An example of how a seemingly simple UI change can have bigger implications

[Cleop]

As a product owner it can sometimes be challenging trying to understand how long various issues will take. Sometimes things that one might imagine are small can take a long time and vice versa.

It's great when your scrum master or developer can communicate effectively with you to help you understand how things work and why they may take a given length of time. But sometimes doing this is hard to put into non-technical terms.

Here's a nice example that will hopefully help illustrate this dilemma:

This navbar changes colour so that whichever page the user is on is shown highlighted in blue:

Changing the items in the navbar seems like a simple change, just some new words and text.

However, what if one of these new items were to involve a dropdown menu? What implications does this have for the highlighting styling? When a user clicks on the dropdown menu nav item the menu opens, at this point should that menu item be highlighted to show the menu is open? Should the previous highlighted menu item remain highlighted to show you are still on the same page but you also have a menu open? Or should that item be deselected? In that instance, would the item then be reselected if you were to close the menu again?

As you can see, one simple change from a navbar item leading to a page and highlighting what page you are on to a navbar item acting as a dropdown menu presents lots of questions. Depending on how you choose to answer these questions then may create additional work for the team according to the consequences of the change.

[iteles]

Thanks @Cleop, this is great.

The other example I often use a client asking for a checkbox to be added to sign up on 'sign up to our newsletter', thinking it will be a 15 minute quick addition at the end of a sprint.

But the questions then begin to appear - how will you know the person has ticked the subscribe box? Do app admins get an email, check a spreadsheet or have an admin dashboard? If none of these things are already in place, they need to be created.
How will the admins safely have access to the person's email address? Is additional consent needed? Is GDPR a consideration? Is there a need to integrate with your mail sending service so you don't have to manually copy each email address?

[iteles]

Another one: look at all the thought that has to go into a simple delete function!
https://github.com/emfoundation/ce100-app/issues/894