New navigation patterns...

designerd

...are a nightmare.

As a designer, I fully understand the time and effort that went into your recent rebrand and the interface updates that came along with it. But I question how much of your changes were actually tested and informed with customer insights and feedback.

Especially when it comes to the navigation updates you've made, which were intended to make finding and navigating to murals and rooms easier - so far, I've found the exact opposite to be true.

For example:

• Is there a reason your "home" dashboard doesn't get it's own tab? When I'm working with a mural, and want to go back home to load another mural for some content comparison, you kill the mural I'm viewing and load the dashboard.
• You have now defined specific spaces for Murals, Rooms and Templates (great!). If I now visit Rooms, and then view all Private Rooms, then view a private mural, I'm shown breadcrumb navigation (great!) but the base link is to the Workspace (instead of Private Rooms or even Rooms) - so instead of using breadcrumbs to navigate backward through the spaces, you make me go all the way to the beginning to then poke through to Rooms -> Private Rooms to see private murals again. I'm sure there's an opportunity to improve that flow.
• Removing granularity from the left-hand menu (ability to see an additional layer of content, like rooms) has created a lot of clicking back and forth and multiple clicks to get anywhere or view content.
• It seems your UI has become very opinionated. “Good design, when it's done well, becomes invisible. It's only when it's done poorly that we notice it”.

Food for thought!

Cheers ✌️

Meghan

Thanks for the feedback, @designerd! There are several lines of feedback here; we're listening, and if I am able to pin any specific items to motivation for updates, I'll let you know!

ryannee

Thank you, @designerd! This is super helpful feedback. I'm Ryan Nee, the product design director for some of the things on your list.

Removing granularity from the left-hand menu (ability to see an additional layer of content, like rooms) has created a lot of clicking back and forth and multiple clicks to get anywhere or view content.

Based on feedback from beta program participants and post-launch reactions, our team has been actively working on fast-follow improvements to the experience of finding a Rooms page. An updated design will launch soon, and we plan to iterate on it in the coming months. Particularly for power users of Mural, we know that we missed the mark with the Rooms experience, and we're rapidly trying to make it better.

...but the base link is to the Workspace (instead of Private Rooms or even Rooms)

Oddly enough, the workspace name in that breadcrumb does actually go back to the Rooms page, but the breadcrumb isn't very clear about that at all. Thanks for pointing this out — I'll add it to our list of fixes. I'm glad to hear that you're a fan of the breadcrumbs generally speaking, however.

Is there a reason your "home" dashboard doesn't get it's own tab?

Just to make sure I'm understanding your question, are you wanting to have a new tab open when you're in the canvas and you click on the logo to go back to the dashboard? We have considered doing that, but we have been worried about biasing toward opening new tabs all the time for fear of cluttering people's browser windows. We've gone back and forth about this though, so if you have a moment, I'd love to hear more of your thoughts about why opening a new tab is the right choice. (Also, there is a bug where we're ignoring the standard browser behavior of Command + clicking the logo to open a new tab. That's on our list of fixes to make.).

If there's anything else (especially things outside the canvas itself) that are giving you trouble in the next weeks or months, please let me know! And thanks again for your candid feedback, it's genuinely helpful.

designerd

Hey Ryan,

Thanks for the insights and feedback, appreciate it!

For your questions, I've tried to clarify below:

This is a personal perspective of course, but I'd consider the dashboard as a home base, where I launch the boards I want to work on. So if my starting point, every time I sign in to Mural, is the dashboard, I need navigate to a specific board to start working. Because of this, I would love to have the board load in a new tab, as this keeps my dashboard anchored as a home base, and I can quickly navigate back and open another board (like a hub-and-spoke model).

Today, if I start from the dashboard, and then open a board, it loads in the same tab, and I lose my home base. And if I click the logo when viewing a board, you load the dashboard in the same tab, and I lose the board I was viewing. So it becomes this complicated loop.

I almost never have a single mural open at once, so this creates a lot of back-and-forth between the dashboard and an individual board.

This is all in regards to the Mac app though, which I expect to behave differently than the typical web experience.

Unfortunately, I have to blame your competitor, Miro, for setting that expectation (anchored dashboard, boards in new tabs) having used it for 2 years every day. In the end, I personally think it's a more productive experience, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time to adjust.

Cheers!

ryannee

@designerd Thanks for the detailed comment! I shared this with the team responsible for making the decision about whether to open a new tab or not. Your thoughts will influence that decision.

Unrelated, we launched a new Rooms page yesterday. It doesn't fully solve the back-and-forth problem you were describing above, but this list view is a step forward from the carousel-oriented page we launched last week. More improvements on their way.