[Usability] I can't breath on this site

from WinCustomize Forums

Where did all the white space go?  Galleries are terrible, skins are all smashed together now making them all look bad.  Give a little space, let the skin breath, its a piece of art not a brick.  Haven't we learned anything from deviantart?  Its great that the thumbnail is larger, but this does not require sacrificing all the white space.

Homepage layout is terrible.  All that is really featured is the WindowBlinds, Icon Packager and CursorFX advertisements.  Haven't we learned anything from google?  Shrink down the ads, use them more effectively, be more creative.  There is no longer a reason for me to go the homepage, all meaningful content is now completely overshadowed by information that doesn't apply to me (I already have these products, what do I care?).  News is now buried and can no longer be read on the home page and the New, Popular, Newest and Featured skins are bench warmers that require second looks to determine that they aren't ads themselves... way too much work for me extract meaningful information out of this page.  Its useless.

What happened to easy navigation?  ALL meaningful links are now buried in a houdini hover menu!  Again, haven't we learned anything from google?  Put a simple link on the page and people will click on it.  This also goes for the terrible terrible "unpinned" filter menus.  Opening and closing those babies requires way too much hand eye coordination, not everyone who visits wincustomize is a video game player, some of us just enjoy good art.  Again, too much work to get meaningful information, its so much easier for me to just head over here.

Based on this new design its obvious that you are not employing your incredibly talented skinners for work on the website.  The last design wasn't significantly better either.  Wincustomize is like an old, tattered, dated, ugly museum that stores masterpieces in a utility closet.  People who are looking at fine art want a better experience, you need to up the ante, put your talented skinners to work on the website, make it beautiful and functional.

14,380 views 28 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Wow! Chill Bud and have a bubbly on me! :beer: You are right about the skins being a mess and scattered all over the place. What ever happened to catagorizing. 

Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Wincustomize is like an old, tattered, dated, ugly museum that stores masterpieces in a utility closet.

If it was such, then why do thousands of people visit the site ????

Also, I would like to tell you that most of the skinners here share their work on other skinning sites too....even deviantArt is one of them !!  And for a skinner, its all about sharing what you create rather than focus on what the site looks like [ till the time its usable ]

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I have to agree with the lack of spacing in the gallery views, it does feel very claustrophobic.

Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top

If it was such, then why do thousands of people visit the site ????

I think the OP is referring to the new site, rather than the current one.... and yes, he makes some relevant points.  I'm not too keen on the new format, either... too Googlish for my liking.

Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top

lol....as if our opinions are going to change anything?

Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Doc, I have expressed my opinions on some things and they've gone ahead and made the appropriate changes. They do care

 

I do have to agree that the hover menus are extremely hard to use- when moving my mouse over to the right side pane, I almost always activate another menu item by mistake.  I think it would help a lot if a delay was present when switching items on the left side.

Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Based on this new design its obvious that you are not employing your incredibly talented skinners for work on the website.

Bertone didn't care how the mechanics of the Alfa T33 chassis/engine was contrived...he was interested solely in aesthetics.

WC2K10 is all about mechanics - making things work.  Aesthetics will be arguably secondary to logical function.

Aesthetes will always argue that function defines the form - which makes function actually quite important, really.

In Nuccio's case he ended up with....

...in 1968....a long time before his Countach...;)

Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I agree the lack of white space is a problem and the boxes around the skins are not helping.

Likewise the expanding side menus don't work well for me.  Move your mouse off them briefly and they collapse which is frustrating as a user experience.

Hopefully there will be some changes to these areas and I have made some suggestions to the developers of the site.

Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I still think a floating width format would be better for WC. Please get rid of the fixed one...

Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I still think a floating width format would be better for WC. Please get rid of the fixed one...

+1

About 50% of my screen is wasted space here.

Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top

+1

About 50% of my screen is wasted space here.

 

k1   Makes little sense, to me at least, that with screens getting wider and wider that the site should get more narrow, albeit, just slightly, still quite noticable...along with having such bright attention getting blinding blue vertical gradients only serves to accentuate it. Bit of a design no no.

 

I have to agree with the lack of spacing in the gallery views, it does feel very claustrophobic.

 

k1

Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting PurrBall, reply 6
Doc, I have expressed my opinions on some things and they've gone ahead and made the appropriate changes. They do care

 

I do have to agree that the hover menus are extremely hard to use- when moving my mouse over to the right side pane, I almost always activate another menu item by mistake.  I think it would help a lot if a delay was present when switching items on the left side.

using this as a jumping off point but I am wondering, would people prefer that it just stays open even if it loses focus for a little?   Or would they rather it become just a click to open/close menu?

 

Reply #13 from WinCustomize Forums Top

using this as a jumping off point but I am wondering, would people prefer that it just stays open even if it loses focus for a little? Or would they rather it become just a click to open/close menu?

 

A bit of a delay would suffice, or a plain [but noticable] open\close button.. right now they jump up and down like jumping beans. Far too sensitive.

Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top

using this as a jumping off point but I am wondering, would people prefer that it just stays open even if it loses focus for a little?   Or would they rather it become just a click to open/close menu?

Clicking to open the right pane would be better than what exists now.

Unfortunately, clicking the text already has an action on these menus- the galleries could have an info button separate from the text, but the Home dropdown would require an extra click to get to the same place in some cases (clicking on the left, then 'View More'-- which 'Highest Rated' seems to be missing) since an info button wouldn't make sense.

Reply #15 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting vStyler, reply 13

using this as a jumping off point but I am wondering, would people prefer that it just stays open even if it loses focus for a little? Or would they rather it become just a click to open/close menu?




 

A bit of a delay would suffice, or a plain [but noticable] open\close button.. right now they jump up and down like jumping beans. Far too sensitive.

+1

Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting DrJBHL, reply 15

Quoting vStyler, reply 13
using this as a jumping off point but I am wondering, would people prefer that it just stays open even if it loses focus for a little? Or would they rather it become just a click to open/close menu?




 

A bit of a delay would suffice, or a plain [but noticable] open\close button.. right now they jump up and down like jumping beans. Far too sensitive.

+1

ok I'm going to try to fiddle around with getting a nice hover delay in there...  with all the other bugs I'm working on, however, it might take a couple days to get up so please bear with me

+1 Loading…
Reply #17 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I'd prefer clicking to open and close it personally.  Mouse-overs should be strictly for menus.

Reply #18 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Another thing regarding dropdowns is when your in a gallery and you graze the filter preferences...it starts jumping all over the place.

Reply #19 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Yeah, the filters should definitely be on-click only.

Reply #21 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I gotta pile into the usability complaint.  I apologize in advance for being annoying, but... I'll do it anyway.  Forgive me.

 

Searching is getting worse by editions, not better.  Searching should be functional, fast, and intuitive to the user.  Right now, all the filtering options are everywhere so it's not quick.  Many of the interactions between the search options surprise me and take me awhile to figure out which hurts intuition.  That I lose my place in search results while I try and filter out something else hurts functionality.  To wit:

 

 

 

Meant purely in the spirit of making things better, not to be critical for its own sake.  Please take it that way.  Thanks.

edit: I apparently can't spell "cart" either. :P

Reply #22 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 17
I'd prefer clicking to open and close it personally.  Mouse-overs should be strictly for menus.

 

done as per Brad's request

Reply #23 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting SirBedwyr, reply 21
I gotta pile into the usability complaint.  I apologize in advance for being annoying, but... I'll do it anyway.  Forgive me.

 

Searching is getting worse by editions, not better.  Searching should be functional, fast, and intuitive to the user.  Right now, all the filtering options are everywhere so it's not quick.  Many of the interactions between the search options surprise me and take me awhile to figure out which hurts intuition.  That I lose my place in search results while I try and filter out something else hurts functionality.  To wit:

 

Reduced 58%Original 1024 x 640

 

 

Meant purely in the spirit of making things better, not to be critical for its own sake.  Please take it that way.  Thanks.

edit: I apparently can't spell "cart" either.

thanks for the feedback I think I can touch on almost everything in your image... 

1) Search results sticking:  this was a bug, it should be fixed now.   so you know, there are still some issues with the way "most popular" sorting works, I am still looking into the backend reasons why this is happening but be assured this is not desired functionality, its just not all working yet :)

2) The reason the results sorting is on the left:  this is because this is the most common thing people want to set as a filter.  By default when you hit the explore page with no filters on (not from a search) the filter menus on the right are minimized.  This is to keep the page simple for people who don't care about filters and for those users they can still just change the sorting real quick if they want (technically sorting isn't really a filter anyways).  Also its worth noting that if you ARE using the filters on the right you can also use the dropdown box in the filter list to change your sorting there, you don't have to go back to the left and change it in both places/twice.  Its just a convenience thing, if you always use filters feel free to completely ignore it.

3) Location of the search box:  The reason the search box is up here is to keep it consistent across all pages on the new site.  Unlike current WC, you can actually jump to a search of multiple different individual galleries directly from any page.  Moving the search box just on the explore page would be a bit jarring, and having two search boxes on a single page would be confusing. 

4) Jumping filters: Filter menu is now a click toggle...  Enjoy.

5) More filters seperated:  These are seperated because there are potentially so many of them depending on the gallery that it could move the "Apply" button off the page.  Also a large majority of users rarely use them and thus there is no need for them to be bombarded with a bunch of checkboxes they don't care about.  This is my understanding of why this is like it is, the decision to seperate them was made before I started here so I cant say FOR SURE this is why.

Reply #24 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Thanks for the responses.  Let me return in kind.

 

1) Search results sticking:  this was a bug, it should be fixed now.   so you know, there are still some issues with the way "most popular" sorting works, I am still looking into the backend reasons why this is happening but be assured this is not desired functionality, its just not all working yet :)

You can't say fairer than that.  Thanks for it.

 

2) The reason the results sorting is on the left:  this is because this is the most common thing people want to set as a filter.  By default when you hit the explore page with no filters on (not from a search) the filter menus on the right are minimized.  This is to keep the page simple for people who don't care about filters and for those users they can still just change the sorting real quick if they want (technically sorting isn't really a filter anyways).  Also its worth noting that if you ARE using the filters on the right you can also use the dropdown box in the filter list to change your sorting there, you don't have to go back to the left and change it in both places/twice.  Its just a convenience thing, if you always use filters feel free to completely ignore it.

That the sorting is repeated salves things.  I can see the function of a "quick button" on the left, so I'm convinced there.

 

3) Location of the search box:  The reason the search box is up here is to keep it consistent across all pages on the new site.  Unlike current WC, you can actually jump to a search of multiple different individual galleries directly from any page.  Moving the search box just on the explore page would be a bit jarring, and having two search boxes on a single page would be confusing.

I'll just have to disagree on that point.  The context for searching anything in that location is "Whole Site".  That it also functions as "Refine Search" is just as jarring.  Every assumption from every other website I've used is that if the search location is at the periphery of the site, it functions solely as a search for site-wide stuff.

Analogy: In radio and television, you have what are essentially "layers of truth".  The anchor cedes the talking floor to the reporter or analyst who either cedes to another reporter or an interviewee.  Each layer gets the view/listener closer to the primary source and lends greater credibility the further in you go.  That's why you never see an anchor directly interviewing the "man on the street".  The anchor has no context for credibly interviewing the subject.  It's the reporter who does that.

Likewise, the website's function is built like layers of an onion.  The outer site-wide search has to do with the onion as a whole.  When you drill down into a smaller context, you search within that context, not put the outer layer of the onion back on and search from there.

Suggestion:  Re-locate the search below the menu bar.  Associate it in some way closer to the search results (picture something like this: WindowBlinds->Brad Pitt->By Highest Rated->"search here").  Then when you have the homepage up, it functions as a site-wide search (or specific depending on the drop-down operatoin).  When you have search results up, it functions in the context of those search results.  In this case it both makes contextual sense and remains in the same location, alleviating the confusion you speak of.

Now I suspect that this is probably cast in stone by now, so I won't speak further.  But I did want to say my piece on the matter.  I hope it makes sense and that I made a reasonable case.

 

4) Jumping filters: Filter menu is now a click toggle...  Enjoy.

Much much better.  Thank you.

 

5) More filters seperated:  These are seperated because there are potentially so many of them depending on the gallery that it could move the "Apply" button off the page.  Also a large majority of users rarely use them and thus there is no need for them to be bombarded with a bunch of checkboxes they don't care about.  This is my understanding of why this is like it is, the decision to seperate them was made before I started here so I cant say FOR SURE this is why.

But if it were ensconced inside the "explore filters" section and closed by default, it would only jump down by the height of the "more filters" bar.  Then you could open "more filters" if you wanted to and then the apply button would be below making more sense.  Dunno, it just seems weird to have "more filters" open, "explore filters" closed and just have checkboxes without an apply button visible.

 

Thanks for your time,

Michael

ps- and if someone could explain how I do quote blocks a'la UBB, I'd be grateful.

Reply #25 from WinCustomize Forums Top

If the search box is supposed to be consistent, why do we have to use a separate one for articles?  Also, what if I want to search a specific gallery that isn't included in the search box dropdown without having to go there?

I think once the Explore menu customization is in place, having the galleries that we have chosen for that menu in the search dropdown would help a lot.