The Org Redesign - Main Thread

[Kai Stromler]

And now...search.

It's appropriate that I write this up the day after Halloween, because the main search page looks like it was designed by the unfortunate combination of too many Skittles and too much tequila. Look at this:



I'm color-blind, and even I can tell that this is too many colors and zero coordination. It doesn't match in with the rest of the site, and the colors appear mainly to be used to separate the too many and too poorly-explained options. If I was in charge of fixing search, this is a clumsy MSPaint look at what the page would look like:



The search and browse options are separated and clearly delineated, reducing confusion. Quick search should usually be powerful enough, and in any case we already suggest Super Search on every regular search page. (Though "For more control over your search results, use the Super Search" might be better phrased as "Not what you were looking for? Try the Super Search", less stuffy.) The reason for the deprecation of Super Search (which is still useful) is below.



Look at the stats on this thumbnail. Super Search, just the options, not any of the boilerplate at the bottom or the framing that the site necessarily does, is nearly 1200 pixels tall. It is too damn big, page-physically, and is populated with a ton of options, most of which nobody puts any values into. It is potentially confusing and intimidating to new users, and it doesn't have to be. If the options in Super Search were collapsible, the content of the function could be preserved in an interface that starts out looking like this MSPaint impression:



With this, the user can open up tabs and see if entering stuff there is helpful, or if the defaults need to be changed. It doesn't crush their screen, and they don't need to think about the fields that don't matter to them.

If one of the objectives of the redesign is to get more viewers in, it makes sense to fix up the search options. The content of the search interface is fine, but the presentation needs some working over, either along these lines or along lines that someone else will come up with later.

--K

[BasharOfTheAges]

I don't see the current point in separating "Newest Videos" and "Newest Downloads." If someone's uploaded info but doesn't have a vid up for download they don't want it to be seen. If you're looking for new videos, you don't want an info page, you want vids you can download. Make "New Downloads" into "New Videos" and only use that one option.

2nd point - to kai's last post... I don't think burying things in expandable menus works from a design perspective. You hide shit and nobody wants to go through the hassle to open it to learn what's where - you may as well get rid of it if you're going to hide it. I think a good option would be to have a lesser version of the super search that utilizes the options most commonly used by people. (under normal circumstances) Nobody searches by file-size, number of collaborators, min/max star ratings, or min/max percentile. Those are useless search metrics unless you're compiling lists using the super search or doing some sort of data mining.

[dokidoki]

2nd point - to kai's last post... I don't think burying things in expandable menus works from a design perspective. You hide shit and nobody wants to go through the hassle to open it to learn what's where - you may as well get rid of it if you're going to hide it. I think a good option would be to have a lesser version of the super search that utilizes the options most commonly used by people.

Well, I wanted to give it a try anyway. Updated supersearch.
It works like the menus. Everything defaults to open, but stays open or closed based on a cookie. I made it so only the items that take more than one line need opening. (I changed #collaborators and ?preview a little to fit on one line)

Also, based on a conversation I saw in IRC, I changed the video link shortcut a little. (you'll have to hover over one of the following urls due to phpBB shortening)
http://www.a-m-v.org/video/3684 still works, but now you can put descriptive text after the URL if you want.
http://www.a-m-v.org/video/3684/RightNo ... gThisTitle works, but
http://www.a-m-v.org/video/3684/FreeNachos works too.

Other sites do this kind of thing too.
http://kotaku.com/5585447/this-chun+li-has-tiny-thighs
but really
http://kotaku.com/5585447/you-can-write-anything

Note: I have to get ready for a con so I don't know how much else I'll be able to change on the site in the next two weeks. Thanks Kai (and others) for the suggestions.

[BasharOfTheAges]

I don't have usage stats to back this up (not sure if you do) but There's just so much there that I don't think people really use. File type? Year premiered? participation? Really? I can see how this is good to find stuff you know something about, but not as criteria to find stuff that fits a general theme... maybe that's the problem though? Using it the right way. Supersearch is good if it's only used for finding that one thing you think you remember details about, but it's far too complicated for finding things that fit a general criteria - which is how I think people tend to use it. As I mentioned in the other thread, the video you find is treated like a discrete end point here instead of a jumping off point for other things you might like. I think the design should be more web (average node has V > 2, ideally > 5) and less flower (average node has V < 2 or even = 1) . That way people wouldn't need to use super search except to find "that one video." Use the recommended videos options to suggest mover vids from the point of download in addition to the member main page.

[Kaream]

Easy navigation is my biggest concern.

[Kai Stromler]

In the discussion about how to get more people watching more videos, and also the management of search, I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned tagging so far. (Actually, so surprised that the first two drafts of this post were a lot angrier than they really needed to be.) The infrastructure is in place on the current version on the .org to support this, and it definitely falls into the "well, as long as the hood's up" category of the other improvements mentioned by the dev team.

Right now, there is a halfassed, partial implementation of tagging. When you open up a video, the anime sources used are linked to a supersearch for that anime, and the creator's name(s) links back to their profile(s). The musical artists used for some reason don't have the same functionality that the anime sources do, and there's no provision for user tagging. If I watch a video using, say, Bela Fleck, I can't immediately check for any other Bela Fleck videos right from the video page, let alone follow a 'newgrass' tag to discover other videos using a similar style of music (with artists that I may not be aware of going in), or an 'awsmcore' tag to see what the hell that even means. I can see that a video participated in a given contest, but I can't click on the contest name and see the other videos that participated.

Users already have the ability to associate short strings with a video's db entry. If, when they're watching a preview or doing up a star rating, they have the opportunity to add or uprate up to five tags on the video, this adds trivially to the db footprint of the current 'quick comment' structure. Supporting tags will require additional coding to get the tags out as needed, keep the weights updated, and do the query behind clicking on the tag, but absent commentary from someone who is able to actually look at the site code, this shouldn't add too much burden in terms of computation over the queries that are currently run on the db.

Will people add stupid, useless, and insulting tags? Sure. But those that are less useful will get pushed to the bottom of the heap. If it helps sort through the thick middle of the database (approximately 86,000 videos score between 3.95 and 2.95 stars), make connections between videos that are related neither by artist, nor anime, nor creator, and gives people a way to add useful content to the site without being an editor or a programmer, it's worth at least looking into.

--K

[Fall_Child42]

In the discussion about how to get more people watching more videos, and also the management of search, I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned tagging so far. (Actually, so surprised that the first two drafts of this post were a lot angrier than they really needed to be.) The infrastructure is in place on the current version on the .org to support this, and it definitely falls into the "well, as long as the hood's up" category of the other improvements mentioned by the dev team.

Right now, there is a halfassed, partial implementation of tagging. When you open up a video, the anime sources used are linked to a supersearch for that anime, and the creator's name(s) links back to their profile(s). The musical artists used for some reason don't have the same functionality that the anime sources do, and there's no provision for user tagging. If I watch a video using, say, Bela Fleck, I can't immediately check for any other Bela Fleck videos right from the video page, let alone follow a 'newgrass' tag to discover other videos using a similar style of music (with artists that I may not be aware of going in), or an 'awsmcore' tag to see what the hell that even means. I can see that a video participated in a given contest, but I can't click on the contest name and see the other videos that participated.

Users already have the ability to associate short strings with a video's db entry. If, when they're watching a preview or doing up a star rating, they have the opportunity to add or uprate up to five tags on the video, this adds trivially to the db footprint of the current 'quick comment' structure. Supporting tags will require additional coding to get the tags out as needed, keep the weights updated, and do the query behind clicking on the tag, but absent commentary from someone who is able to actually look at the site code, this shouldn't add too much burden in terms of computation over the queries that are currently run on the db.

Will people add stupid, useless, and insulting tags? Sure. But those that are less useful will get pushed to the bottom of the heap. If it helps sort through the thick middle of the database (approximately 86,000 videos score between 3.95 and 2.95 stars), make connections between videos that are related neither by artist, nor anime, nor creator, and gives people a way to add useful content to the site without being an editor or a programmer, it's worth at least looking into.

--K

Do you mean like a danbooru style?