Two questions come up constantly once you are signed in, and both of them have
an answer that is already on your screen: where can I go from here, and
which organisation am I in.
Everywhere you can go is listed down the left
On a laptop or a desktop the product’s screens sit in a column down the
left-hand side of the window, and they stay there. You do not open a menu to see
them and you do not close one to get on:
- Dashboard
- Signals
- Findings
- Sources
Whichever one you are reading is filled in and set slightly heavier, with its
symbol picked out in colour, so the list also answers “where am I” without you
having to read the page title.
The column can be narrowed to just the symbols if you would rather have the
width back. Press the control at the top-left of the bar, or ⌘B on a Mac and
Ctrl+B elsewhere. Hovering a symbol names it. Your choice is remembered on
that device, so it is still narrowed the next time you sign in and it does not
flicker open on the way there.
On a phone the same list is one tap away
Below a laptop width the column slides out over the page instead of standing
beside it. The same control at the top-left opens it, and it holds exactly the
same screens, in exactly the same order — there is no shorter phone version to
learn, and nothing is reachable on one device and missing on another.
Tap a screen to go there, or tap the dimmed page beside the panel to close it
again.
The organisation you are acting in never leaves the screen
Your organisation’s name sits in the bar across the top, at every window width,
on every screen in the product. It is there in the very first thing the browser
draws — you will not catch a product screen with a blank space where the name
should be.
It stays there when the navigation panel is open, too. The panel slides out
underneath the top bar rather than over it, so at the moment you are choosing
where to go next you can still read which organisation you are choosing it in.
Everything in this product is scoped to one organisation. A finding, a signal, a
source and a connected channel all belong to exactly one, so “which one am I in”
is not a detail — it is the difference between resolving something on your own
systems and resolving something on someone else’s.
Moving to another organisation
If you belong to more than one, the organisation’s name is a menu. Open it and
every organisation you belong to is listed, with the one you are in now marked
and set in bold. Names are written out in full there rather than shortened, because that
list is the one place you are deliberately comparing them.
Choosing one reloads the product into it and says so at the top of the screen:
“Now acting in Acme Payments EU. You were in Acme Payments.” The notice stays
until you dismiss it. It does not fade while you are still reading it.
You land on the same screen you were on rather than the same record. Records
belong to the organisation they were read from, so an individual finding’s
address means nothing in the organisation you have just moved to — but Findings
still does.
If you belong to exactly one organisation, the name is not a menu. There is
nothing to switch to, and a menu offering a list of one teaches you that the
control is decoration.
If a switch does not take, the product says so rather than leaving you guessing. You get a
message naming the organisation you are still in, with the list still open so you can try again or
pick a different one. It will never spin quietly and leave you to work out which side of the
switch you ended up on.
Your account is at the right-hand end
Your avatar sits at the far right of the top bar. Everything to do with your
own account is behind it — your password, two-factor authentication, connected
accounts, and the devices you are signed in on — and none of that changed when
the navigation did.
Beside it is the light/dark control. It switches on that device only, and it
takes one press: whichever theme you are not currently looking at.
What is deliberately not here
There is no search box. There is nothing in this product to search yet, and
a field that takes what you type and can never answer is worse than no field at
all — an absence does not make a promise.
There is no notifications bell. Findings are delivered outbound, into the
channel you connected on the Sources screen. This product does not page anybody
and does not keep an inbox for you to check, so there is nothing for a bell to
open. If you want to know what has been raised, Findings is the screen.
Reading it with a screen reader
Each screen offers a single main landmark, so jumping to the page content
lands you on the page content rather than on a choice between two of them. The
navigation column is a navigation landmark named Product, and the screen you
are on is marked as the current page rather than only being coloured in.
The first thing in the tab order on every product screen is Skip to content,
which jumps past the bar and the navigation in one press.