General UX, discussion list avatar mismatch

henrywright

Franz agree! But this means we still have the mismatch to contend with 🙁

henrywright

Is the mismatch really a huge deal though? Users should become familiar with the format.

Dominion

The first one would also be my preference.

@Franz do you think moving the name away from the avatar does enough?

Franz

Dominion I think it at least improves the current situation...

Toby

It's live (reload the page).

Dominion

I think it works. It no longer attaches a name to the avatar; instead, it says something about the thread named above. And although it's a bit longer, adding the word "last" does add something.

Toby

I'm happy. It's far better than the mini avatar overlays or any other solution IMO.

Dominion

Egads, now I just have to worry about how I'm going to do this in Japanese.

... My rendering of the equivalent phrase in esoTalk has the username first, of course. 😛

wizgriz

The wording is less natural, but I agree, there aren't a lot of options left.

Beware: Some major ass pulling below.

Toby It's really important to me that the whole column containing the discussion titles is free of high-contrast elements.

This is 100% correct, hadn't thought of that. However, the segregation is currently a bit weird:

--------------------------------------------------------
| (Ava)* Discussion title*  |  Tags*  Unread/Replies** |
| (tar)  Last reply**       |                          |
--------------------------------------------------------
* Pertains to info of the discussion's creation: Who started it, where he/she put it, what he/she named it
** Pertains to dynamic info of the discussion's replies: Why this discussion is now at the top of the list

Ideally * would all belong on the left hand side, and ** would all belong on the right, otherwise it contributes to the mismatch/confusion (less now). Don't have an actual solution to the tag issue but thought I'd bring it up regardless.

Dominion

wizgriz Ideally * would all belong on the left hand side, and ** would all belong on the right

Yeah, that's why I suggested putting the tags above and the "last reply" string below, together with the reply count.

The only way out of this problem would be to put the tags over in the left column. And when it comes to that sort of thing, I think esoTalk has the best solution: tags right-aligned to the left of the (left-aligned) titles. That's a very easy to read layout. But then there's no good place to put the avatars...

Franz

I'm enjoying this discussion. Really productive. (Thanks, @Toby for implementing these so quickly.)

wizgriz Ideally * would all belong on the left hand side, and ** would all belong on the right, otherwise it contributes to the mismatch/confusion (less now). Don't have an actual solution to the tag issue but thought I'd bring it up regardless.

Also, we could think of these as the first line containing creation information, and the second one dynamic info. That would only require moving the reply count down.

Dominion

Franz Also, we could think of these as the first line containing creation information, and the second one dynamic info.

Oooh, that's an interesting angle.

EDIT: I've been making my Safari window small to get an idea of how the mobile layout looks. It might even be possible to as Franz suggested and get the tags out of the left column for the mobile layout. Or would there be too much risk of title and tags encroaching on each other?

wizgriz

Franz Also, we could think of these as the first line containing creation information, and the second one dynamic info. That would only require moving the reply count down.

Not a shortage of clever solutions it seems. Depending on how that looks it could work.

Franz

wizgriz It may be clever; I'm not 100% convinced that segregation mismatch is actually a problem for people. Thus, it may not be needed.

Waiting for opinions... 🙂

Dominion

I have no real problem with the tags and reply count centered as they are now. But I'm wondering if it might not be a good idea for the mobile layout. Now that the tags seem permanently fixed in the right column for the desktop view, I would like to ask how @Toby feels about their location in the small screen...

EDIT: Come to think of it, I've been ignoring the mobile design too much. I don't use mobile devices, but I know a lot of people in Japan won't even touch a desktop box these days.

Toby

Agreed, I don't think the segregation is a real issue. On desktop, putting the tags/replies on separate lines looks aesthetically worse; the aesthetic tradeoff is not worth the semantic correctness.

Trying out some things on mobile now, stay tuned...

Toby

Played around with having the tags/reply count on two rows to the right on both mobile and in the sidepane, and didn't like it at all. I think for those small widths, it looks much better if all of the high-contrast stuff (avatar + tags) is together (on the left side).

What we've got now is good.

Dominion

I was afraid that tags on the right wouldn't work, especially when titles start getting long. But since I don't use mobile thingamabobs, I'm a terrible judge of what works for them.

Toby

Now that we use up more room with the "Last reply" words, I'm wondering whether shortening the timestamps would be worth it? e.g. "Last reply 16m ago by Dominion"

wizgriz

Toby Would "Last reply" being replaced with a reply arrow icon thing make sense? Something like this

Dominion

Hmmm ... is that 16 months or minutes? 😉

I don't feel the need for it on the desktop layout. Would it be possible to use the long version in the desktop layout and the abbreviated version in the mobile layout? (Probably too much bother, I'm guessing.)

How about a more moderate abbreviation? ... sec ... min ... hr(s) ... day(s) ... mo(s) ... yr(s)

Toby

I was thinking purely in terms of length – but you're right, "Updated" isn't that much shorter than "Last reply".

I would argue that showing the time before the username is better for another reason too. On a narrow mobile screen, there's a good chance that there won't be room to show the whole "Last reply" string for some discussions (with >1 tag). In that case I'd rather the username get cut off than I would the time.

Dominion Hmmm ... is that 16 months or minutes? 😉

I don't feel the need for it on the desktop layout. Would it be possible to use the long version in the desktop layout and the abbreviated version in the mobile layout? (Probably too much bother, I'm guessing.)

Ideally as you suggested we would use an abbreviated version on mobile, but that introduces a bit of complexity which I'm not sure it's worth. We'll put it on the "nice-to-have-maybe-one-day" list.

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