New UX issues often lack important details
Problem to solve
At GitLab, anyone can create an issue to bring it to the attention of the UX team. However, new issues often lack important details that could be included from the start.
The issue templates can be quite overwhelming. Currently, there's no specific UX issue template. Usually, the Feature Proposal template is used. Since it contains so many sections, it's difficult to differentiate between the most important information and information that isn't necessary to understand the problem, and the easier route may be to start with a blank issue. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but it means that the issue template wasn't helpful in that case, and there may be ways for us to improve the issue template.
Intended users
Further details
We decided to see if improving the issue template (simplifying it, using less verbose language, better examples) would be helpful for the rest of the team.
Proposal
Conduct research around how out team uses issue templates to answer these questions:
- What is the most important information they want to see in a feature request issue to be able to work on it?
- What issue templates do the users use most often and why?
- What are the reasons they may start with a blank issue?
- What sections do they fill out and why?
- What are the reasons they skip sections when filling out a template issues?
- What could be improved about the issue templates?