Jira's ever-evolving-UI (2025 Edition)

[#1]

In case you hadn't heard, Atlassian is pushing a new UI to Jira over the coming months.

And the changes (scroll to the end for some side-by-side comparisons) may be a bit of a surprise for your users.

I've never spent as much time thinking about Jira UI before @Alex Ortiz, @Rodney Nissen - ReleaseTEAM and @Robert Wen_Cprime_ roped me into a fun chat with @Sarah Wright and @Matt Reiner _K15t_ about it this past Thursday.

And now I can't stop thinking about it. This comment from "Administrator" got me digging:

This reminds me of what happened in 2018 when Atlassian changed the ‘top’ navigation bar to a ‘side’ navigation bar. The experience was so bad that *after* they rolled it out, they ran focus groups where 95% of users said they preferred the ‘top’ to the ‘side’. Then in 2020 the ‘top’ was brought back as an ‘improvement’ (“we have heard your feedback”) and because it was a “better navigation system”.

So as I only adminned on-prem Jira Server instances up through 2019, I was spared from all of this UI "whiplash". Or rather spared from user outcry over it. So I went digging. Oh boy.

@Rachel Wright's excellent 2020 Evolution of Jira Design - Part 2 is a terrific starting point. It links to a 2017 blog post (thanks Internet Archive!) that precisely describes what Administrator was talking about.

On November 21, 2017, it was declared: "Your teams are getting better navigation in Jira Cloud"

Pre-2017/2018 Top Nav

2018 Side Nav

Oh look, this is when they introduced the Project Sidebar

But then sometime in October 2019, we were told: A better navigation for Jira Cloud is coming soon

2019-2020 back to Top Nav (Project Sidebar stays)

Notably this included the introduction of the Your work page

Back in March of 2024 Atlassian started testing the New navigation via a Chrome Extension(?!) Apparently the EAP and Open Betas were a smashing success (97% of testers opted to stay with new nav) and so this new new UI is slated to roll out in 2025.

(Source: Webinar: Unpacking the new Atlassian global navigation experience)

So, what are you getting with this update?

2025 Side Nav is back

Hrm, that's a little hard to see. So I spun up a new site (and used the very cool cloud-to-cloud copy product data feature) to do some side-by-side comparisons. (No, not that side-by-side feature.)

2025 vs 2020 Nav

Summary

Ooof I have a lot of stuff in my fake Backlog

Boards

Issue

Huh, after having done the screenshots... it doesn't seem that bad. But hey, let's discuss.

[Darryl Lee]

Because I was blissfully unaware of the EAP and Beta (oh right, I was working on migrating us from Server to Cloud last year), I missed out on some very critical feedback.

Notably, the venerable @John Funk asks What is the New Navigation Being Created? but I really think he was wondering WHY?

One of the most frustrating things you can do to Jira users is constantly monkey with the interface. For awhile there are top navigation menus. Then all of sudden there are side navigation options. Then a combination. Then JWM comes out with a product specific top nave menu structure which is different from all of the other tools. 

And now a different navigation/menu structure is being worked on. Surely, you saw the uproar when the product navigation was changed recently. And the feedback was so bad, there were parts that had to be put back in place. 

Simply put, you can't keep doing this to your user base. If you roll this out, there amount of screaming will be at an all time high. The attitude in the past seems to have been, let them scream for a while and eventually they will get over it. And all of the new customers will see only the new one anyway, so it all works out. 

Yes. The term I'm going to try to get trending is "UI Whiplash".

Now, back on 2020, commenting on @Rachel Wright's excellent 2020 Evolution of Jira Design - Part 2, our good friend @Matt Doar wrote:

UI Design still feels like the fashion industry to me. Wait a couple of years and a new fashion will come along. Entertaining to watch.

To echo John, I don't think it's very entertaining for users, but rather, pretty frustrating. And for the admins who have to support them.

Ah well, maybe we get top nav back in 2027, just like in 2020, per @Administrator 's comment.

[Yatish Madhav]

Brilliant post @Darryl Lee  - thanks!

Yeah, love the progression and the customizability that has been introduced over time .... but totally agree that the way it was rolled out and allowing the option to switch back to the old UI will be a benefit that Atlassian should do some analytics on that they can share, just to get more real-world states as 97% def seems to subjective!

[Haddon Fisher]

I once worked at a super-large financial information company...not naming names, but it started with a "B" and ended in a "oomberg LP". Their core product was "the terminal" and when they call it that there's a good reason: it looks like someone reinvented DOS with a bit more colors. My first day, I was so shocked I laughed and made a comment to my boss about how we needed to hire some better designers. I will never forget his response:

"The purpose of a user interface is to allow users to interface with the application, so you need to evaluate it on those terms. Our users value speed and efficiency above all else so yes - in the year 2008 we still largely operate with a command line, because that's what gives our users what they actually need. It also is what they're used to, and even if we did want to improve the UI, we'd need to be extremely purposeful about it to make sure our user's experience and patterns weren't disrupted more than the minimal amount."

They began rolling out primarily mouse-based functionality in I think 2011 or 2012. We got rich text messaging in 2013. We heard a lot about the UI, but not from people who used it.

My dad, an architect and construction project manager said it slightly differently: Form follows function.

• Change fatigue is real, but is particularly acute when it involves UI's.
• Even ostensibly "good" changes can net out to negative value when the user impact is high.
• The best UI is the one that lets the user do the most amount of what they do, the most efficiently they can do it.

Things like inconsistency in patterns, frequent changes, and not aligning with the users on their actual needs are going to continue to result in feedback like this.