[Lens] Creating visualizations from Discover page works differently depending on a context in Dashboard

[jughosta]

Kibana version: 8.3

Description of the problem including expected versus actual behavior:
Creating a visualization from Discover histogram works differently depending on a current context (whether a user already started creating a dashboard or not). Question: is it a feature or a bug?

Steps to reproduce:
Case 1: if user went to Discover directly, pressed "Edit visualization", it will open “Visualize Library > Create” page + “Save” button
Case 2: if user started creating a Dashboard and a visualization but interrupted it by going to Discover and pressing “Edit visualization”, it will open “Dashboard > Create” page + “Save and return” button

Noticed while testing #129053

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-vis-editors @elastic/kibana-vis-editors-external (Team:VisEditors)

[flash1293]

Good question - @elastic/kibana-presentation team, what do you think about this?

[teresaalvarezsoler]

I think it's a feature... In the Case 2 we assumed the user wants to save the visualization in the last opened dashboard.

[ThomThomson]

In short, I agree with Teresa that this seems more like a feature, but I want to go a little bit deeper because I think this depends on where we draw the line that defines a user's session.

We've previously considered that if a user navigates via the nav drawer rather than via links / drilldowns in the apps, that it ends their session and starts a new one. In that case, the minute the user clicks discover from the Lens page, they will have left their session behind, which would mean forgetting that they were building a dashboard earlier. In this case though, it seems as though the originatingApp is either forwarded to discover then back to lens, or is stored separately in Lens, even though the user navigated through the nav drawer.

I think that navigating via the nav drawer and navigating through a button on the page should be treated the same, and only specific drilldowns registered on data click should come with special behaviour.

[jughosta]

An issue with Case 2 could be that user can't select a dashboard where to put their new visualization. It will be simply added to the active dashboard.

[teresaalvarezsoler]

If we assume this is the desired behavior by users at least 80% of the times, then this is the correct UX. Otherwise we will be introducing an additional annoying step for most users most of the times.

Did we receive any feedback in the past from users that this is not desired? You could also look at the metrics in Full Story if you consider this is important.

[jughosta]

Thanks for looking into it! Feel free to close the issue.
I think #134017 could improve UX a little here.

[teresaalvarezsoler]

Good point, closing the issue then.