Rebuilding Join's navigation around how users actually think, dropping support tickets 32%

Join is like Jira for construction. As Head of Design, I lead a small team and ship product across the platform.

The new navigation rebuilds Join’s structure around projects. The old surface had grown feature-by-feature, with labels that drifted away from how users described their work. Customer success was absorbing tickets clustered around “how do I get to X.” Usability sessions confirmed users couldn’t describe Join’s structure in the product’s own terms. They described it in terms of projects.

Rebuilding around projects gave the app a clear rhythm: zoom in to one project, zoom out across the portfolio, two clicks in either direction.

Projects as the top-level unit

The nav isn’t a list of features anymore. It’s the portfolio, then the specific project you’re in. Features show up as sub-navigation inside the project’s context, sequenced to match the phase of work.

A two-click zoom rhythm

From the portfolio overview, two clicks take you into any view inside a project. From deep inside a project, two clicks take you back out. Symmetric. The rhythm is the part users feel, even if they can’t articulate why it’s easier.

Feature discovery as a side effect

When users land on a project, the nav surfaces features relevant to that project’s current phase. Discovery becomes natural, not something the product has to teach.

Results

Support tickets on navigation questions dropped 32% after launch. Users started reaching for the org-level portfolio views in ways they hadn’t before. The zoom-out had existed in the old nav, technically, but nobody used it because there wasn’t a clear path back in.

“The team at Join is very brave for tackling this kind of UX issue.”

“So valuable for end users and their organizations as they will discover and use more of Join’s capabilities.”