Usability feedback

[Bananeweizen]

Some feedback regarding UX:
* It was not obvious that all the build details are hidden behind the bluish "Build 1" label, after opening a repository. I had read the announcement and half of the help pages, and just couldn't map that overview screen with all the detailed screenshots. Maybe you want to have an explicit button besides that label.
* Next/Previous doesn't scale. If you have 20+ builds, you are lost in navigation.
* Status Failed/Success is not really clear. In most cases this fits to the overall build result, but I also have a maven build with a compile error, which is "Success" in YouMonitor.
* Please add F5 keyboard shortcut to refresh the repo.
* On the build summary page underneath the durations headline are the durations by tool/technology. It would be nice to make those hyperlinks, which switch to the respective tabs. On all other screens the similar labels are already hyperlinks.
* There is much empty space on build summary and "tool X" tabs. E.g. the summary contains 2 graphs with maybe 100 pixels of height, which could consume all the whitespace underneath to show more details with higher resolution. Similarly the Ant/Maven tabs could show more than 5 goals/targets to use the whitespace.

Ciao, Michael

[Bananeweizen]

Addendum: The build duration chart of a repository can be very confusing if you have mixed failed and success builds. Tools like Jenkins therefore color the points of the duration chart with green and red, according to the build result. That way shorter (but failed) builds don't confuse the user.

See images in https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-38741 for an example.

[Vladimir Kondratyev]

Thank a lot for providing feedback. Really appreciated. Please find my comments below.

It was not obvious that all the build details are hidden behind the bluish "Build 1" label, after opening a repository. I had read the announcement and half of the help pages, and just couldn't map that overview screen with all the detailed screenshots. Maybe you want to have an explicit button besides that label.

But “Build 1” looks like a hyperlink. It’s blue and has hover effect. We thought that it should be recognizable as a clickable active control. There is also popup menu in “Trends” graphs which has “Open Build” action.

Next/Previous doesn't scale. If you have 20+ builds, you are lost in navigation.

Please describe your workflow. We expect that the user clicks on some build in “Trends” graph and then opens it clicking “Build #N” link. That is why “Trends” are at the left side of the screen. For example, I would like to inspect internals of some long build. I see the build in “Trends”, click it and then open. In my workflow I do not need “Next” and “Previous”, may be “Open build #N” when I know build number. Which task do you solve ?

Status Failed/Success is not really clear. In most cases this fits to the overall build result, but I also have a maven build with a compile error, which is "Success" in YouMonitor.

Does your entire build finish successfully or fail? If your build consists only from Maven and Maven fails, but YouMonitor reports it as a successful, then it is definitely a bug. But if Maven is only a part of the complex build and the build ignores Maven failure, then this is different situation.

Please add F5 keyboard shortcut to refresh the repo.

Will do. May be in the next bug-fix build.

On the build summary page underneath the durations headline are the durations by tool/technology. It would be nice to make those hyperlinks, which switch to the respective tabs. On all other screens the similar labels are already hyperlinks.

Thank you for suggestion.

There is much empty space on build summary and "tool X" tabs. E.g. the summary contains 2 graphs with maybe 100 pixels of height, which could consume all the whitespace underneath to show more details with higher resolution. Similarly the Ant/Maven tabs could show more than 5 goals/targets to use the whitespace.

The interesting moment is that some people reported that they do not want to see more than 5 lines in top charts. Initially we showed as many lines as free space allows and people complained about UI cluttering. It seems that it should be configurable.

BTW, what is the resolution of your monitor?

[Bananeweizen]

But “Build 1” looks like a hyperlink. It’s blue and has hover effect. We thought that it should be recognizable as a clickable active control. There is also popup menu in “Trends” graphs which has “Open Build” action.

As far as I'm aware that is the only place in both YouMonitor and Yourkit, where a bold headline is clickable. Maybe I got used to the headline style so much I ignored the blue due to that. All other links in YouMonitor and Yourkit are in text below such headlines, I believe.

Please describe your workflow. We expect that the user clicks on some build in “Trends” graph and then opens it clicking “Build #N” link. That is why “Trends” are at the left side of the screen. For example, I would like to inspect internals of some long build. I see the build in “Trends”, click it and then open. In my workflow I do not need “Next” and “Previous”, may be “Open build #N” when I know build number. Which task do you solve ?

I guess the problem is _initial_ user experience. Imagine you are a new user without any knowledge of the tool and you do the first profiling. The charts are empty, the Previous/Next labels are greyed out, but available. That moment you can only learn the previous/next labels for navigation. When you have collected some measurements, you may learn "by accident" that clicking the trend also selects a build.

BTW, what is the resolution of your monitor?

1920*1200 is the default screen size in our company