Blog PostsWhat's Wrong with Zspace (part 2)? : continued discussion with Albert and ZCC
By Jonathan Schindler at Feb 12, 2009 |
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I'm going to post my reply to Michael in a new blog post since it seems that the old post might be overlooked. However, feel free to reply wherever you wish.
>As to not consulting users, etc. - that too is hard to comprehend - since we sought reactions, ideas, comments, advice, etc., over and over, in diverse ways for months, and have actually never stopped doing so. We even put in whole forums for the purpose, wrote emails and solicited replies that way, etc.
Did you start consulting users before implementing the site? If so, why didn’t you use an open source project? Why wasn’t the development done in a more iterative fashion, so that the users would have a chance to get used to the features as soon as possible, and offer further feedback.
>Anyhow...here are reactions to the first blogger's initial specifics, point by point...
>==
>> I. The interface is clunky. It has quite a few options, and a lot of work has been done, however, making it more intuitive and aesthetically pleasing would go a long way towards encouraging people to use it as a social tool. I don't think you are going to get people involved in Zspace purely from a movement building perspective, because to be honest, I don't see it being that effective as a movement building or organizing tool. It's a great source of information, but isn't quite there yet when it comes to networking. So, until it becomes more practical, it needs to be fun.
>Saying something is clunky is not, well, very easy to relate to, honestly - because it points nowhere.
I think there are others who share this perspective (they showed that they understood by providing suggestions for improvement), and to be honest, I didn’t do a good job of explaining it because I thought it was self-evident.
Here are a few examples:
1. The menu to add photos only allows one to add a single photo at a time, so adding an album, which takes about 10 seconds on facebook, takes about 45 minutes on Zmag. Please add the ability to add multiple photos.
2. The album only shows 10 photos at a time, so I added a bunch of photos, to find that only 10 would be shown. Please add the ability to add more than 10 photos to an album.
3. The wiki has no security, so currently, when I go to add something, there is a bunch of spam, with no user content. Please add security to the wiki so that it’s not over-run with spambots.
4. Things like search are difficult to find, because they aren’t shown in a typical way (there is no search box next to search, which is something my eyes look for when I’m on a website.) Please add a search box next to the search, or figure out another way to make it more visible.
5. You can search for users by address, but not groups. Why not? Please add the ability to search for groups by geographic location in the same way that you allow us to search for users by geographic location.
6. When replying to blogs, the messages get reformatted to remove paragraph pasting, which causes a nicely formatted reply to show up as a block of text. (I’m going to stop using please, since it’s tiresome) Formatting needs to be preserved.
7. The mailing list function of groups only displays the last message that is sent. It would be better for each group to have their own subforum, so that discussion threads can be reviewed by new users. Maybe you could make it so that when a group is added, it automatically gets it’s own sub-forum.
8. As I suggested to Chris Spannos, it may be a good idea to get a google search appliance rather than trying to roll your own.
9. The interface limits users to only adding 10 photos for an album. If it’s a space issue, then you should make users aware of how much space they are allowed to use.
10. You should refer your web designer to the previously mentioned books on interface design. This is an open-ended suggestion, I can’t tell you exactly what’s right. However, I can say that you shouldn’t only be basing your layout on numbers of clicks to reach a certain area. That’s extremely biased towards making life easier for those who are already familiar. You are going to need to make tradeoffs, like adding an extra mouse click so that menus are organized better. One method is by grouping like things together. So, when creating a menu, try to organize things by a single axis. i.e. US,
>You mention you are a programmer. Excellent. Do a screen image of something better and we can take a look. That will be necessary, I think, because I just don't see how the tabbed menu system is clunky - or the left menu system - and they are the navigation tools.
I write software that processes terabytes of genomic data on a world class supercomputer with about 4000 online processors. Our increase in data usage is 4 Terabytes per day. Last year, we produced over 1,000,000 GB’s of new genomic data. That said, I haven’t written a web page in 10 years. The tools I use are for editing text files (vi, emacs,nedit), not slick user interface design apps. The last user interface I designed was for an end user application (think windows applications, not web pages). I’d rather not dig up a bunch of out of date web development tools for something that isn’t a serious development effort. I can get my point across without designing a mock web page. If needed, we can do that later.
>Clunky suggests slow - but they are not slow at all. Clunky suggests, perhaps, inefficient, but I don't see that either since you can get virtually anywhere in the site in two clicks - despite that it is so large. So I don't know what you mean.
What you describe, Michael, is one (extreme) end of an axis that spans all the way from power users who want to be able to get anywhere with the minimum amount of mouse clicks, and casual users, who don’t mind a few extra mouse clicks if it makes the software more intuitive and easier to use. The reason you are at this end is self-evident. You use the software every day, and have no issues with things being difficult to understand at first, since for you the most important aspect is maximum efficiency over a long period of time, not initial start-up costs. What’s tragic, is that I doubt your approach is anywhere near what most Z users want.
Also, your response indicates that you think Zmag is designed for maximum efficiency. Except, it’s not. As I mentioned in the tool to add photos, there are areas that require an obnoxious number of mouse clicks to use (i.e. click, add photo, click, add photo, etc.)
>The admin features, however, I agree were clunky - or perhaps more accurately, a bit hard to find, and requiring some serious attention to use well - but they are now improved with quick edit, and will soon become much better...in many more ways.
Ok, we agree on this.
>Maybe I am not hearing well, but I am not sure what you think should be fun - the site technology won't be what is fun, or amusing, or insightful, or inspiring - it is just a vehicle. The content - which writers and sustainers offer, will be all those things, one hopes.
I’m not sure either. I think the fun angle refers to the culture. But, I think the interface kinds of feeds it, i.e. the categories are serious left issues. I’m not sure this is a good idea if we want to encourage users to participate as much as possible. You could address it by writing a commentary, (or I could). But, I think it’s a hurdle.
>When I look at the bios of people, which is part of the content that people provide, I am impressed and inspired. If people whose bios I have noticed were to offer up something more of themselves, with more people doing it, my guess is the current technology - much less the technology which is coming - would be fine.
I agree with this sentiment, in that it’s successful to the extent that people use it. If a bunch of people were using it, then fine. I use craig’s list, it’s about 100 times less sophisticated than Zmag, but it works, so why fix it? My suggestions are in the context of our need to get more users. If you think it’s more about the culture, then maybe we should focus our discussion on that. I’m not against discussing culture if that’s what people think the issue is.
>> II. The things that I really NEED it to do, it doesn't even address. Here are my issues. I've been on this site for 6 years. I still don't know where a single member of zmag/zspace lives, and have no idea who is near by.
>Okay, good, I look forward to seeing things you would like to do that we don't address...
As mentioned in the 10 suggestions above, make it easy for me to add a geographic location to a group. This would make it easy to create a group with local chapters. i.e. IOPS, and then Saint Louis IOPS, etc. Right now, we can create a group named Saint Louis IOPS, but I have no way of ensuring that users who are searching for groups in
>But this first one - is, well, odd. It may well be you don't know where anyone is from, but if so it is not because the site doesn't address it. If everyone enters their locale, anyone could search and find everyone near them. Videos show you how to do so, though, honestly, it is like any other form entry and search - it seems to me...
I missed the location search for users. This is great, thank you, but we still need it for groups.
>Soon the friends feature, chat, messaging, etc., will be much better - but they do all exist now.
I’m looking forward to it, and please keep it up.
>> The only time I've met other members of the community was at a life after capitalism conference 6 years ago. I feel extremely isolated, and in my own community, I feel like I'm "the guy who read's zmag", not a member of a larger community or movement.
>I don't know where you live - but all a site can do, I would think, to help with your situation where you live is allow people to enter geographic and other such info, and then tp search for people near them. We have that - but we will be adding more, including easier access and use of it...soon. If there are ideas beyond that, please do let us know.
>But note, maybe a half a million people use the site - all leftists, located all around the world. If everyone did put in their info - then in most places, certainly countries, states, cities, even towns, you would be able to meet others. I don't see how we can do much, however, other than urge it and continually improve the tools...
Don’t underestimate the importance of dialog. I also think that one of the issues, and frustrations that users have when dealing with Zstaff, is that the process for addressing user feedback is somewhat arbitrary. i.e. A user comes to you with a suggestion, you’re having a bad day, or maybe you don’t agree, so that ends the conversation. To a user this can feel very stifling, in the sense that whether or not they are listened to, is somewhat a matter of luck. It depends on who they are talking to, whether or not that person agrees that it is an issue. It also gives you, or whichever staff member they are talking to, WAY too much power. Don’t get me wrong, you should have more power than the typical user, because what happens at Zmag affects you more than the average Z user. However, we shouldn’t round user’s decision making power down to zero. In other words, your ability to see where a sustainer is coming from shouldn’t be the filter or gateway that determines what gets done. But, if the interaction between you and a user is one on one, that is exactly what happens. This isn’t by design, but just a side effect of how users and staff are communicating.
I think you and the staff are very open, and try to take into account what our needs are. But, as an institution grows, it becomes more important to formalize participation, to ensure that users are given a voice that counts, at all times, not as a matter of chance.
>> How exactly am I supposed to form a chapter of whatever our Parecon club is if I can't even find people? I thought about using meetup.com, but I don't think we really want to force people to use a commercial site, as that could limit growth. What's more, this kind of thing would be possible on zmag, if only we set it up and organize the site so that people in a certain geographic location can find each other.
>But actually, we have... as noted above. Have you looked at the videos about site features - examined them, etc.
Sorry, I will.
>Now you might say, well why do I have to do that? But, honestly, why wouldn't you?
A smart ass reply, but not incorrect,”Why wouldn’t I read the instruction manual for a new car?” Well, the answer would be, I have 100’s of websites in my bookmarks, and have never had to use a video, so why would I start?
>> III. I'm a computer programmer, and even as someone who works with arcane syntax and cryptic interfaces every day, I find the interface to be quite arcane and overwhelming. There are way, way, way too many options and the organization of information is quite haphazard.
>Saying there are too many options always strikes me - perhaps wrongly, but I have to answer honestly - as very strange.
No it isn’t. According to your reasoning, it would make sense to put the index for textbooks in the front, since the table of contents is a wasteful over-simplification. Or, when teaching grandma how to use the computer, you’re saying it would make sense to give her a display showing her all of the BIOS settings, her installed software, every single system setting, all programs, including ones that are system or commandline only, within two mouse clicks. I am an expert, and the only time I check my BIOS is when I’m building a computer, and the last thing I want is to have needless information distracting me from my tasks. I’m not saying there are too many options, but that they aren’t organized well. Users prefer to have irrelevant things hidden. You are trying to avoid the decision of what’s relevant by displaying too many choices in the top menu. I know that what goes in the top menu is political, but we have a solution, allow people to vote. That’s a lot better than providing a huge number of choices up front.
>The top tabbed menu has 13 options. If that is way way way too many - would you like to go down to ten, or eight, or five. WHich ones would you drop - and what would you say to the person for whom those are important?
Yes, down. First, grouping is important, so they should be grouped in a way that like things go together (as mentioned above in the
>I only use some - but the fact that there are others there for when I do want them, or for someone else - why should that bother me?
It should bother you because there is a cost in having irrelevant information displayed up front. It makes it harder for users to find what they want. People tend to look for logical groupings and patterns in how things are organized. If you fail to do that, then they are likely to overlook something.
>To reduce options means reducing things that someone wants to do, or even that you might want to, at some time - even if we remove ones you don't presently care about. Some folks might not want half the topics, or nine tenths of the places, or various facilities. Surely the thing to do is use what you like and just not the rest, no?
I don’t want to reduce options, I want to change how things are organized. I’m not proposing that we throw anything away.
>I personally don't really think this should be a factor at all - but it is, I know - and we are creating tools which will allow users to have the top page, and their zspace page, and the top zspace page, look as they like and contain what they want - and no more. Yes, even the top znet page - you will be able to have your own version. But notice, when we do this, it won't mean I have to have your version... which if we just reduced everything, we would be imposing on everyone.
How can you have written as many books as you have, and not understand the importance of layout and organization? I would think that a lot of the same decision making that goes into organizing the chapters of a book would also apply to creating menus, but I guess I’m wrong.
>So I have to say, even now, before that, saying you find a tabbed menu arcane, and a left menu that does something admittedly unusual, but transparent once you use it, arcane, I find hard to fathom... Perhaps people explaining would help.
Not tabbed menus, but this particular tabbed menu, and not because it’s tabbed, or because it’s a menu, but because of how the particular topics are organized.
>> There are way too many links on a single page. Take a look at google, it only has a few links, and then gives you a drop down menu for the rest.
>Take a look at the New York Times ... etc.
>I just don't see your point, I have to admit - but that's me, again, it won't be an issue, soon, because we will each have what we want. Take the top page - you will be able to see your own version - with whatever boxes of items in the second and third column you want to have there, and no others - with the first column filtered however you want, with whatever numbers of links you want...etc. You could choose, on your version, to have only writers you want, or topics, or places, or whatever else... So this problem, I think, will be history, soon.
Good.
>> There's also the psychological issue of knowing that if I'm overwhelmed, then so is everyone else, so what is the chance that they will use it interactively?
>Again, this will be history due to coming personalization features - but, while that is so - I have to say, changing the world, honestly, well, it does entail work, lots of issues, lots of foci of concern...we need to be less easily put off, I suspect...
Yes, and while we’ve spent a lot of time talking about the interface, I don’t think that it’s the only reason why people aren’t participating yet.
>> It's one thing to have a few bookmarks to the parts of the site that I use every day, which is the way I've used zmag until now, and quite another to have to interact with the site and learn all of the new features.
>You don't have to do anything - but it is there is you want to.
>But that said, we are going to allow you have exactly as little as you want, on your version - but, I have to tell you, from where we sit, we of course precisely want people to pay attention to that which doesn't come naturally, what isn't the stuff they are already most into... so it is a kind of balancing act...
I agree, it is a balancing act, and a difficult one.
>> Rather than extending a busy layout with even more features, it would have been better to start over with a sister site or completely clean up the existing site (like what we used to have with parecon.org).
>If what you like is a lower level page - why not just go to it?
That’s what I’ve done, but I miss quite a bit.
>But, again, the personalization features that are coming will address all this, I think...
>So far, despite the tone of your blog, you have said only we should reduce...and of the things you want to be able to do, mentioned one that we in fact facilitate. I am a bit at a loss...
Sorry to disappoint. I’m going to stop now, since I think I am repeating myself, and I don’t think I have anything new to say in response to the rest of what you wrote. Most of what I wrote above could be used to answer your other concerns.(however, if I missed something, please let me know).
Re: What's Wrong with Zspace (part 2)? : continued discussion with Albert and ZCC
By Schindler, Jonathan at Feb 16, 2009 18:42 PM
One more thing. I'll be hanging out in the chat room from 8-9 tonight (CST) if you want to chat. There will hopefully be some members of ZCC on tonight as well. Any feedback would be great. Thanks.
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Re: What's Wrong with Zspace (part 2)? : continued discussion with Albert and ZCC
By Schindler, Jonathan at Feb 16, 2009 18:33 PM
First, I want to acknowledge all the excellent work you have done in building Zmag. I have appreciated and used the site for years. My interest is to help in building the community around Zmag. I'm sorry that my previous posts didn't acknowledge (as much as they should have) how much work you've done and how much has been accomplished. I have quite a bit of respect and admiration for the work that you've done and think very highly of you. Before going negative, I'm going to list a few things I like, since that's just as constructive as anything else.
1. Thank you for making changes to the top menu (I think Zeducation works better, I also think grouping things that start with Z first helps with the flow of topics).
2. quick edit - great idea, would like to it appear elsewhere
3. zspace and zgroups - great idea
4. The new tab menu is a much better way to organize things. Part of the reason I'm overwhelmed, is because I'm actually seeing things that I ignored before, which isn't exactly a bad thing.
5. I think the formatting is better, I like the four column organization of the site.
6. There seems to be quite a bit more video available than before, which I like.
7. Instant messenger is a great idea, and may even be a good idea for our future conversations, since it's more interactive
8. The forums are using a more modern system than they were two years ago, a nice improvement.
9. You get the idea, the new site is many times better, to the point that it's a completely different kind of animal, which maybe is why it's been getting more criticism. Before, people wouldn't think of comparing it to myspace, but now it's not exactly outlandish. Going back to what it was before would be a major step backward.
My original intention was to reformat the Z page and then put it on a server so that users could see the changes, which is why I was thinking 2 weeks. I also wanted to spend time looking over the source code (java script and html), to see if there were ways to help increase responsiveness. I'm still going to give it a shot, but for now I'll try to keep the momentum going rather than going stale for two weeks. The other reason I thought it would take longer, is because I wanted to watch all of the videos so that I didn't waste your time. That, I have done.
What I'm proposing is that we only leave out a category if it strongly overlaps with some other category. So, this requires me to go through all categories and try to find common groupings. When there is no avaliable concept (or grouping convention) for a certain set of categories, I will attempt to find a way to group them together. This is quite a difficult problem. I'm not proposing that we just go in with an axe and chop things out. What I propose is that we reorganize things so that they are easy to find. I don't think this is easy.
Below are the top headings:
ZNet - internet
ZMag - magazine
ZVideo - video
ZSpace - user content
ZBlogs - user blog
Parecon/Soc - economic system
ZEducation - institution
Intl - geographic
Places - geographic
Topics - can be grouped into spheres (feminism, racism, economics, kinship)
Books - is a kind of media
Store -
Here are the two rules I will try to follow:
1. If content can be grouped along an axis of some sort, then more than 7 items will be allowed, otherwise, only 7 items will be allowed for a menu.
2. Things that are common subtopics of main topics will be pulled out and placed elsewhere (i.e. search, about).
The main groupings I can think of off the top of my head are:
1. Broadcast content - highly formatted, packaged for ease of use and consumption, typically generated by staff/writers/professionals but featured well-written sustainer content could also appear here, includes things like links to daily mag, periodical (monthly, quarterly, etc.) online/offline mag
2. Community content - less strict, community based, subheadings provide a variety of ways (views) to get to this content
3. Places - topics related to geographic area
4. Z institutions
5. Topics - I'm not sure if topics is the right name, it implies transience to me at least, but we can use it for now
6. (Store?) - store could also be moved under Z institutions
Also, I think that one concept we might want to come up with is the idea of views. I think that is what a lot the categories are striving for. In this case, I'm defining a view as a specific way of organizing content. For example, one view might be by user pages, another view might be by content type. So, we can have a view of content based on users (articles/blogs, video/vblogs, audio/podcasts), places. Since our site is trying to do many things, it may make sense for us to think about whether we want a zblog and zspace. A blog, by itself makes sense as a way of grouping content, but the idea of having a community, and then having a separate top level tab for blogs seems a bit much. I think it might make more sense to move it down a level. Another thing to consider is the main reason for having all of the topics up front. One thing I've heard you mention is that you don't want Z to be just about economy, or just about feminism, etc, but to promote a diverse range of left issues. In print format, that means having all topics up front. But, on the web, we could use other methods than putting everything in the menu. We could have a topic of the day that asks users to spend a minute on a certain page. I think commentaries sort of do this, but you could also extend this to the website. I know people hate popups and splash screens, but that may be ameliorated by the fact that it's for a good purpose.
Ok, so finally, here is what I would have under each main topic above.
Under Broadcast content
Periodical content - realtime (online), nightly (email), monthly(online and print)
Audio
Video
Books - online and print, under books we can have similar (if not the same) sub topics as we do for the current books tab
Under Community content
Blogs
Staff/User Profiles and home pages
Video
Audio
Written(or Print) - Lyrics, Quotes, and Poems could be sub topics
Under topics related to geography (places)
I would have two drop down bars. The first bar would be major continents or maybe quadrants (Asia, Africa, etc.)
The second would be an alphabetized horizontal scroll bar. I would give the alphabetical scroll bar some inertia so that users can quickly scroll to a region of interest.
Under Z Institutions and Groups:
Z Education (online) - you can keep the menu below Z Education the same
PPS (IOPS) - I would try to keep the first four or five subtopics of the Parecon tab, but maybe get rid of
the direct links to Moving Forward and Thinking Forward, but we can discuss this more
Z Store
Z User groups (or networks)
Under Topics:
This one, I'm not sure about. I need to put more thought into how we want to group things. I think
there is a good argument for keeping them all, but I it may be easier if we can group the ten or so topics into a smaller number of subtopics. i.e. social relations, economy, international relations, environment. Under social, you could have race, gender, kinship. Under environment, you could have ecology, climate, etc. Also, whatever we decide, it would be a good idea to alphabetize things, so that people who are looking for economy, for example, can jump right to it.
Some other, unrelated thoughts. One thing I noticed when looking at the videos was that the site seems more responsive in the videos than it does on my end. I'm not sure why but I can make some guesses. I do have a fast connection, and a modern computer, so that's not the cause. Looking at the java script code, I noticed that the developers put in delays of 0.5 second and 1.5 seconds when moving the mouse over the menus. I had no idea this was being done on purpose, but apparently it is. This seems to further the perception of slowness. Could they reduce (or eliminate) these delays? Also, are there multiple round trips being made to a backend database? That's what it seems like, as I notice that certain parts of the page appear before others, and their seems to be a delay as the page is created at zmag and finally sent to my browser. Is this happening every time a user accesses the site? It appears that it is, because stuff like "Some Sustainers" is being updated every time I refresh the page. Maybe this could be sped up by only updating things like Some Sustainers once every minute. If you have a database driving this, and it's doing a query for every page hit, that is quite a bit hit on your server. Only updating it every minute would greatly reduce the load on your servers, I would imagine. I've also been looking at ways to speed up javascript, and one thing that a lot of sites mention is using some kind of compression. Another thing that could help to speed up loading is to only load the javascript when it's needed (right now, everything is being loaded at the top of page). Also, combining the scripts into a single javascript file helps to further reduce round trips to the server.
I'm also not so sure about the top menus for anything other than top level content. I have a hard time reading stuff that is in a wide format. I tend to scan much faster when I'm reading something that goes up/down vs left/right.
Finally, I use my iphone to access content on the site. While it handles javascript ok, it would be nice if their were a light weight version of the page. I've also noticed that my site experience is heavily dependent on which browser I'm using. If I use google's chrome browser (which is very fast with javascript), then things are quite fast. If I'm at work where we use linux and firefox 2.0, things seem quite a bit slower. It might be good to test in a wide variety of browsers and connection speeds. (I'm sure you've already done this, but speeding it up would be a good thing).
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Re: What's Wrong with Zspace (part 2)? : continued discussion with Albert and ZCC
By Schindler, Jonathan at Feb 13, 2009 17:35 PM
Hi Michael, can you tell me what editor's your designers typically use for updating the website. Do they use any specific web development tools, or a plain text editor?
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Re:
By Albert, Michael at Feb 14, 2009 09:39 AM
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Re: What's Wrong with Zspace (part 2)? : continued discussion with Albert and ZCC
By Albert, Michael at Feb 13, 2009 09:39 AM
> I'm going to post my reply to Michael in a new blog post since it seems that the old post might be overlooked. However, feel free to reply wherever you wish.
Okay, sure... I am replying right here I guess... since I saw it here... but I think we are going to have to bring this to a close before too long - there is only so much time in each day...
> Did you start consulting users before implementing the site?
Yes, by many months... and all during the implementation, too.... We asked people specifically, and also generally asked everyone not only online, but by email... though I have to admit, after a while you feel like a nag - and you stop - and that has afflicted us.
> If so, why didn't you use an open source project?
Not sure what your definition is - the site is using open source software...but much programming was done specific to our needs.
> Why wasn't the development done in a more iterative fashion, so that the users would have a chance to get used to the features as soon as possible, and offer further feedback.
Actually, this too was pretty much the case...as in we asked feedback continuously, and still do... You may mean why weren't steps smaller - well, a half a bridge is quite hard to comment on - or show...
The same thing is happening now - we are doing some major changes - but neither we nor users will be able to interact with them in any productive way until they are, well, in place and useable...
>> Saying something is clunky is not, well, very easy to relate to, honestly - because it points nowhere.
> I think there are others who share this perspective (they showed that they understood by providing suggestions for improvement), and to be honest, I didn't do a good job of explaining it because I thought it was self-evident.
I don't think it is at all clear what people generally think - except that the site garners more support, more use, and more activity by a large margin than before... a few people, literally a handful - or less - posting involves what is rightly called a selection effect. If you ask for criticism from thousands of people, and get some criticism, it only tells you some exists...
But, again, you act as though we think the site is perfect or something - not remotely the case.
> Here are a few examples:
> 1. The menu to add photos only allows one to add a single photo at a time, so adding an album, which takes about 10 seconds on facebook, takes about 45 minutes on Zmag. Please add the ability to add multiple photos.
Fair enough - though I put up an album in just a few minutes, so perhaps you are exaggerating just a bit. But do you really think saying it is clunky - says the above? That somehow I would read the photo suggestion in the shotgun comment? And do you really think that the one left site that allows photo albums at all, at least that I know of, in the first iteration of doing so, is in danger of being irrelevant - etc., as per your earlier post - because it isn't as facile at a multi million dollar "competitor" already?
> 2. The album only shows 10 photos at a time, so I added a bunch of photos, to find that only 10 would be shown. Please add the ability to add more than 10 photos to an album.
See above...
> 3. The wiki has no security, so currently, when I go to add something, there is a bunch of spam, with no user content. Please add security to the wiki so that it's not over-run with spambots.
We removed the wiki...basically, for now...not enough gain... the real problem with it, honestly, is that it was a generic open source product - as are the forums, and chat, etc. All those have been quite inferior in their success levels, to the blogs, say, or content stuff - which were programmed for the site, specifically. So now we are taking a risk - without much evidence to warrant it - and building forums, chat, messaging, etc. etc. specifically geared to and integrated into the site...though it will be a few months until we can unveil that.
> 4. Things like search are difficult to find, because they aren't shown in a typical way (there is no search box next to search, which is something my eyes look for when I'm on a website.) Please add a search box next to the search, or figure out another way to make it more visible.
I have to say... I fear this isn't going to accomplish much - replying item by item - what is obvious to you is not to someone else...and vice versa...
On every page, in the left menu, the top entry is search...hard to miss, I think... If you click it, you have a powerful search facility with many options, yes - but that is what we wanted because we want to serve, with the search facility, serious investigation... There are tons of ways to do the more general looking - such as a topic page, or place page, or the overlays from the left menu, and so on...
> 5. You can search for users by address, but not groups. Why not?
Mostly because having links that yield next to nothing is depressing and tends to undermine people coming back to use them again...so we need groups, many groups, in order to make searching groups sensible - it is a kind of chicken and egg, issue.
Same holds for searching people by place, actually, though we did put that. If we have 6000 sustainers, and I search for those in, say, Canada, and get n found - I think there are n in Canda. But what is, in fact, there are five times n, or ten times n, so it is horribly misleading.... That's why we tried to get people to enter their addresses, over and over, before putting in the search fields to find them by address...
We finally just put it...
> Please add the ability to search for groups by geographic location in the same way that you allow us to search for users by geographic location.
This is a good one - except for one thing. See above.
More generally, there are a near infinite number of improvements of this sort - enlargements too - but the problem is that we cannot keep doing them without users making use of them to provide practical indications of their merit and needs. Given our very limited resources - we don't know if what we are doing is worth doing - or will get used. If people were beginning to create groups in larger numbers, and to invite people to them, and to blog for them - and given their use said the above - we would immediately make it one of our tasks. But when people aren't using a feature much, yet, and say okay add this and that to it...it is hard to act on, among all the things that compete for out time and attention.
> 6. When replying to blogs, the messages get reformatted to remove paragraph pasting, which causes a nicely formatted reply to show up as a block of text. (I'm going to stop using please, since it's tiresome) Formatting needs to be preserved.
This happens, still, perhaps, on some browsers, not on others... we are trying...
It is quite hard with a staff of two to find all such problems. Thus we ask people to let us know when they find a problem - but, instead, most people find a problem and just ignore it, moving on to something else - and we don't know it is there.
> 7. The mailing list function of groups only displays the last message that is sent. It would be better for each group to have their own subforum, so that discussion threads can be reviewed by new users. Maybe you could make it so that when a group is added, it automatically gets it's own sub-forum.
Actually, we are rewriting the whole forum system - doing just that, and much more... This relates to the earlier comment - the canned forum system wasn't optimally, or even well, integrated...
You know, we can list possibilities too - we can list dozens of things we would like to implement... and actually quite a few we are currently implementing - but such lists, though I think - you may disagree - are largely beside the point. That we can grow and diversify and improve is not under debate. On the contrary, it is of course possible, and is desired - but what we can't do - which your comments are ignoring - is make the site better and better, and bigger and bigger - without seeing people make use of features, and how they use them.
When you say you used the photo thing and found it wanting and say how - okay, that is helpful.
When you say something abstract and general, much less shotgun-ish (clunky) it isn't.
> 8. As I suggested to Chris Spannos, it may be a good idea to get a google search appliance rather than trying to roll your own.
Our own allows searches of particular types of content - and in no way precludes using google, of course. And it is being improved, even as we discuss it...
> 9. The interface limits users to only adding 10 photos for an album. If it's a space issue, then you should make users aware of how much space they are allowed to use.
This is a repeat...
> 10. You should refer your web designer to the previously mentioned books on interface design. This is an open-ended suggestion, I can't tell you exactly what's right. However, I can say that you shouldn't only be basing your layout on numbers of clicks to reach a certain area. That's extremely biased towards making life easier for those who are already familiar. You are going to need to make tradeoffs, like adding an extra mouse click so that menus are organized better. One method is by grouping like things together. So, when creating a menu, try to organize things by a single axis. i.e. US, Canada, Mexico... go together, but adding something like Audio/Video to the above choices would be confusing and unexpected. If I'm looking for something, I may never get to Audio/Video, because my expectation from the first three things is that I'm looking at geographic locations. Make sense?
Sure I agree with the general points, who wouldn't - but it has no obvious bearing on the site - place are under places, topics under topics, types under types, etc. If you think something is out of place, fine, say which thing...
>> You mention you are a programmer. Excellent. Do a screen image of something better and we can take a look. That will be necessary, I think, because I just don't see how the tabbed menu system is clunky - or the left menu system - and they are the navigation tools.
> I write software that processes terabytes of genomic data on a world class supercomputer with about 4000 online processors. Our increase in data usage is 4 Terabytes per day. Last year, we produced over 1,000,000 GB's of new genomic data. That said, I haven't written a web page in 10 years.
Hmmmmm....
> The tools I use are for editing text files (vi, emacs,nedit), not slick user interface design apps. The last user interface I designed was for an end user application (think windows applications, not web pages). I'd rather not dig up a bunch of out of date web development tools for something that isn't a serious development effort. I can get my point across without designing a mock web page. If needed, we can do that later.
I don't think so. Honestly - I really don't. I doubt our interactions are going to produce a lot we haven't long since thought of. I wish they would, but doubt it.
> Clunky suggests slow - but they are not slow at all. Clunky suggests, perhaps, inefficient, but I don't see that either since you can get virtually anywhere in the site in two clicks - despite that it is so large. So I don't know what you mean.
> What you describe, Michael, is one (extreme) end of an axis that spans all the way from power users who want to be able to get anywhere with the minimum amount of mouse clicks, and casual users, who don't mind a few extra mouse clicks if it makes the software more intuitive and easier to use.
We are well aware - but in our case it is frequent recurring users, and relatively or completely new users....
> The reason you are at this end is self-evident. You use the software every day, and have no issues with things being difficult to understand at first, since for you the most important aspect is maximum efficiency over a long period of time, not initial start-up costs. What's tragic, is that I doubt your approach is anywhere near what most Z users want.
I am not at either end, in fact... You can say as much as you want, in the abstract, that we are ignoring one and or the other - but wouldn't it be far more useful to make a positive suggestion?
As to where people are at, and how the interface affects them, there is no way to know with any confidence, that I can see. But in any event, the issue is not just what people want. There is a universe of hundreds of millions of users out there, and most don't want anything even minimally like ZCom - either content or design. That says nothing. What matters is having content, design, structure, that facilitates engagement of the sort the site seeks... which seems to exist, to a point, and which we are trying to improve...
> Also, your response indicates that you think ZMag is designed for maximum efficiency. Except, it's not. As I mentioned in the tool to add photos, there are areas that require an obnoxious number of mouse clicks to use (i.e. click, add photo, click, add photo, etc.)
I don't believe I have used the word maximum anywhere - but there is a difference between short of maximum - which of course I would admit, and don't honestly care much about - and clunky...or whatever, which I haven't admitted, but do care about. Our goal is not, in any event, maxmally efficient navigation per se, as if that even exists, it is successful use of the site for consciousness raising and, we hope, activist linkage...
> I'm not sure either. I think the fun angle refers to the culture. But, I think the interface kinds of feeds it, i.e. the categories are serious left issues. I'm not sure this is a good idea if we want to encourage users to participate as much as possible. You could address it by writing a commentary, (or I could). But, I think it's a hurdle.
It may well be - it is not going to change. The site is first and foremost content - very very serious content. That is not going to change, and we are not going to put catchy little titles that somehow make it seem otherwise. If that isn't your suggestion - sorry...not sure what you suggestion is. And that is because it isn't concrete. I have no more time for the generalities, please. Offer as many concrete suggestions as you like - I welcome every one whether we ultimately implement it or not. But please, no more generalities...
I think, honestly, you are seeing yourself as somehow an expert, a really great source, for us to improve the site - and maybe it is true - but honestly, I am not at all sure about that, as yet - because so far I just haven't seen suggestions that go beyond rather obvious and familiar generalities without concrete applications...
> I agree with this sentiment, in that it's successful to the extent that people use it.
Not really, it is successful if a lot of people use it in ways that yield desirable outcomes...not just if they use it per se. Consciousness raising, movement building, activism... I think there is considerable success - but could be way more.
> If a bunch of people were using it, then fine.
About a half a million people are using it - just mostly for content...so far... so on that score, yes, I suppose we could say it is fine, though there is always room for improvement, of course. For interactivity, the levels are much lower, and the room for improvement - if an interactive left social networking component is possible - is much much greater. So we are trying...
> As mentioned in the 10 suggestions above, make it easy for me to add a geographic location to a group.
For the most part groups are diverse, not confined to a locale...though sure, we could add this, other than just in the name, and would if there were more groups...
> This would make it easy to create a group with local chapters. i.e. IOPS, and then Saint Louis IOPS, etc. Right now, we can create a group named Saint Louis IOPS, but I have no way of ensuring that users who are searching for groups in Missouri will find it.
This is fair enough, as said above - though the real point is no one else has suggested it - and there is no way to know, no indication, that it would make any difference to anyone - so among all the things to do - and the list is long - how do we know just how much to prioritize it. We don't.
> I missed the location search for users. This is great, thank you, but we still need it for groups.
You missing it is the problem I am raising - as compared to what is on your mind.
I am raising the point that even features that exist - not content features but interactive features - are ignored. To elaborate them more and more, doesn't accomplish much if people just don't care enough to even notice they are present, much less use them, or don't want it at all, even... It is easy to come up with good ideas in principle - but we need evidence that what seem to be good ideas will matter...
>> But note, maybe a half a million people use the site - all leftists, located all around the world. If everyone did put in their info - then in most places, certainly countries, states, cities, even towns, you would be able to meet others. I don't see how we can do much, however, other than urge it and continually improve the tools...
> Don't underestimate the importance of dialog. I also think that one of the issues, and frustrations that users have when dealing with Zstaff, is that the process for addressing user feedback is somewhat arbitrary. i.e. A user comes to you with a suggestion, you're having a bad day, or maybe you don't agree, so that ends the conversation. To a user this can feel very stifling, in the sense that whether or not they are listened to, is somewhat a matter of luck.
Fair enough - but on my side, I answer every email I get. And sometimes people, honestly, aren't paying any attention, they are just saying things - but not hearing replies, so there isn't much point continuing though I rarely cut anything off.
Look at the time I am giving you - but at some point, when I do cut it off, you may well feel that you are dissed, or something - which I think would be utterly incredible, but nonetheless, you may. You know how other sites and writers avoid that - they don't engage in the first place.
> It depends on who they are talking to, whether or not that person agrees that it is an issue.
Thaht would seem to be pretty inevitable, but there are two of us... and we are typically sitting about six feet apart ... so it doesn't depend on much.
> It also gives you, or whichever staff member they are talking to,
I am curious how many you think there are?
> WAY too much power.
I am confused the power to reply to a query, positively or negatively?
> Don't get me wrong, you should have more power than the typical user, because what happens at Zmag affects you more than the average Z user. However, we shouldn't round user's decision making power down to zero.
And, have we? Users can control unilaterally their own posting and pages. They can weigh in on everything else, comment on everything, etc. Soon, they can even control how the site looks to them, what it includes, etc.
> In other words, your ability to see where a sustainer is coming from shouldn't be the filter or gateway that determines what gets done.
Well, it isn't, in that which affects that user most - such as their page, their uploading, their clicking, and soon, even their determination of what is on pages they visit.
> But, if the interaction between you and a user is one on one, that is exactly what happens. This isn't by design, but just a side effect of how users and staff are communicating.
We have built all kinds of ways for users to express themselves - on all kinds of matters - overwhelmingly ignored...sadly...
> I think you and the staff are very open, and try to take into account what our needs are. But, as an institution grows, it becomes more important to formalize participation, to ensure that users are given a voice that counts, at all times, not as a matter of chance.
Users use, or not, the site. They place up content, if they choose to, without constraint. They comment, throughout. They can critically discuss, in forums - a whole set of them for specifically that purpose - or could have, had they chosen too - and we are now redoing it in hopes we can elicit more participation. They can enter preferences, which will become far more prominent, soon. They can blog, can post articles, etc. etc. They can also write us - what you have in mind, isn't obvious, however.
Soon, a user will be able to construct for him or herself literally a site that displays the type of content, authors, topics, etc. etc., they want - from what they put up, their friends, and the whole site...
But what isn't possible, in a world such as we occupy, is for someone to come out of nowhere and make critical decisions affecting budgets, work loads, etc. etc.
>> How exactly am I supposed to form a chapter of whatever our Parecon club is if I can't even find people? I thought about using meetup.com, but I don't think we really want to force people to use a commercial site, as that could limit growth. What's more, this kind of thing would be possible on zmag, if only we set it up and organize the site so that people in a certain geographic location can find each other.
> But actually, we have... as noted above. Have you looked at the videos about site features - examined them, etc.
Sorry, I will.
There is an old slogan, no investigation, no right to speak. I think it exaggerates quite a bit - but there is a kernal of truth to it. How about
no investigation, no right to judge and convict...
>Now you might say, well why do I have to do that? But, honestly, why wouldn't you?
A smart ass reply, but not incorrect,"Why wouldn't I read the instruction manual for a new car?" Well, the answer would be, I have 100's of websites in my bookmarks, and have never had to use a video, so why would I start?
Because building a new world is a bit more complex than many other things - and because, even if ideally it shouldn't involve looking at a video (and by the way, I use computers every day, too, but I look at instructional videos, routinely and always), if being part of a massive ambitious project isn't so smooth that it is seamless yet, still, presumably, making some effort makes sense... and surely it makes sense before leveling shot gun general criticisms, I would think.
For you, this discussion is overwhelmingly about saying things could be better and offering very generic norms - as if I or anyone else denies that. As if we aren't trying precisely to make it so.
For me, however, the discussion is quite different - it is, things are pretty good - to get better what is needed is more use to give indications, from real practice, what is possible - so why is it taking so long for that to happen? And asking for concrete suggestions.
Why do people spend minutes, even hours, on facebook, seeing idiotic and gross corporate ads, putting up content with no real means to participate at all, and the same people can't manage to enter their locale or a bio say, on ZCom - even though they would decry facebook as corporate greed and vapidity - albeit offering outreach potentials - and elevate zcom as politically wonderful, in their eyes, if asked?
>Saying there are too many options always strikes me - perhaps wrongly, but I have to answer honestly - as very strange.
> No it isn't. According to your reasoning, it would make sense to put the index for textbooks in the front, since the table of contents is a wasteful over-simplification. Or, when teaching grandma how to use the computer, you're saying it would make sense to give her a display showing her all of the BIOS settings, her installed software, every single system setting, all programs, including ones that are system or commandline only, within two mouse clicks.
I don't have much more time for this - if you are going to read a sentence and attribute idiot meaning to it, and then knock it down, what is the point?
Okay, I should have said, if I was being ultra careful - saying there are too many options - but not saying how the presence of the options obscures access to the more important ones - always strikes me as odd. Having more options, at no cost in obscuring the most important subset, is simply a gain...it seems to me.
> I am an expert, and the only time I check my BIOS is when I'm building a computer, and the last thing I want is to have needless information distracting me from my tasks.
Indeed - but doesn't it strike you as silly to keep saying things in the abstract that are obvious...
Tell me which of the tabs is both needless and also distracts you from seeing the tabs that are more important - that would be constructive, if you think there is one. Then we could look at that and assess - okay, (a) is it really a less important tab for nearly everyone, or even everyone, and (b) does its presence reduce the likelihood of people seeing that which is more important.
For that matter, in the submenu under the main tabs, for any tab, you could tell me which entry is needless, and also distracts you from the items that are important. That would be constructive, if you think there is one, or more.
> I'm not saying there are too many options, but that they aren't organized well. Users prefer to have irrelevant things hidden.
What you think is irrelevant - and I have no idea what that is - we may think is important, or even paramount... so the abstract point is fine, though repeating it over and over is not helpful - because the practical implication is unclear.
> You are trying to avoid the decision of what's relevant by displaying too many choices in the top menu. I know that what goes in the top menu is political, but we have a solution, allow people to vote. That's a lot better than providing a huge number of choices up front.
That is an absolutely terrible approach...and I am tired of this to be honest about it, since it isn't going anywhere concrete...that I can see.
Thirteen isn't huge. Finding out that a fraction of a percent who would in fact vote (or even if everyone did) think six of the thirteen are more important than the other seven, would tell us very very little. What if the store is in the seven - as it would be? Or what if most users who vote - which would be recurring users - thought, hey, we don't need all the about links, or the history of zcom, etc. etc. What if 80% felt we don't want parecon prominent - or 60% felt we want a 9/11 section - and so on...
>>The top tabbed menu has 13 options. If that is way way way too many - would you like to go down to ten, or eight, or five. WHich ones would you drop - and what would you say to the person for whom those are important?
> Yes, down.
Is that your idea of answering? Down to what, removing which ones?
> First, grouping is important, so they should be grouped in a way that like things go together (as mentioned above in the US, Mexico, Canada example). Then, let users vote. To users for whom this is important, I would tell them that we strive to achieve maximal effectiveness for all users.
We are wasting time. (a) no one else has complained, so it probably doesn't warrant the time. (b) whether it does or not, we are working on a system that will let each user display the top page with whatever menu items they want - how many times do I have to repeat that? (c) That you should vote on how I see it, or that a majority should say how the rest see it, is well, not on the agenda.
As to grouping, (d) even now, perhaps we are stupid, but we think that is in place... so if you think it isn't, you would need to say where you think the change should be - concretely...not generally...
>> I only use some - but the fact that there are others there for when I do want them, or for someone else - why should that bother me?
> It should bother you because there is a cost in having irrelevant information displayed up front. It makes it harder for users to find what they want. People tend to look for logical groupings and patterns in how things are organized. If you fail to do that, then they are likely to overlook something.
Honestly, it is like a mantra...that you repeat. But you don't really answer what I offer. Maybe I am being unclear, but I do think we are done. You have yet to say what is irrelevant - what should be removed. Using words like irrelevant over and over - without the slightest indication that something is irrelevant - to everyone - is not constructive. Why having the four items you want in a menu, and only those four, will make it easier for you to see those four, than having a few others there as well, that other people benefit from remains unclear to me - and certainly why your concern overrules the other, is not obvious - and why you think we should go back and forth without a concrete proposal, is even more confusing to me.
I am sorry, I just don't have more time - I hope you can understand that for me at least, the time investment in this communication is having diminishing returns... If you have very specific suggestions, make them - but let's not belabor the general discussion further...let's give it specific substance.
>> To reduce options means reducing things that someone wants to do, or even that you might want to, at some time - even if we remove ones you don't presently care about. Some folks might not want half the topics, or nine tenths of the places, or various facilities. Surely the thing to do is use what you like and just not the rest, no?
> I don't want to reduce options, I want to change how things are organized. I'm not proposing that we throw anything away.
You are not actually proposing anything specific, however, about the menus, that I can see - if you have any positive proposal, by all means, offer it. Not something abstract - not a general advisory, but a specific suggestion - the ones you made earlier about photos are good examples, something like that, for the menus, I will pay close attention to.
>> So I have to say, even now, before that, saying you find a tabbed menu arcane, and a left menu that does something admittedly unusual, but transparent once you use it, arcane, I find hard to fathom... Perhaps people explaining would help.
> Not tabbed menus, but this particular tabbed menu, and not because it's tabbed, or because it's a menu, but because of how the particular topics are organized.
Then why are we wasting time on generalities. If you have such strong feelings about this, and if it is so obvious to you, then why not propose a specific st of changes. Propose, perhaps with a little humility but by being concrete - with real traction...
I feel like the top tabs should be - one two three...
Under one - I feel like you should have a b c
Under two I feel like you should have d e f
....
With this change I think the benefit would be...
At the same time, I don't think there would be much loss offsetting that benefit.
If there is something wrong with my reasoning here, can you give me a quick indication? If some of it appeals, great, I look forward to the change.
......
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Re:
By Schindler, Jonathan at Feb 13, 2009 10:58 AM
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Re: Re:
By Albert, Michael at Feb 14, 2009 09:35 AM
> To be honest, the only reason that I would ever reply, "Come back to me with a concrete mock up of the interface and then I'll take a look." to a user would be because I was trying to blow them off.
Well, while that isn't in fact a quote from me - I did ask you to please provide some kind of mock up of ideas - and I also said can you please you list the ideas which don't need a mock up to be comprehensible, for example those bearing on the tabbed menu, and I even gave you a kind of simple form to do it. Far from trying to blow you off per se, I meant both requests.
I was indeed saying no more vague give and take, we have heard you, and at this point it isn't moving us forward. But, by all means, if you provide specific insights we will take those seriously. Sorry if that seems to you to be blowing you off.
More, you had already shown a willingness to spend more time than I felt either task, particularly the second one of providing a simple list, would take.
Finally, as to actually "blowing people off," if I just want to end an exchange, I say so - no subterfuge.
> That's an extremely difficult task, and it essentially amounts to saying, "Please design my software for me."
That may be how you read it - or what it means to you, even - but certain it did not mean that for me.
You have gone on at length about the navigation being rather horrible - not because, as you have also repeated numerous times, the idea of a tabbed menu is bad per se, but because you feel our particular categories - groupings - are ill conceived, and also because you feel the items under our poorly conceived categories don't belong because many or even most, are irrelevant...you use that term often, among others that imply the same perception.
I said, okay, fair enough, please indicate which tabs you would retain, new or as is, and what you would include under each, which is to say, what you would leave out or bury, basically, as irrelevant and in the way, if prominent.
I don't think that asking you that is the same as asking you to redesign the site - but is instead, merely asking you to give some indication of what your rather strong words actually mean...
> Part of the job of a designer/web site developer is to take user feedback, no matter how vague, and produce something better with it. You provide options, and the user says, "Yes, that's better, not the other way around."
We have nothing like the means to keep shuffling through variants, and, as well, appealing to one user is very far from the same as appealing to all, and, as well, as I have pointed out, the purpose of the site isn't in any event that people like it, per se, but that people actually benefit from it.
You have been very harsh, have at least to my ears acted as though your judgements are definitive - and I have replied to everything you have offered... which seems to me to be very far from dismissing you. You have also shown a willingness to spend lot's more time than it would take for you to say, okay, drop these four tabs, or five, or six, or whatever on grounds they are simply unimportant, or on any other grounds you may have. And to then add to your entreaty something like, change two of the ones I want you to keep thusly, in the label that denotes them. Also, under the six or seven or however many tabs you are suggesting we retain, you might say - I think these items that you have are irrelevant...you should drop them.
> You may think it's moronic, but that's the way it's done. I will come up with a concrete proposal for the menus in my next reply (I'm guessing 2 weeks), I promise.
You know I have never been much of a partisan of how "things are done" as template for "how we ought to do things" - sometimes there are indications of sensible methods in the mish mash of how things are now done - but, my perception is that it is mostly not the case. How things are done now is instead how they are done in commercial, corporate, hierarchy ridden venues... that are seeking profits, not user benefit or political/social gain - so, yes, sometimes there is a nugget of good sense in "how things are done," but often not.
Having people indicate their reactions to things is good, and it can be useful, for sure, which is why we routinely ask for it, provide means to deliver it, etc. But so is thinking about things and coming up with ideas, etc., good...
You don't need to spend two weeks working on your reply re the menu inclusions and exclusions - you can do it in an hour, I would bet, and you have elicited more time than that from both me and you so far. I am not asking for anything like perfection - you are making a broad suggestion, is all - there is no need for you to provide some kind of incredibly accurate formulation. You have said the menu sucks, it is clunky, it is full of excess that is irrelevant - fine - maybe so. But you can't honestly think that, especially as strongly as you express it, it seems to me, offering it not as a personal reaction but as a fact only a defensive host would not easily perceive on his own - which you did - unless you explicitly think that, okay, this item this item, this item, this item, and so on, through a pretty long list, are quite obviously and irrefutably irrelevant. Okay, again that is fair enough - and perhaps it is true - but say so, explicitly, by positively providing a list of what you would leave in the menus to make them better.
> And, I'm not blowing you off, grouping 130 categories is not a trivial task, and it will take some time.
But you said most of the items linked are irrelevant and merely hide by their presence what is important. Presumably, what would propel those words is a feeling that of the thirteen key tabs, there should be, instead, maybe five or six, seven or eight. Under the tabs you would want, you would presumably think, I would take as a basis for your words, maybe 4 or 5 items each, say. So you would wind up with perhaps 6 tabs and 30 links under those tabs - presumably chosen from what is there - more or less. Okay, you might have to rearrange a bit - but, honestly, don't sweat getting that perfect too much - what I am asking first off is what do you see as irrelevant - the presence of which constitutes a big burden on users, in your view, preventing them from getting to what is valuable and important. You have said that over and over, I have asked for substance, over and over...this last time I just asked more forcefully, is all...
> But, the tone so far doesn't give me a lot of confidence that anything will be done with it. But for now, let's consider the interface discussion closed.
The tone so far is me asking you to back up your words with something concrete that I can act on, or not, as we decide. That is in fact a very positive response, it seems to me. The only thing more positive, would be if I said, hey, yes, gee, I didn't realize it sucked, we will redo it in full dropping 80% of the items since it is obvious which they should be...though the other half of my reply, did include, over and over, notice that we are putting in user control over site composition...
Your reaction in this current note is what I meant when I said that despite my giving you, one person who has written rather contemptuously of key aspects of the site despite barely having given a close look at it as evidenced by not knowing that it has features that you say are critical but describe as absent, a good chunk of my time, patiently asking repeatedly for substance, and then finally saying, okay, honestly, I can't go back and forth more unless there is substance, and then you take my asking for substance - specific recommendations, as me dissing you...dismissing you...blowing you off.
Honestly, I find that reaction hard to fathom. I know how others avoid it happening. They never reply, or they patronizingly say yes, yes, great - and then they move on oblivious to the whole exchange. I don't do either of those things. I simply reply, honestly, at length, taking what is offered quite seriously. In fact, I already made a bunch of menu changes, which apparently you didn't see, and I would make more - but not without additional explicit advice.
I look forward to your sending me a simple list of what you would include in or like in the menus, and what you would drop from them. Honestly, though, I don't think you should spend too long on it - remember, way beyond such changes, we are in the process of making it so users can actually themselves control what they see on their own personal version of the top page, and also the top zspace page, as well as their own personal zspace page, of course.
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By Schindler, Jonathan at Feb 12, 2009 21:18 PM
Oops, I should rephrase this para:
A smart ass reply, but not incorrect,"Why wouldn't I read the instruction manual for a new car?" Well, the answer would be, I have 100's of websites in my bookmarks, and have never had to use a video, so why would I start?
What I meant to say was:
A smart ass reply to your question would be,"Why wouldn't I read the instruction manual for a new car?" Obviously, the answer to your question is, I have 100's of websites in my bookmarks, and have never had to use a video, so why would I start?
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Re: the delay
By Kreider, Aaron at Feb 22, 2009 22:29 PM
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