@RHo @Volker_E I conducted a simple user test on usertsting.com in an attempt to verify that given this change:
(1) non-experts are able to navigate to their profile page (i.e. userpage) easily
(2) non-experts are able to navigate to their preferences/settings page easily

Results

• There were 7 participants
• All participants were able to navigate to their profile page, and to their preferences/settings page with no issues
• 5 out of 7 participants looked for their profile page under the user menu first, then clicked their user name. It took them between 2 and 5 seconds to realize it wasn't there and then click on their username

Assumptions

• It's okay if people spend a few seconds looking through their user menu before clicking on their user name
• The previous design, where the user name was next to the user menu wouldn't necessarily make a difference in terms of people thinking their profile page is located under the user menu
• In a real scenario, where the person has chosen their own user name, it might be more noticeable to them and they would be even more likely to think to click on it
• We can change this in the future if we determine it to be an issue

Thanks @alexhollender, that makes sense. Since the username link is a main entry point to the Growth team's newcomer homepage feature on Desktop, we can actually help monitor whether discoverability of their userpage/homepage is impacted by this change. Pinging @MMiller_WMF and @nettrom_WMF - should this be something we keep track of?

Secondly, we will want to ensure that the current guided tour pop-up with the arrow pointing to the username is not broken by this change.

Change 702232 had a related patch set uploaded (by Clare Ming; author: Clare Ming):

[mediawiki/skins/Vector@master] POC move userpage link to precede notifications

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/702232

hi @alexhollender -- I'm assuming this reshuffling of menu items only applies to modern Vector?

Pushed a quick POC patch to show new placement of user page link to precede notification icons in modern Vector:

Unless this request applies anywhere else, a small change in the relevant template should be all that's needed.

Re: @RHo's points:

1. Pending response, if we need to track this change, presumably a new ticket to add instrumentation will be needed?
2. I'm not sure how to test POC change with the guided tour popup - I will follow up once I do know

In T285728#7184754, @RHo wrote:

Pinging @MMiller_WMF and @nettrom_WMF - should this be something we keep track of?

Given the high usage of this link to find the Homepage I think we definitely want to understand how this plays out for us, but I'm also wondering what @MMiller_WMF thinks. By the way, our most recent analysis of this was done in February last year: T245369

Will this roll out to a few wikis to begin with? If so, maybe we'll have a few wikis we can analyze the effect on and get a better sense of the impact?

In T285728#7185231, @nettrom_WMF wrote:

In T285728#7184754, @RHo wrote:

Pinging @MMiller_WMF and @nettrom_WMF - should this be something we keep track of?

Given the high usage of this link to find the Homepage I think we definitely want to understand how this plays out for us, but I'm also wondering what @MMiller_WMF thinks. By the way, our most recent analysis of this was done in February last year: T245369

Will this roll out to a few wikis to begin with? If so, maybe we'll have a few wikis we can analyze the effect on and get a better sense of the impact?

So when we deploy it will be avaiable as opt-in across all wikis, and by default to this set of wiki: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements#List_of_early_adopter_wikis_(test_wikis) so monitoring first should be fairly straightforward. We'll also be doing analysis of usage before and after from our side as well and can share anything we fine. cc @MNeisler

1. Pending response, if we need to track this change, presumably a new ticket to add instrumentation will be needed?
2. I'm not sure how to test POC change with the guided tour popup - I will follow up once I do know

I think these are out the realm of analysis for this task. We can make that a blocker for deployment. Your analysis looks good to me and this looks ready to estimate!

In T285728#7185146, @cjming wrote:

hi @alexhollender -- I'm assuming this reshuffling of menu items only applies to modern Vector?

Pushed a quick POC patch to show new placement of user page link to precede notification icons in modern Vector:

looks great, and yup only modern vector (they are actually already in this order in legacy vector)

@alexhollender FYI this is how it looks with the OBOD

In T285728#7188288, @Jdlrobson wrote:

@alexhollender FYI this is how it looks with the OBOD

Presumably we'll need some margin to the left of the OBOD as well?

the username is currently missing the correct padding, which is noted in T285786. I will add a note to that task to check how things look with the OBOD.

Change 702232 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/skins/Vector@master] Move userpage link to precede notifications

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/702232

Hi all -- I'm sorry for being late to this task, but I do want to follow-up on whether the Growth team's GuidedTour popup still works as expected with this change. I'm assuming that we should check from our perspective. @Etonkovidova, could you please check it?