Improving the Board View experience in GitHub Projects
During my internship, I improved task visibility and workspace control by restoring key features, introducing new interaction models, and pitching two new board view concepts as GitHub Projects became more widely used by non-developers.
MY WORK
Interaction Design • UX Research • Design System • Enterprise Tools
TOOLS
CONTEXT
What is GitHub Projects?
Projects is GitHub's one-stop-shop for organizing and prioritizing work, serving as a single source for hubbers to integrate, plan, and track issues and pull requests.
During the course of my internship, I touched many corners of the interface, pitched new ideas, and saw several projects to completion. Below, I highlight one key improvement I led.
THE CHALLENGE
Board View wasn't keeping up with user needs.
Research and insights
To uncover needs across different user types, I:
Analyzed feedback from GitHub Discussions, user tickets, and internal user interviews
Identified a desire for faster, at-a-glance comprehension and less clicking
Balancing familiarity with flexibility
Originally built for engineers tracking bugs and issues, Board View lacked the flexibility and scannability required by a broader, non-developer audience. Key frustrations included:
Missing item descriptions (a legacy feature), forcing users to click into every card
No support for image previews, making visual workflows cumbersome
Overwhelming column density, especially for large or shared boards with higher workflow complexity
ITEM DESCRIPTIONS
Prioritizing scannability in item descriptions.
Why do teams want item descriptions?
Through user feedback analysis, I identified that many teams relied on item descriptions for quick context. Without them, users had to click into each item, slowing down workflows.
To address this, I:
Designed a preview layout that showed the first few lines of each item’s description
Worked with engineers to ensure that longer text was truncated gracefully
Validated that users also wanted task list previews, which I introduced alongside item descriptions
IMPACT
Reduced click-depth by surfacing key context on the card itself
Introducing a preview mode for text and task lists
ADDING IMAGE PREVIEWS
Balancing clarity for technical users and customization for visual teams.
A double-edged sword
Image preview usage would be nuanced. They were great for visual-heavy workflows (e.g., marketing, product roadmaps), but were clutter for technical teams who mostly dealt with text-based tasks. Thus, I:
Identified divergent needs between devs (who preferred minimal cards) and non-dev teams (who relied on images)
Proposed a toggle setting for enabling/disabling previews
Designed card visuals that maintained hierarchy even with image content
IMPACT
Enabled richer workflows for design and product teams without cluttering dev boards
Customizing image previews: introducing description, image, and task list previews and the ability to toggle them
Users can understand what a card is about at a glance without needing to click in.
Users who rely more on narrative and less on card titles can quickly scan a board's contents.
Even with previews, users still have to click into a card to see all of its details. Is there a way to surface the content without having to click away from the current page?
An important factor is speed
Users wanted faster access to common actions (like expanding/collapsing columns), and wanted all information without having to click away from the main Board view.
To address this, I:
Prioritized expand/collapse as a quick action, making it immediately accessible.
An expandable board card via a caret in the top right corner
A NEW OPPORTUNITY?
Refining the interaction model.
Packing more power into the Board, without the bloat
During testing, I uncovered a deeper user behavior: users often ignored entire columns when boards became dense or shared across teams, but didn't want to hide them completely.
I reframed the opportunity: this wasn’t just about visibility—it was about board manageability.
So, I:
Designed two interactions: (1) collapse to hide column details, and (2) compress to shrink cards for ultra-dense boards
Pushed for both as quick actions, minimizing friction in fast-paced workflows.
Pitched both views as a step toward improving board triage workflows, setting the stage for more scalable boards as they grow more complex.
IMPACT
Allowed users to triage boards more efficiently and customize their workspace
Pitching different column views: collapsed and compressed
TAKEAWAYS
What I'll keep in my back pocket.
A few new North Star design principles for my toolkit
Don't just listen — watch
User interviews told me what people said they wanted, but it was up to me to uncover what they actually needed.
Pitching the "next step" matters
Framing new features as part of a larger workflow narrative helped secure buy-in and push ideas forward.
A balancing act
The most flexible tools are those that feel simple…until you need more. Designing for that balance was key.
A big THANK YOU! to my mentors Jannes Peters, Manuel Solera, and Matt Pence, and to my intern cohort :)