Let the Logo Lead Us Home 🏠 🍗
Not planned
The new navigation bar looks good overall, but there’s one small thing that’s been bothering me. I’m used to clicking the logo in the top-left corner to go to the dashboard, but with the new setup, it now shows the role/company switcher, which I rarely use.
Maybe the role/company switcher could go back under the profile menu, and the logo could link to the dashboard again?
I know it’s a minor UX thing 😂, but I’m curious how others feel about it.
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Hi Kennard, it's funny that you mention that as I sent a ticket to aXcelerate the other day as it also bugged me a bit. I then realised that they have a 'Dashboard' menu item and this does the same functionality as what the logo use to do. I think it's a strange choice as it's quite common these days for the logo to link to a site's dashboard. I agree with you in that I'd rather the role switch under the menu and the dashboard link in the logo. I'm also curious what others think :)
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I would prefer the logo to still link to the dashboard as well, though agree it's only a very minor thing.
As Belinda mentioned, it's still perfectly doable through the 'Dashboard' menu item, and I'm sure we'd get used to it... but it does strike me as being that tiny bit harder doing things this way.For such a frequently-used action, having the dashboard link blending in with the other menu items is slightly less user-friendly than before, where the logo acted as a big 'home' button that stood out from the rest. I feel that having the role switching grouped with your profile was more intuitive as well.
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Hi all, thanks for the comments.
I agree — this feels more like an accessibility issue. Most web apps place the logo in the top-left corner, so users naturally associate that with a way to return to the home page.
This could become a bigger issue once the old navigation is deprecated, especially for users with low digital literacy. I can already picture the kind of phone support call that I will be talking to:
“Hover over the navigation bar on the top left corner, find the dashboard or home icon, then click on it…”
(and if their cursor moves out of the navigation area, the menu disappears)
Compare that to the much simpler:
“Do you see the logo in the top left corner? Just click on that.”
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I agree that clicking on the logo should take you to the dashboard, it was a handy feature.
Our logo is also shrunk and looks horrible.
The new option would make sense if the logo button allowed you to switch between aXcelerate organisation accounts, but that doesn't seem to be an option either, I actually can't see how you do this in the new navigation.
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Hi all – thanks for all of this feedback!
What we're aiming for here is to convey the data hierarchy better via the navigation menu. By having your customer account at the top, everything below it is visually contained underneath, implying a hierarchy.
Making your customer account name also the account switcher also provides a more intuitive way to switch accounts:
Having a dedicated menu item for the Dashboard also makes it easy for us to include this in our handy Ctrl + K (Cmd + K on Mac) keyboard shortcut to easily jump between pages – try it out if you haven't already!
Regarding logo sizing – stay tuned. We're in the process of adding another setting to add a square logo that will be used for the navigation menu.
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Hi Brendan,
Thanks for the explanation.
I tried the Cmd + K shortcut and I’m pretty happy with it, though there’s still some room for improvement. For example, when I type “class,” the first result is “Create Class,” but I find myself using “Manage Classes” more often. It might just be me, though. Aside from that, I still find it quicker to move my cursor to the top left and click Dashboard directly than to type it in the command bar.
The hierarchy makes sense if you’re a customer of multiple admin RTOs using aXcelerate. But that’s not really the case for me — or for any of our trainers and admin staff. We all manage just one RTO, so switching between customers isn’t something we really do. I’d imagine that’s probably the case for others as well (happy to be corrected if I’m wrong!).
In saying that, I’ve done training with another RTO that uses aXcelerate, where I had a student role. But once that course was completed, I rarely — if ever — switched accounts again. So, for me personally, the new hierarchy doesn’t add much value and feels like a step back in terms of usability.
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