ID:138277
 
I know there is a desire to allow arbitrary amounts of nesting in the hub, but I'm finding a real usability issue with it.

When you go to a section of the hub, you expect that the big link that says, for example, Sneak!, will take you to the game of Sneak.

But it doesn't. It takes you to a sub-page that shows you the Sneak blurb again. A page that, I guess, allows for sublinks under Sneak.

In addition, there are several elements to an entry kind of crammed together:

- Icon which links to the game
- Title which links to a subpage
- Banner which links to the game
- Text description which may also contain links.

How about something like this...first, allow either an icon or a banner, but not both. There's no clean visual way I can think to allow both.

Second, for page scannability, always have the game name as the left-most item. If it is sometimes the name and sometimes the icon, the eye gets stalled while trying to read down the page.

Third, put everything for an entry on the same line, to reduce clutter and make it easier to support sub-entries.

Fourth, have the game name and the icon/banner be a link to the game.

Deal with sub-entries as indented items with the sub-entry right there so you don't have to go to another page. (People shouldn't put in so many sub-levels that the whole hierarchy can't be displayed on one page. There's just no point, since we're not Yahoo or the Library of Congress, and people get very confused by that sort of thing.)

Here is an attempt at what I'm describing:

















DragonSnot        Because you're the janitor. And it's snot.
     
Living & Dead        Body switching. Mass murder. Evil plans.
Get in here.







Obviously banners look better than icons in this scheme, but that's okay. The main thing is that it makes the page scannable, it doesn't confuse you as to what a link will do, and it makes it easier to put indented sub-entries in.

What do you think?
Obviously banners look better than icons in this scheme, but that's okay. The main thing is that it makes the page scannable, it doesn't confuse you as to what a link will do, and it makes it easier to put indented sub-entries in.

What do you think?

I think that basically the nested scheme prevents that possibility, though I can think of two workarounds that would make it more of a possibility.

i) This wouldn't look or work as good, but if a category has no sub-categories, don't make it a clickable link. That way someone wouldn't follow a link thinking that they'd go to the game, because there would be no link to follow.

ii) Give the option of changing the subcategory link to an actual link to the target. That would work the same way as you prescribed, and it would look fine.

And the secret third option,

iii) Have both of the above.
In response to Spuzzum
On 12/2/00 12:18 pm Spuzzum wrote:
I think that basically the nested scheme prevents that possibility, though I can think of two workarounds that would make it more of a possibility.

I think the nested scheme works better with this approach. You just do an indented table with the nested items, and then it's clear what the person is seeing. (I didn't and don't have the time yet to demo this but I can later.)
In response to Deadron
On 12/2/00 12:38 pm Deadron wrote:
On 12/2/00 12:18 pm Spuzzum wrote:
I think that basically the nested scheme prevents that possibility, though I can think of two workarounds that would make it more of a possibility.

I think the nested scheme works better with this approach. You just do an indented table with the nested items, and then it's clear what the person is seeing. (I didn't and don't have the time yet to demo this but I can later.)

I don't quite think I was clear... sorry 'bout that. What I meant was that the hub is designed for everything to potentially be a subcategory and have subcategories, but if you changed the system to have links to games as the titles rather than links to subcategories, someone who actually DOES make a subcategory in the games section wouldn't be able to have anyone view the subcategories without the workarounds.
On 12/2/00 12:02 pm Deadron wrote:

What do you think?

I like your ideas a lot, and, in fact, discussed a similar proposal with Dan recently. I think that the one-line "no clutter" display is very important; I don't like how the current system takes a lot of space to display a few links. I also am in favor of having only one image format (icon or banner)-- having multiple types makes in unnecessarily complicated, in my opinion.

Furthermore, I think that links should display chronologically by default, with options for an alphabetical (and /or "featured") listing.

The current hierarchical scheme will probably be useful in the future when we have a gazillion links, but for the time being I think it is overkill and am in fact in favor of no user-defined hierarchies for now. I think that a simple, consistent display such as the one you have suggested will probably be the best option.
In response to Spuzzum
On 12/2/00 1:08 pm Spuzzum wrote:
What I meant was that the hub is designed for everything to potentially be a subcategory and have subcategories, but if you changed the system to have links to games as the titles rather than links to subcategories, someone who actually DOES make a subcategory in the games section wouldn't be able to have anyone view the subcategories without the workarounds.


I don't get it...you can just do subcategories like this, which in fact I think makes subcategories more useful than they are now...

<table>
<tr>
<td>DragonSnot&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
<td>Because you're the janitor. And it's snot.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>Beta release of DragonSnot 2.0: When Snot Freezes&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>SantaSnot Crossover Beta 0.5&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Living & Dead&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
<td>Body switching. Mass murder. Evil plans.
Get in here.
</td>
</tr>
</table>