How can we find a new way to design the current structure of navigation in order to unleash the potential of the tool?

Jira was growing not only with new users but also with new features and accesibility of these new features causing major usability problems.

With the involvement of marketing department, we analysed background analytics and do some on-site interview and testing with key users to understand the problem in depth. We found out that users are struggling to find these new features and the top menu navigation doesn’t meet the standards.

To create a premium experience for all users, we had to decide key user personas that get benefit from the tool. From the research that we’ve conducted we set our key user personas as kanban users, scrum users and next-gen users.

With the help of analytics data and user feedbacks that are received before we conducted design thinking workshops in order to list and prioritize frequently used features of the tool and identify the pain-points.

To create a tool that satisfies all personas need, in addition to our workshop, we performed various numbers of interviews and surveys with the users around the world to create unique experience to each different persona while trying to maintain consistency within the journey.

From the researches and feedbacks, we defined the strategy and goal of the navigation:

– Even though updating the content of the top navigation all the time is not convenient, frequently used features should be visible to users all the time
– Top menu drawer is not only time consuming for users but also occupies huge amount of space over dashboard, therefore new navigation should be located in natural place and include quick action buttons.
– User should have flexibility of customisation and visibility over navigation.

It was very important to create sketches of the navigation for optimum UX solution. With sketch workshops, we discovered the revolutionary left menu idea.

With new left menu idea, a new way of information structure was needed in order to create convenient and user friendly navigation experience. Therefore, with design thinking workshops that are conducted with cross functional departments and stakeholders, we created a new detailed information structure and journey maps.

Wire-framing is done with new design system that were under development. It was pretty tricky and challenging to use new components while being updated regularly. With good communication and time management, we designed various numbers of ideas.