GitLab: Designing for Innovation

Shaping GitLab’s DevOps Experience (2015-2016)

GitLab is an open-source platform for software development and DevOps lifecycle management. It integrates tools for version control, continuous integration (CI), and project management into a single interface. This allows developers, managers, and designers to collaborate on code, manage issues, review changes, and automate testing and deployment workflows.

As the second design hire, my role was to align the open-source community with GitLab’s new vision while helping expand GitLab into a broader Product Management delivery platform. I focused on optimizing engineering delivery, staying true to the DevOps domain. My primary goal was to refine and enhance the way teams collaborate, plan, and ship software within GitLab. GitLab Workflow emerged as the cornerstone of the initiative.

Below are some of the projects I helped launch:

Resolving Merge Conflicts in GitLab UI

GitLab was the first to introduce in-browser conflict resolution with version 8.11, allowing users to edit and comment directly within the UI without needing external tools. Prior to this, resolving merge conflicts involved checking out the branch locally, fixing issues, and pushing changes using Git tools. Following GitLab's lead, other platforms have since adopted similar solutions to simplify collaboration.

GitLab Milestones

Milestones in GitLab are a way to track issues and merge requests created to achieve a broader goal in a certain period of time. Milestones allow you to organize issues and merge requests into a cohesive group, with an optional start date and an optional due date.

GitLab Issues: From Community Collaboration to DevOps Backbone

 Originally designed for community engagement, GitLab Issues evolved into a powerful tool for brainstorming, problem-solving, and planning. Now, it’s the backbone of GitLab’s end-to-end DevOps workflow, seamlessly integrating ideas with execution through merge requests.

More layout designs and design system elements are showcased below.