Managing complex, large-scale projects in Jira often presents challenges in efficient navigation, task management, and communication. Our team “Innovitify” designed an AI solution to streamline these processes, enhancing user experience and efficiency. Grounded in key design principles, our solution ensures familiarity, consistency, and accessibility, making it a valuable tool for Jira users.
Problem Statement
New and existing Jira users face difficulties in navigating the platform, managing multiple tasks, and prioritising their workloads effectively. These challenges can lead to reduced productivity and increased frustration. Our AI assistant aims to address these issues by providing intelligent assistance, thereby simplifying task management and improving overall user experience.
Research and Insights
We conducted primary research using think-aloud protocols and interviews to identify user pain points. Participants highlighted challenges in finding necessary tools, managing task priorities, and navigating the platform efficiently. Users expressed a need for an AI tool that could assist in organising tasks based on due dates and priorities.
Design Principles
Addressing these pain points, our design solution emerges. Integrating AI to streamline and enhance user experience, firmly grounded in key design principles.
Our solution is tailored to a user-centred design. It directly addresses their challenges, making navigation and task management smoother. To do this, we made sure that our design solution caters to design principles.
Recognition Over Recall: Ensuring users don’t get stalled having to remember details.
Consistency: The new AI feature is consistent with existing Jira functionality, meeting user expectations.
Accessibility: Ensuring every user, regardless of their ability, can seamlessly interact with the AI features.
Competitor Analysis: Our competitor analysis revealed a broader application of AI in other issue and project tracking products. We studied how AI is integrated into platforms like Microsoft Teams, Monday.com, and Lark. These insights drove us to envision an AI assistant that not only helps users navigate through various functionalities but also simplifies mundane task management.
Primary Research
Our team conducted primary research methods such as think-aloud protocol and interviews to better understand the problem scope.
Interview: Interviews gather in-depth qualitative data by engaging users in structured or semi-structured conversations about their experiences, needs, and preferences, allowing for a deeper understanding of user motivations and behaviors.
Think-aloud Protocol: The Think-Aloud Protocol involves users verbalising their thoughts, actions, and feelings while interacting with a design, providing insights into their cognitive processes and highlighting usability issues as they navigate through tasks.
Opportunities Discovered
Our research identified key opportunities to enhance the task management experience for project managers like Alex. While Jira’s priority tagging system was beneficial, it often left users overwhelmed on busy days, creating confusion and stress due to the sheer volume of tasks and lack of actionable direction.
To address this, we envisioned an AI assistant that acts as a personalised guide rather than just another tool. This AI would analyse Alex’s tasks, understand his work habits, and provide tailored suggestions. It recommends the most suitable tasks for different times of the day, aligning with Alex’s energy levels and work rhythm. For example, it suggests tackling high-priority tasks in the morning when Alex is most focused, and more creative tasks in the afternoon when he’s relaxed.
This AI transforms task management from a chaotic list into a clear, manageable path, reducing stress and enhancing productivity. By aligning task recommendations with Alex’s natural workflow, the AI assistant not only helps in completing tasks but also ensures that Alex is working at his best, making the entire process more satisfying and efficient.
Persona and Walkthrough
Based on the opportunities we discovered, we created two persona that reflect two usage scenarios. They are: John the Product Manager, and Clare the Designer.
Concept Development
We derived our design solution from intensive background research, case studies, and invaluable user feedback. The AI assistant was envisioned as a multifaceted tool to help users easily navigate tasks, assign them, and even fill in task descriptions, fostering enhanced communication among team members. The assistant also ranks tasks, aligning them with calculated importance and urgency, providing autonomy for Jira users.
Features
Our final design includes several key features:
AI-Assisted Task Management: Helps users prioritise tasks, create plans, and assign tasks to team members with options to review messages.
Interactive Planning: AI-generated plans are clear and customisable, allowing users to review, edit, and apply them as needed.
Enhanced Communication: AI assists in task assignment and communication, improving team collaboration and efficiency.
Customisation: Tasks can be grouped and displayed based on various attributes, such as due dates and priority.
Prototyping and User Testing
During the prototyping phase, wireflows and interactive prototypes were used to test our design. User testing provided valuable feedback, revealing the AI’s strengths in simplifying navigation and task management. Users suggested improvements in notification systems and interface clarity, which we incorporated into subsequent iterations.
Mid-Fidelity Prototype Evaluation
Our team conducted a cognitive walkthrough on our workflows and derived the following results. The findings provided insight into room for improvement. Which we took into consideration when iterating to the high-fidelity prototype.
Final Solution
Our final design integrates the AI assistant seamlessly into Jira, enhancing task management and communication while maintaining user control and customisation. The high-fidelity prototype showcases the AI assistant’s features, ensuring a user-friendly and efficient experience for Jira users.
The Figma high-fidelity prototype can be accessed here.
High-Fidelity Prototype Evaluation
Usability Testing: This provided our team with a snapshot of a user navigating through the design, with performance metrics and observations noted. Providing both insightful qualitative and quantitative data feedback. The insights of the evaluation will be used for future design iterations.
Our usability testing highlighted areas for improvement, including:
Minimise AI Assistant: Replacing the close button with a minimise button for better usability.
Email Notification Review: Allowing users to view and edit email notifications generated by the AI.
Customisable Plans: Adding steps for users to review and edit AI-generated plans before applying them.
Clear Visual Indicators: Enhancing visual indicators for AI-generated plans to improve clarity.
Validation
Participating in the Atlassian x SUEDE Designathon allowed us to create an innovative AI solution for Jira that addresses key user challenges. Through comprehensive research, iterative design, and user testing, we developed an AI assistant that enhances task management, navigation, and communication within Jira. This project highlights our ability to leverage AI technology to create impactful, user-centric solutions that improve productivity and user satisfaction. The positive feedback from users validates our approach and demonstrates the potential for wider application in project management tools.
