@morbidpixie: Qualtrics is a survey tool we use occasionally. It doesn't do any profiling or tracking by itself, but when we turn it on, it'll run pop-over surveys on the site, so y'all can be even more candid with your feedback than you are here. : )
dw.cbsi.com is just an internal analytics tracker (cbsi being our parent company,) not a third-party.
Neither do any of the canvassing this thread was about.
@styx971: Date sorting options are on their way - stay tuned!
As for some shows not needing season/year separators, I'll chat with Jeff about it. We separated them out by year across the board, and in some instances like GOTY it still makes sense, even without a ton of content, but...there are always edge cases.
This site is chock full of edge cases, btw, which is what makes so many of these decisions difficult and frankly makes a lot of of this development take longer than it should. Things like the episode page redesign are hard because there can be 4 versions of an episode - video, podcast, free, premium, and there can be any combination of those four. Or a YouTube version. Show title already in the episode title or not. Show notes or not. Wiki links or not. Part of a show or not. Part of a serial show or an episodic show. Part of a show that publishes weekly or one that publishes a couple of times/year. The user is signed out/signed in/premium/moderator/staff. That's a whole lot of IF statements. : ) Anyways, not complaining, but just explaining why some of these edge cases haven't gotten the attention they need yet.
@theadmin You have some good questions in here, so I'll try to give some insight. There's a LOT of stuff here, so I'll try to respond to as much as I can, but I may not be able to keep responding to this thread much beyond this - I gotta get some other work done, too. : ) My responses in bold.
Navigation:
Why did "forums" and "wiki" not get the same treatment as "Words" in the top nav? - Forums and wiki are user-contributed content, so it's fairly natural that they get a different presentation. Also, especially in the case of forums, we wanted to make sure people still had quick access to the most popular forums rather than forcing a click to get to the Forums page before they can pick a forum.
Why was the "wiki" drawer split into 3 groups? (new releases, games, franchises, characters being the first group) - 3 columns fit the number of links well. I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at here.
It would be a lot more consistent and you could feature new additions and what's popular in the forums. If we did this in a large presentation like the other nav options, you'd lose the quick links to popular forums. If anything, we're leaning towards a more link-dense presentation for Videos and Podcasts going forward.
Why not make the nav menus open on click instead of hover?
This would remove the issue of clipping the menu item to the left and having it close on you. The nav menus are clickable themselves, so that precludes a click-to-open model.
Why is the search all the way to the right and kind of hidden? It's a fairly common model online to keep the search in the top right.
Why is the search filter, when the search is shown, all the way to left? I suppose it could be on the right, but if you consider it's a filter that takes precendence to the search, putting it on the left isn't too crazy. I'm not sure either side is particularly more usable.
Why if all the menu items have a menu drawer are there carets next to the words? We've been discussing the needs for these internally and haven't come to a final conclusion. The original intent was to show that they have drop-down menus - without the arrows, it isn't obvious that they have dropdowns, and you won't know they have dropdowns until you hover. That said, they do add a touch of clutter to the nav, and they dropdowns will probably be discovered regardless.
Homepage:
Why was all content, except for videos and tweets, removed from the homepage? Why not include new forum posts, new additions to the wiki, new games coming out? It was decided that the homepage should have a strong focus on editorial content - videos, podcasts, and articles. We wanted the nav to continue to give people quick access to the Forums and Wiki - folks who are interested in wiki and forums from the homepage will find them regardless (tends to be a very small percentage of users.) The wiki will get a more proper homepage of its own sometime this year.
Why does the hero have the show name as the biggest title and the name of the video the subtitle? (QUICK LOOKS, Dota auto chess) Shouldn't it be the other way around? Also a good debate to be had here. There are arguments that show names may be more recognizable in some instances. Show names have always preceded episode names on GB, but that said, it's not currently consistent with the carousel presentation.
Why do carousel arrows have such a subtle difference to whether it's active or not? We don't want the arrows drawing too much attention. The difference also may look more or less pronounced on different monitors with different brightness and contrast settings.
Why do carousels have latest items to the left on the homepage, but episode pages they go the opposite? Here's the concept: on the homepage, you're here to see the latest stuff, so right-to-left makes sense. On the episode page, at least for some shows, you're more likely to be watching them chronologically, so left-to-right makes sense. That said, the expected behavior kind of depends on the other sites you use - different sites do it different ways. We will be introducing a switch so folks can sort how they like. Why does the "live on GB Infinite" bar not follow any other design pattern?
It doesn't look like it's something you can click on It was designed late in the process. It's in the middle of a redesign.
Why do carousel item containers not visually show they're the same height as the arrows and "Show more" boxes?
I understand this is subjective, but I think it would be more visually appealing if the arrows / show more stopped at the bottom of the thumbnail, since the text below floats. Also a subject of internal debate. We have a new style in the works that will resolve this.
Latest / Shows List (Videos)
Why can't I filter, sort, or search the latest videos page or shows page? Well, it's the Latest videos, so the sort is kind of build in. I'm not sure what kind of filter you'd want here. A search would do the same thing as the main search. Interesting concept with bringing carousels to that page - we'll think on that.
The homepage concept serves better as the default videos page, with "latest" and "shows" as two pages from there. The user gets the best of everything, categorized carousels, latest grid, latest show grid.
Why does the shows page not show which ones have been updated or have new episodes? That would be a nice addition.
What order is the latest / shows page suppose to be in? (alphabetical, most recent, recently updated?) Aside from the top two promo slots, the Shows page is alphabetical.
How do I find uncategorized shows? (For example "The 'There's no new games' Show" video). You're pretty much stuck with Search. We discussed a "miscellaneous" show, but that doesn't really solve the problem as it becomes a big pile of random stuff.
Episode List
Why is there no episode list page?
After clicking a show, you go directly to an episode instead of a listing of all episodes and years (which act as seasons) for the show. Netflix, HBO, Hulu, YouTube (playlists) all have episode list pages. The old videos page acted as this page since you were able to filter by show/type. You can see more episodesdirectly there on the Episode page, so we didn't think an additional page was necessary. Switching to grid view allows you to see more without scrolling through the carousel, if that helps.
Episode (video player)
Why is all the video info (title, date, etc) hidden once the video plays? To allow focus on the video itself. It's a fairly common pattern in OTT/mobile apps, but admittedly it may not be necessary on desktop. We are looking at options here currently.
Why are related videos categorized here by year?
This seems like an arbitrary step for me to have to switch between, as some years have only one or two videos (Breaking Brad for example). It would be better to just let users scroll through all. Breaking Brad is a bit of an edge case. That grouping was done to accommodate more common/popular shows like QLs, UPF, Beastcast, Bombcast that all have lots of eps per year.
Why does switching to grid view or carousel view not stay as a preference as I browse to other episode pages? We may change this.
Why does the grid view not show the timestamp and the carousel view not show the comment count? We're working on making all of that more consistent.
Why does the player, player container, carousel / grid container, and comments container all have different widths? Various reasons...but some of this will be resolved soon.
Why are related videos newest to the right when the homepage (and most common video sites) has newest to the left? Not sure what this is referring to.
Why was pinning the player (lock it so you can scroll comments) removed? The video player is currently too big on most monitors to allow much real estate for seeing the text as you scroll.
Forums
Why when added sub-bullets does it add a space under it after publishing? Dunno. Probably some quirk of TinyMCE.
Log in to comment