
To hone in on some proposed solutions for Jira, I synthesized my research into three user stories.
User Story 2:
As a lead developer I want to be able to search and filter comments so that I can keep track of the progress on issues and quickly find relevant information to the task I’m working on.
Before diving into Figma to create a high-fidelity interactive prototype, I created some low-fidelity sketched wireframe screenflows.
User story 3: a wireframe showing an added “saved” section under the “create a project” workflow.
User story 1: a screenflow of easy user customization to choose which aspects of the Jira project are visible in their immediate view.
Final Design
Working from my low-fidelity sketches and using the Atlassian Design System community file in Figma, I created an interactive prototype focusing on two improvements.
Template Save Functionality
I added functionality for project managers to save issues, workflows, and labels that can be applied to a new project template. Project managers can also pre-populate set sprint durations and so that issues are immediately put on the first step of the workflow for the project. This saves time and prevents redundancy in their work day.
This eliminates repetitive configuration tasks, streamlines workflow, and ensures a uniformity across similar projects.
It simplifies the learning curve for new team members and established developers within a company. Developers would not have to spend time at the beginning of each project to understand the organization and workflow of the new project they are working on.
Comment Search and Filter Functionality
I repurposed the search box at the top of the board view to include a category option, allowing users to choose to search within “issues”, “comments”, “labels”, and “assigned”.
All users can easily find specific and relevant information within extensive comment threads. This saves time for developers specifically, when they are searching for code blocks or steps that other developers have taken while working on an issue.
By being able to quickly retrieve necessary information, users can concentrate on their core tasks without distraction of irrelevant comments.
Deliverables
Interactive Prototype:
There are two interactive flows laid out on the left hand side. The first one shows my implementation of a saved template feature. The second shows my implementation of a search and filter feature for comments.
Prototype Walkthrough:
I created a video walkthrough that describes my rationale behind the design choices I made and displays how to use the interactive prototype.
Next Steps
Conduct usability testing on the prototype with a broader user base. This will allow us to gain insights on how these new features effectively or ineffectively address the identified pain points and enhance the user experience.
Using this feedback, fine-tune and iterate on this prototype. Continue to make adjustments on design in order to ensure it is meeting users’ needs.
Key Learnings & Challenges
Building empathy for users through contextual inquiries was crucial to understanding underlying frustrations and needs.
Diving into the intricacies of such a complex tool was difficult. As we continued to research Jira, we found that many of the proposed solutions were actually possible to integrate into the product with plugins, custom code, and significant time spent customizing personal Jira views.