 All right, it's the top of the hour. I'm gonna go ahead and get started. So welcome everybody to the UX Functional Group Update. April 2nd, just missed April Fool's Day by one day. So today I'm gonna go over the results of our quarter one OKRs, talk a little bit about EPICS and then spend a couple of seconds on hiring. So for our Q1 OKRs, first one I'll talk about is the reduced the installation time of DevOps for Kubernetes by 50%. Very ambitious goal. And the goal here was to go through the flow of installation and look for ways that we could streamline it and make it as easy as possible for even a very beginner to do. So from the outset, what we did was we put together a demo with Mark Punzak to kind of understand what that flow looks like. And in doing that flow, we realized that there were a lot more problems with it than we had anticipated. Initially we thought what we would do would be to do a demo, then start doing some testing with users, come up with some quick wins, how to make it more streamlined, implement those, then do more testing. And what we saw in that demo with Mark was that unless you were an expert, it was going to be very difficult for you to get through that demo. It would have been frustrating for our testers and it would have probably been very expensive because the test itself with Mark took probably an hour and a half. So what we did was we took that demo and we started working through everything we saw in that demo that could be improved. We came up with issues, both short-term and long-term and we started pushing those forward. We worked really close with both Mark and Fabio on that. Unfortunately, we only made it, my estimation is about 33%, not the most scientific estimation due to the fact that we could not retest. So that 33% is all the effort we put into the demo, the research, the creation of issues and the UX ready issues that we have. So I think the accomplishments there were getting that initial demo to really understand what wasn't working, identifying those short-term, long-term improvements and then creating a roadmap. And we do have a pretty good roadmap. We know what it looks like to make this better. The challenges that we had were that unfortunately our OKRs were not solidified until just about the 22nd of January. So we missed two scheduling for releases. So it was kind of impossible for us to get those improvements into an actual milestone. And of course, the demo was so broken that it was difficult to actually do the user testing that we thought we were going to do. And of course, those issues were spread out over three releases. So we are gonna carry this on into Q2. We've done a lot of work here. And I think that as we start to see those come through, we'll kind of get a snowball effect where those improvements will just add one upon the other and improve that flow completely. Did a little bit better with our design pattern library. So the pattern library is setting our usability standards. So it's not about documenting colors and typography. Well, that's part of it. The bigger idea here is to establish patterns that we know we can use when certain problems come up. So that's when do we use a modal? When do we use a button? When do we use forms? What kind of forms do we use? When do we use tabs versus a filter or sort? Those kinds of things. We made it 64% of the way through. We got all the leftover patterns from phase one documented and every issue in phase two is either completed or in final review. So it will be done in 10-8. Just missed the deadline. Challenges that we had, sketch files are binary files. So you cannot really work with them in a Git workflow. There's no way to branch and then merge. So reviews took a really long time. As one designer was reviewing, other designers were working in the file and updating. So everything has to be manually merged. It just makes it take a lot longer. We're also doing hiring, which really slowed us down and we focused on hiring deliverables and then the OKRs that pertain to Kubernetes and operations engineers. So our own issues took a little bit of hit in that. And then we did really well on our established operations engineers as a first class citizen. I'm really proud of the work that Sarah and Catherine did here. The goal here was to understand who operations DevOps engineers are. What are their challenges? What are the common tasks? What is it that they're looking for in the tool that we can provide? And they did an excellent job. You can actually link to the report that they produced from that research and they are in the middle of just finalizing the user interviews that they've done, as well as laying out what that roadmap looks like. So the work here was really, really well done. I think Bill Duncan, I think your mic is on. You're not muted. I'm hearing a lot of noise in my ear. It's the only person I can see without a mute. So sorry to call you out, but it's really distracting. When you're trying to concentrate on what you're saying. So really happy with that. I do encourage everyone to take a look at that report. There's some really interesting information there. And then, again, our own UX issues got pushed aside a little bit. We got to 63% on our design.gitlab. The goal of design.gitlab is to take all of those patterns and make them publicly available for not just our designers, but really the goal here is to be more front end product facing with this. We know what our design patterns are. We have them all in our sketch documents. Those need to be something that are searchable by the rest of the company so that we are not a bottleneck for coming up with good solutions and being consistent. So the good things that happened with this were able to update and record all the standards that are already in the current guide. So we're not missing any of that. And we've actually added a lot of patterns that we're not currently recorded. If you go to the handbook to our UX guide, which I will add a link on this slide to our old guide so that you have some context, there's a lot of stuff that's updated there. Again, the challenges were increased volume of deliverables. We had a lot of dependencies on front end for review and assistance and some aspects of that code base. And I would say that there was definitely some poor time management on our part. I think what we learned from that experience is that set incremental deadlines for these issues. It keeps them a little bit more at the forefront. It makes it harder to focus on milestone deliverables over the deliverables that we really need to accomplish for ourselves. So definitely a good lesson learned there. We also had a goal to write three public blog posts and we accomplished that. There's a link to each of the blog posts here if you're interested in reading. So those are our Q1 OKRs. We're still, I believe, finalizing Q2. So I'll talk about those in our next FGU. Another big thing that we've been working on alongside product is defining EPICS for a set of issues so that both front end, well, not both, all three back end, front end, and UX can take a look at these EPICS, understand what product is trying to achieve, and make sure that we can help them achieve that. And this is a process that is ongoing. We're just starting it now. So there's a lot of bugs to work out. But the goal here is to have front end, back end, and UX take a look at these issues, give feedback, anything that's missing, requirements documentation, challenges that we see, make sure that there's been scope for UX discovery allotted. So that UX has time to actually look at these issues and provide valuable input. So that is a big push that we're going through right now. You can read about it in the handbook. And if you're curious about how we're doing this, you can always send me a chat message and can talk to a little bit more about it. I've actually created a spreadsheet to kind of document what I'm looking for and how I'm going through each of those issues. And lastly, for hiring, we have a new UX designer starting April 16. I didn't put a link to their information because we don't want to make that public until they actually start. But I will definitely introduce them next time around. And we will be looking to hire another UX designer in Q2. So if you know any awesome UX designers that we just love to come and work at GetLab, please let me know. We're definitely interested in hiring someone soon. So with that, any questions? I know it's kind of a light day today with the holidays and everything. I will, you know, absolutely, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, we don't have it up officially yet. It should be this week. So I'll make sure that I share that tweet. Hey, Sarah, something else. What are you most excited about the things that you've been working on with your team? Well, I think the most exciting thing is actually the operations results that we got. I think that we've really been making this huge push to do an operations dashboard, complete DevOps. And in having a clearer picture, some of the things that we found in that report were actually really surprising to us. They were unexpected. And I feel like we have a lot of good insights into how to really make this valuable for operations. So I'm really excited about that. We'll be working on the dashboard alongside CICD. And then there's some other stuff we're doing with Platform, which is pretty exciting in that area. What was unexpected? I think there was this idea that a lot of operations engineers were very focused. They were specialized. And what we found was that's not the case at all. A lot of them are wearing many, many hats. A lot of them are full stack developers that have kind of been roped into becoming an operations engineer and handling that for the company, which once I thought about my own experiences in past companies that wasn't very surprising at all, especially in startups or small to mid-sized companies. You're more likely to have people that are generalists rather than specialists. So I think that's something to take into account when we're putting this together. Hey, Sarah, what are your takeaways from the operations work? I read the doc. I think one thing that stands out is that people want a single place. And I think Data Doc calls this the trifacta of metrics, tracing, and logs. Like one place where you can find all three, preferably with a link to the application. And the other thing was, I think, two factor for approvals. I didn't quite get that because we have two factor and we have approvals. But how would you summarize the results? That's a tough one, Sid. Put me on the spot. Summarize the results of a very long report. A fool can ask more questions than 10 vice people can ask. So I think what might take away from that is that we definitely do need to create one space. I think what we've been doing is really creating different areas of interest for operations engineers. But we have not brought that into one place where they can come and get everything they need without having to bounce around without having to really connect the docs. So I think that that's gonna be a big focus, especially with this operations health dashboard that we're doing. And I think that what we really need to do now is identify the metrics that should be included. I think some of that's gonna be in those user interview follow-ups. That report, again, will be done this week. Now give us some more insight into those metrics. And I think that what's exciting to me about it too, that I take away is that there's this deep need for it. Everyone was excited about it. Everyone was like, yes, we're so glad that you're doing this. This is the tool that we need. And they were excited to be part of the talk about it. So just getting that really detailed feedback about who they are, what they're looking for, and the fact that they're hungry for it, really I think puts us in a great position. I see there's some questions here in the chat. So do you have time for DevOps? Is that auto DevOps? Yeah, wait a minute. So that has to do with the, and that is really confusing because there's a lot of different pieces to that. So I can understand that question. So what we focused on because there are so many different pieces is that flow of the auto DevOps with Kubernetes. So what does it look like if you're setting that up with Kubernetes? And that was the focus of that particular demo. If you haven't watched the demo, I really suggest that you do, and there's a lot of really good follow-up kind of summarization of what we found in there to be helpful moving forward. Then there was another question. Documentation, is there documentation on the UI component templates that is published? If internal projects for planning metrics would be awesome to reuse GitLab UI for graphs. Yeah, so that's something that we're working on. I believe right now we're actually in the process of working with Josh in monitoring on graphs and determining which graphing and churning plugins or systems that we're going to use and then how we're going to design within those constraints. So I would say that no, we don't have those yet for graphs, but if there's other areas that you're interested in, shoot me a message and I'm happy to walk you through what we have and where there's some gaps. You may actually have some insight into something we're missing, so I'd love to talk more about that. Any other questions? Great questions today, thank you. I don't normally get questions, so I'm really excited. All right, I want to count down. Four, three, two. Yes, Sarah, I have another one. What is one of them? Is there anything in terms of UX that has been worked on in terms of changes in GitLab that you're looking for to see being actually released into the product? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, I'm super excited about, and I think this was touched on in the last FGU. I was away and Pedro did the last Functional Group update for me, but we are redesigning our discussion tab for both issues and merge requests. We've had a lot of people say that it's overwhelming, that it feels very difficult for them to parse through who's saying what. There's a lot of activity mixed in with comments, and so we really focused in on how we could improve that, and it's actually in several different issues. One is through having the ability to see only comments or see only activity or see a combination of both. That is an issue that's still in flight, so we don't have a 100% definitive answer on that, but we're working on it right now. And then the other is an actual redesign of the comments and the way they're structured to make it, give a better visual hierarchy so that when you're scanning down, it's really easy to see that flow of conversation. So I'm really excited for that. That's coming out in 11, so. That's great, sir, thanks. I have another question, and this is the last one I promise. What can we do as non-UXers do to work together better with the UX team? Oh man, that's a loaded question because my answer is talk to us more, but then that's gonna create even more work, but bring it on. I think that everybody here has some understanding of user experience. We're all users, we're all using GitLab, we're all using other applications, and I think it's really important to note that everybody's opinion matters, and while we have domain expertise and we have education and a background in doing this, it's really good to have those conversations with actual users and see things from a different perspective. And we do that a lot with our user research, but it's something that I'd love to do even more with the people here at the company and just get more feedback from them on what we can do. Exactly, and Tori says in the chat, communication, just talk to us, ping us in issues, send us chat messages, set up coffee chats. I would be more than happy to sit in a coffee chat and let you covech to me about everything that bothers you. I will write it all down and see what we can do. It's a dangerous proposition for me, but I'm really more than happy to do it. Thanks, Sarah. Awesome, thanks, Yobe. I really appreciate the awesome questions said Yobe, William, and Mac. It was really great to have some questions today. So with that, I think I'm gonna let everybody go, and I will see you in the team call. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.