[Discussion] Navigational Redesign

Summary:

So, I'm writing this to document what I can only assume is my sudden descent into insanity. I can't possibly be THAT bad a navigator, and yet as I write this I've been trapped in the topbar for 2 days.

[Discussion] Navigational Redesign

OptimisticLucio 06 Oct 2021 18:20

^{Link to 05command Thread}

Hey all. For the past few months, MAST's Navigation team has been working on a sorely needed redesign for the topbar and sidebar of the Wiki. I'd elaborate on the specifics, but this link showcases both the reasoning for the redesign and the redesign itself, so it'd probably better if you just check that out.

Topics of discussion are whether you think this change is good or even necessary, anything that can be changed or added, and optionally if we should just do away with the favicons next to the sidebar links, since aside from Home none of them serve a purpose anymore.

This discussion will be open for a week.

Re: [Discussion] Navigational Redesign

OptimisticLucio 14 Oct 2021 05:08

The timer has ended, and we've implemented (or atleast considered) the different responses to this redesign. Before going to vote, we're going to pass it by the IO social media platforms for about three days to also see what kind of insight we'd get from the userbase who doesn't frequent 05command or the onsite policy forum.

Once that's finished, it'll go up for a five day vote.

Re: [Discussion] Navigational Redesign

PeppersGhost 07 Oct 2021 00:39

I'm a big fan overall, but one glaring omission I noticed is the lack of any link to the general Tales Hub.

The most logical way to find content is to start general and then narrow it down to something specific. For example: Tales > Series > Daybreak, or Tales > By Author > P > PeppersGhost.

As a user, what's frustrating is when I get presented with more specific options first, and then struggle to find out how to navigate a "layer up" to a more general search. If anything, I would recommend removing the Canon Hub and Series Archive from the sidebar in favor of the Tales Hub, and then maybe make those two categories more prominent on the hub itself.

Or, alternatively, have a separate sub-menu (collapsible?) for the Tales Hub, Canon Hub, Series Archive, Curated Tales List, and Tales by Series. (The lack of Tales by Series on the sidebar is also weird; overall things seem to be heavily reducing the visibility of standalone tale access in favor of promoting serialized content.)

Re: [Discussion] Navigational Redesign

OptimisticLucio 07 Oct 2021 14:10

Noting that we ended up talking about this over discord, and here's a summary of what we talked about and got to:

The SCP Tales by Series Hubs are going to be linked at the top of the SCP Series Hubs, so we in nav felt cutting that link for now was fine since it was only temporary.

About the Tales Hub, we both came to the following conclusion - The Tales Hub, conceptually, is an incredibly useful asset to help not leave standalone tales to be abandoned and help find tales by their general topic. However, the current implementation of the Hub is clunky at best and terrifying to newbies at worst, which is why Nav is planning to redesign that page at a later date. I felt that it was better to not wait for the Tales redesign, since it may result in neither ever being finished, while Peppers felt that not waiting could result in the Tales redesign never being done.

It comes down to a choice between the lesser of two evils, and it's fairly subjective on which is better.

Re: [Discussion] Navigational Redesign

Ethagon 07 Oct 2021 09:45

I'm personally missing the shortest new pages because I frequent that page a lot, but this looks otherwise great.

One thing I want to point out is that everything that would be omitted from this new sidebar should get at least one new place to link from (things like underread and underrated are currently only linked from the sidebar)

Re: [Discussion] Navigational Redesign

OptimisticLucio 07 Oct 2021 14:03

Totally fair on the second point, we'll look into it. On the shortest new pages - we're working on merging Recent Pages, Top Rated, and Shortest into one, so hopefully we'll have shortest find its way back soon enough.

Re: [Discussion] Navigational Redesign

Boro610 07 Oct 2021 14:53

As long as you can easily get to “tales by series” I’m down.

Re: [Discussion] Navigational Redesign

timeforthyme 08 Oct 2021 21:29

I think this redesign does its job really well for the most part. Looking at it makes me realize just how little of the sidebar I actually use on a day-to-day basis. I do have some (relatively minor) concerns, however.

1. The abbreviations "J," "INT," and "EX" are uses as stand-ins for their respective article categories. From a space-saving perspective this makes sense, but from a discovery perspective I'm not so sure. Certainly these are abbreviations you only need to have explained once to understand, but new users seeing these codes and not knowing what they mean might dissuade them from clicking. A user looking for funny SCPs won't necessarily understand the relevance of "J" but would much more likely know to click on "Joke SCPs," for example.

2. This is more of a question than a concern, but would the translations/languages box be placed on articles that have translated versions? While not necessarily relevant for all users, being able to click to a translated article rather than having to find it on the respective language's wiki seems pretty useful. Perhaps there's a way to put it into a collapsible in the sidebar?

Other than what I've listed above, I think this proposal would be a good thing for the site as a whole.

Re: [Discussion] Navigational Redesign

OptimisticLucio 09 Oct 2021 06:55

1. That's something we discussed too. We tried making the tab say "Translated | Joke | Explained" instead to remedy, but it ended up looking awkward, and the "Joke SCPs / Translated Articles / Explained SCPs" method ended up taking a lot of space for what is only very initial confusion (one click and the user gets what the letter stands for). We ended up deciding that the mild inaccuracy was a fair tradeoff.

2. Yeah, same place as before.

Re: [Discussion] Navigational Redesign

Petrograd 11 Oct 2021 14:04

I'm gonna make a huge caveat down below, but on a basic level I like the simplification of the sidebar a lot.

One thing I'm missing overall is the removal of a lot of resources from the Universe top-bar. Maybe you could make, like, a landing page that links to these and put a "Universe Info" link to that on the side bar or something?

I'm not as wild about the new top-bar menus, I honestly don't see a lot of those getting used very often.

Big caveat time: You could very easily be deleting links that people use all the time and rely heavily on, and there is no way to know without asking/testing. You could set up a simple survey asking people which links they use regularly, sometimes, or never, and throw it out on social media.¹

Bare minimum, I would recommend asking for feedback in other community venues. This is going to impact a LOT more people than registered site users.

Footnotes

1. (There are also tried and true methods for conducting user testing data to improve website navigation, but I get that staff isn't a paid gig.)