I don’t want the main page to change when I’m clicking the sidebar rail. I clicked there because I wanted to see the list of teams in the sidebar. I wasn’t expecting the main page to change, and I don’t want to be redirected from the main page I had been looking at; and certainly not to my own Profile page, which I almost never want to see.
It was surprising, disruptive, and violates a fundamental UX tenet (“the user is in control”).
It seems that Asana recalls the last object that you visited before switching between work, people etc. and opens it. If you open My task in Work, go away and than come back, My tasks will be opened again. If you switch into Inbox in Work area, Inbox will be opened when you come back to Work.
The linking of the sidebar to the main page is a major change that doesn’t feel right to me.
Another discovery: If I enter my email in the search box (I use the search box for quick navigation often), there’s now a new side effect: It switches the sidebar rail from Work, say, to People. I’m trying to navigate the main page; I didn’t ask to switch the sidebar. So that’s another problem with the new design, I feel.
Larry, I’m fully agree with you. I’m not a big fan of this new navigation as it brings a lot of confusion for me and my clients. And I even cannot say what should be displayed when we click Work or People. In case of Work option each of us will have another preferences, so maybe the last visited option is the best behaviour we could expect.
In case of searching when I press enter after typing my email address I see the list of objects related to my account but it is so short that I’m not sure if this searching works properly. But when mouse coursor is on person in search window, pressing enter moves me to my profile. So maybe this is your case.
Re your first paragraph, I feel that clicking a tab button in the leftmost rail should just the sidebar submenu and nothing else. And navigating the main page however you do it should not alter the way you last left the rail. Detached.
Re your second paragraph, I started to autocomplete my email address, waited to see the autocompletion, then saw my name under People and clicked to go there. I do the same to navigate to work objects I know the (partial) name of: teams, projects, portfolios, etc.
Thanks @lpb and @AnnaPapiernik for the feedback on the new page switching behavior.
This is an intentional design choice (Larry, the difference between your two environments is because we’re still in the process of rolling out the new version to everyone). When you switch to a different sidebar rail for the first time, you will be navigated to the first page within that rail. After that, you will navigate to the most recently visited item there.
We decided to link the sidebar rail to pages within it for a few reasons:
To keep the sidebar rail from drifting out of sync with the page you’re on, which was a common source of confusion in the earlier feedback we heard. For example, users were getting stuck in the wrong rail (like “People”) and were struggling to figure out how to get back to their projects (in “Work”).
To save a click by dropping you back on your most recent page (1 click instead of 2)
It follows a pattern that’s common across apps with layered navigation like ours, so it should feel more familiar and predictable to people using other tools
In our testing of the new behavior, we are indeed seeing that users are getting lost less often and are better able to find the work they’re looking for. At the same time, I completely understand there can be differences in what feels best here (the same behavior that keeps some people from getting lost can feel disruptive when you clicked the rail just to see the menu and didn’t expect your page to change). It even took me some time to get used to this myself!
We’ll keep listening here and are still actively exploring ways to reduce friction in the new navigation experience. I’ll keep posting as we have more to share. Thanks again for the feedback!
I appreciate your conveying the thinking behind the change, @Audrey_Breitwieser.
(For context, I’m an Asana Services Partner who has worked with hundreds of client organizations, and much of my career before this has been in interaction design, user experience, usability, and information architecture.)
I haven’t done specific usability testing, but I remain concerned about how suitable this will be for the clients I work with. For example, most typical users find the rail Work tab the one where they spend almost all of their time. With this change, navigating to a Team via Search box autocomplete now will switch their rail tab to People without their having asked to do that. I would expect that to add to disorientation, not reduce it. They’ll have to figure out what happened, then switch back to the Work rail tab.
Although it was mentioned earlier that we could expect customization options being available for the sidebar for users, I’m guessing this kind of behavior would not be customizable; is that a correct guess?
I’m guessing this kind of behavior would not be customizable; is that a correct guess?
That’s correct, we don’t plan to make this behavior customizable. The rail reflecting your current page is the foundation of how the navigation works now (the rail is essentially a “you are here” indicator tied to the page you’re viewing). Decoupling it for some users would mean the app behaves quite differently from person to person, which makes it harder for us to learn, document, and support. The customization I mentioned is more about what shows up in the sidebar and how it’s organized, rather than this underlying navigation model.
but I agree with @lpb on this one (and most often )
In those “confusing sidebar times” for users (the recent new model change that already caused a series of hiccups); I doubt that adding another automated mechanism will help bring the clarity and consistency they need.
From here, that almost looks like a bug.
An example of my preferred mindset
The sidebar section that all my clients prefer is their “Starred” section (as soon as they have understood the way it works). Why?
Because it doesn’t move and they can order it the way they want (instead of some hardly predictable sorting, like “most used”, or “recent”).
I believe that tells a lot about what most users would want: control (meaning, not automated UX behavior)
@Audrey_Breitwieser, definitely not a fan of how much horizontal real estate the new navigation takes up in Chrome when using Chrome’s vertical tabs feature.
There really needs to be a “Favorites” mode that lets us arrange things how we want them.
Harder to learn: This can be solved with better measurement systems and more effort on your part. How hard something is shouldn’t trump UX, especially when the difficult is tied to your ability to measure something, not provide end-user functionality.
Harder to document: You don’t need to document it. Have a default and document that. Need inspiration? Here’s some of Chrome’s documentation on bookmarks (which is effectively what a favorites tab would be).
Harder to support: Do you mean support from an engineering perspective or CS perspective? Having a “favorites” mode would be functionally similar to how “favorites” work already in the SidebarStarredSection within each mode.
Also, to follow-up on things @lpb mentioned re: how clicking the mode buttons work @Audrey_Breitwieser:
I 100% agree with Larry on all of this.
The current navigation is using <buttons> instead of <a href> to perform URL changes.
Buttons perform actions
Anchor links handle navigation
The way this is implemented is creating multiple issues:
The mode buttons do not support “Open in new tab” behavior via right-click, mouse modifiers (e.g., ⌘ + Click), or screen readers.
Clicking a mode changes the URL where the user is currently. And the only workaround is to use the ⌘ + K navigation to open something else from a different mode in a new tab. ⌘ + K is okay for this; but not ideal because it is built to search, not to exploratory browsing.
Summary
The primary sidebar items navigate to distinct, addressable application locations, update the browser URL, and determine the available local navigation. They should therefore use native hyperlink semantics rather than role="button" and aria-pressed.
The current implementation misrepresents navigation as a toggle action, uses aria-pressed for current-location state instead of aria-current, and removes standard browser link functionality such as opening the destination in another tab or copying its address.
I’ve just noticed Asana added yet another useless button in the already-horrible new sidebar: Agents. Look, I get it. AI is everywhere and everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. But it should be the user’s choice, not the company.
I’m glad to see @Audrey_Breitwieser has addressed the initial complaint about that new side bar and that it takes up too much screen real estate. I don’t know why it can’t be a simple “let us toggle it on or off” fix across the board.
Hi all, writing with an update that the new navigation experience is launching to all users over the next couple days. If you’re new to this thread and seeing the new experience for the first time today, you can refer to this message to understand the motivation behind the change.
This thread has drawn a lot of engagement, and we want you to know we’ve read every single message. We’re taking the feedback and actively considering how to continue streamlining the navigation experience (customization of your left rail is on the way). We know that navigation is core to how you move through Asana every day and that a change like this means adjusting muscle memory built up over a long time.
For additional product feedback or ideas (e.g. the desire to save more real estate in the left navigation, or better support for starred objects), please consider posting new topics in the product feedback category where other community members can comment and upvote. Ideas submitted there feed directly into our product planning process, so that’s the best path to make sure your input carries forward.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your experiences here. It helps us build a better product.
Not looking forward to this, to be honest Why not tackle the core issues (like customization) first, before launching this to everyone? This whole process is incomprehensible to me. I’m more frustrated with the way this change is being handled than the actual changes…
Adding to this: I’m very confused why my Workflow items are listed under Agents, when Agents are not critical for writing rules, managing or filling out starred forms, or creating custom fields.
When I need to go fill out a form for a new request, I do not automatically think “Hey, I should have a discussion with an Agent to explain what I want it to put in this form.” I just want to access the form, which has already been curated to collect the information I need to give it.
Edited to add: This seems to have reverted back to just the number and speech bubble icon. - August 5
I’d like to know why list view now shows "12 comments "
Adding the word “comments” and leaving the speech bubble seems redundant, but more critically, the length of the word “comments” is truncating the task names to the point that some of them are functionally illegible, especially when a task is expanded. I’m not sure what the rationale is here. Is the the number and speech bubble icon not enough of an indicator that there are comments? If “comments” has to be spelled out, why is the icon necessary? Why does the actual task name collapse before the word “comments”?
How many comments exist on a task is far less important information to me than being able to scan the list of task names for the item I’m looking for.
I really think Asana fubar’d this for many of us. Seriously, it isn’t that difficult to add the customize feature for the other (annoying) side menu—at the very least. Or give us the option to switch back to the previous layout. Not all updates are functional and if it screws up the user’s experience overall, it definitely doesn’t belong. I’ve been using Asana for over 6 years and have loved it. Now, it sucks.
It seems many of you are making great use of Asana.
Personally, I find the new sidebar menu, with items arranged from top to bottom in order of frequency of use, simpler and more natural than before. Perhaps it’s because I only use the Work tab on a daily basis.
Furthermore, since we switched to Teamless Projects, I’ve seen a significant decrease in opportunities to look at teams, so I don’t mind that the People tab is at the bottom.
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Why not tackle the core issues (like customization) first, before launching this to everyone? This whole process is incomprehensible to me. I’m more frustrated with the way this change is being handled than the actual changes…
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