New Dovetail 3.0 experience

We've revamped navigation in Dovetail, making it simpler, more intuitive, and faster than ever for you to access customer insights.

Why we redesigned Dovetail

As Dovetail has grown over time, it has evolved into a powerful tool with tons of useful features. However, it has also become quite complex. We’ve consistently heard from our users that they find Dovetail's navigation confusing and difficult to use when trying to find information, navigate the platform, and comprehend its overall structure.

This issue is especially significant for users who are not familiar with research taxonomy and detailed analysis processes—such as product managers, engineers, and executives—who need to quickly and easily find the information required to inform their product decisions.

In the new Dovetail, users will start with a simplified UI that helps them focus on tasks without distractions. Advanced options will be progressively revealed when project requirements become more complex, guiding users from data to insights.

At the same time, Dovetail continues to be a powerful analysis tool. We keep all the advanced features and options users value in Dovetail, but only when needed, with access to advanced filters and multiple views exactly when and where they’re most useful.

Navigating your workspace

We’ve moved global navigation actions to a vertical sidebar, where you'll find Home, Search, Your work, Browse, Settings and More.

When working in a project, the sidebar will be collapsed to give you more room to focus on your work. It can be opened by pressing ☰ in the top left, or by hitting [ on your keyboard.

Navigating your projects

We’ve moved to horizontal navigation in projects to visually understand the steps from data to insights. Streamlined with quick access to filters and menus to help you focus on the task at hand.

Customize each project to fit your workflow by toggling the visibility of project features by pressing + and adjusting the customize toggles.

You can organize and view your project data the way you'd like by clicking the 'Refine' icon at the top right. This is where you will find project views and filters, allowing you to decide what and how you want to see your projects.

If you have an existing Dovetail workspace, you can enable the new Dovetail 3.0 experience for your account by clicking on your avatar in the top right of your workspace and pressing Enable for me. This will only enable it on your account and won't impact other users in your workspace. To switch back to the old interface, open the sidebar and press ☰ More and disable the toggle.

If you're new to Dovetail or have created a new workspace, you'll automatically be using the new Dovetail 3.0 experience, so you won't need to do anything!

As part of the new simplified experience, we'll also be removing some older, underutilized features and options within Dovetail. A full list of these features is below.

Sentiment analysis

You can now use magic highlight to automatically find and highlight key moments in your data.

Viewing tag boards as a list and collapsing tag groups

Tag boards can now only be viewed in a board view, and you aren't able to collapse entire tag groups.

Side panel object view and ability to minimize objects

Objects can now only be viewed in center panel, or full page views. Objects will open in center panel by default, and can be opened in full page by clicking on ••• in the top right, then pressing Open in full page.

Applying multiple 'Sort by' rules

You can now only apply one sort by rule on object views within your projects.

Custom workspace theme

The ability to select a custom color theme for your workspace has been removed, and default colors have been applied to all buttons and labels.

Project settings page

Most actions that were once located on the project settings page are now under the project options menu which can be found under the ••• in the top right of a project when using the new 3.0 experience. Other actions, such as navigating to trash, can be found in workspace settings.