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(meta) Getting started with GitLab

Based on feedback from a potential customer:

Right now, we assume the user knows all about GitLab before starting to use it.

Especially for the administrator that logs in for the first time, it's not immediately clear where / what they should do.

We should provide some sort of guiding for first-time users.

Description

We have a lot of features on GitLab. Most features have a blank state by nature. Currently, most blank states in GitLab are basic and it's hard for new users to know what they can do with them, or what they can expect.

Having great blank states for every single screen that we have on GitLab is invaluable. Most users judge a software the first seconds they are using it. We need to make sure that those first seconds are memorable. Our goal with this meta issue is to

  • Improve the quality of our product.
  • Bring immediate trust to the product for new users.
  • Take first time users by hands by explaining features.

Design considerations

The todos below contain wireframes. They are meant to give a general direction and it'll be up to the design team to choose the layout they want.

However, the final design will have to contain

  • clear indications of what each feature does
  • visual clues of what the feature will look like.

What we will do here will serve as a basis for blank states in new features.

Todos

General screens:

Project related screens:

Note: the Pipelines pages are left out of this issue for now. CI is a really complex feature and better getting started pages for this feature should be treated as a separate, new meta issue.