Improving the Global Navigation Experience

Summary

Navigation is generally our first experience when trying a new product.

In this study, we conducted research to evaluate the usability and effectiveness of our global navigation system for PagerDuty. The primary goal was to assess whether users could intuitively locate key features and complete tasks efficiently using the navigation structure.

The research focused on identifying pain points, uncovering areas of confusion, addressing user feedback, and understanding user expectations regarding navigation labels, menu hierarchy, and overall design. The findings informed significant design updates, leading to measurable improvements in usability metrics and a more user-friendly navigation experience. This project exemplifies the importance of aligning navigation design with user mental models and demonstrates the value of iterative testing in creating effective digital experiences.

Tools

  • UserTesting

  • Figma

  • Pendo

Type & Timeline

  • Usability Testing

  • 1 month

 Goals

  1. Understand User Expectations
    Learn whether the global navigation aligns with user mental models, including where they expect to find specific content or features

  2. Identify Points of Confusion or Frustration
    Uncover areas where users encounter difficulties, such as mislabeled menus, excessive clicks, or hidden features.

  3. Evaluate Navigation Clarity and Intuitiveness
    Determine if users can easily understand the structure, labels, and hierarchy of the global navigation.

  4. Gather User Sentiment
    Collect qualitative feedback on the overall experience of using the global navigation, including perceived ease of use and satisfaction.

Methods

Script Creation

Given that we are already aware of some pain points our users faced with our navigation, we began by combing through NPS scores to identify areas of the menu to focus on. Some key pieces of feedback we received were “Navigation in PD is not easy. I can’t find easily all the calendars that I’m included in” as well as “…there is one thing that I find a little bit inconvenient: the while UI related to schedules… not very friendly and easy to navigate”. We also tracked how our navigation was performing through our NPS scores and found that 24% of the responses we received mentioned the navigation with an average score of 4.6/10. These responses were primarily concerned with finding upcoming schedules within the users’ accounts and adding new

With these pieces of feedback in mind as well as feedback we had received from other internal teams, we focused our script on the following parts of our product and navigation system:

  • Navigating to find individual user schedules and team schedules

  • Adding a new service to an account

  • Adding a new integration to an account

Participants were asked to perform a series of tasks reflecting these goals while thinking aloud and providing feedback on their experience within the webpage.

Participants

For this project we wanted to seek out users who are familiar with tools such as our own but who didn’t have specific knowledge around navigating through PagerDuty. With this in mind we sought out participants who fit the following criteria:

  • Worked as a DevOps engineer, IT, or infrastructure engineer

  • Used an incident management tool that was not PagerDuty

  • Went on-call at least once every other month

In the end, we ended up running the test with 15 participants unmoderated through the UserTesting platform.

Results

Analysis

Once we had run the test, we began by watching the recordings back and noting specific actions that each user took during the test, interesting comments they made, or spots where they ran into trouble. Once we had each session broken down into notes we then looked for patterns or repitions across all the participants, looking for overlapping experiences. Afterwards, we prioritized each issue to determine what we should acknowledge first and where we could make the most impactful improvements. Once we had our results compiled, I created a Figjam board with our results to share out with the relevant teams.

Outcomes

Based off what we found in this user test, we began making immediate small changes we knew would provide value to our users. The first of which was removing the “Learn More” sections within the nav that housed only links to the knowledge base.

Before

After

Next, we added a new link for users to look at the on-call shifts schedule under the profile avatar which we believed is more intuitive and easier to find. This has now become the primary pathway that users take to access their schedules. Through our gathered metrics, we found that this quickly became the most commonly used pathway to access the “My On-Call Shifts” page, with users using this link 4 times more often than the link under the global navigation.

The improvements to our navigation system are ongoing and iterative as the company develops and creates new features. However these small changes are examples of paper cuts that we can resolve to decrease annoyance or frustration while navigating through PagerDuty.