#Deviantart Listen To Your Users Challenge

Вторник, 01 Февраля 2022 г. 03:53 + в цитатник

oh boy, here i go complainin' again!

So. This recent site update. The new notification center. In dA's own words, it's meant to "boost engagement". Fascinating. Because I've never wanted to use this site less.

I'm not going to be mean or angry at the staff about this, I'm sure they're trying (??). But this newest update is a mess. Easily the worse site change since the launch of Eclipse. Over the years I've really tried to adapt to each new update, I realize a website can't stay the same forever. I stuck around even as dA gutted old fun features (Stashwriter, drag&drop favoriting, the ability to preview comments, etc). I stuck around even when Eclipse launched and effectively cut my audience engagement in half. I am here now, even though dA feels more dead with each passing year, a relic of a bygone age of internet. I've been here for fourteen years. Half the time I've been alive! I didn't want to leave. But this newest update is just....awful. I'm sorry, it's awful. The new notification center is slow, it's buggy, and what used to take just one click now takes several. It is an absolute chore to use. I compiled comments from users here that have given similar feedback.

One of deviantart's few remaining solid features was the ability to easily receive and manage audience feedback. I loved logging on and sorting through all my neatly organized comments and mentions. I loved the community! Comments are a solid 80% of the reason I post art here. And now deviantart has torpedoed the ability to access them. The comments I get are now buried under hundreds and hundreds of favorites notifications. There is zero organization. I could get a comment on a recent piece, but it's lost in a sea of people favoriting old art and liking my old comments. There is no way to sort comments from faves. Good luck even finding your mentions. This update has actually made me dread my art receiving favorites. How do you bungle something that badly, dA?

Before anybody says it, I've already filled out dA's official feedback form, and I've left my thoughts on their notification center post. I'm uploading this drawing because I know from experience that dA doesn't listen. I'm certain they don't read feedback forms. I'm certain they plan on making this update permanent. So I uploaded this, because I figured it'd be a little louder than their limited-character feedback form. Even if dA is determined to self-destruct, I at least wanna know I said something. You guys should say something too. Voice your issues in the comments below, heck, fill out a feedback form. Maybe if we annoy them enough, they'll actually listen. Maybe.

If you like the new update, fine, I'm happy for you. But please don't try to shut down critique of the new system- users are very much allowed to feel unhappy with this change.

The new notification center is perhaps the least intuitive, most user-unfriendly update I believe we've seen thus far. This is my feedback/suggestions:

Split notifications into clearly divided categories (comments/replies/favorites/mentions). The new notification center sorely needs to have an option to sort comments from favorites. As is, it's pretty annoying trying to comb through hundreds of favorites notifications to find and reply to the (much rarer, in comparison) comments. There also needs to be a way to sort comments from replies. Mentions also need to be their own separate, easy-to-access category.
The scroll bar needs to be wider. It's a thin little sliver. It's already terrible trying to wade through a mess of notifications, and this is made even worse when your cursor misses the tiny scroll bar and accidentally closes out the notification sidebar, forcing you to start reading again from the top. It's a pain to use. Also, just a personal thing, but I'm not a fan of the choice to leave 7/8ths of the notifications page blank and give us a teeny drop-down panel on the left-hand side to actually scroll through notifications. This is not a good use of space, an art website should know better.
Provide an option to mass-remove notifications. This one is fairly obvious. The only current options are to manually delete each notification one by one (a laggy, awful experience), or mark them all as read, which still doesn't remove them.
Please, pair notifications with the watch feed. The same way things used to be, before Eclipse was launched. Separating notifications from watch (and making the watch feed a cluttered mess to sort through) has drastically reduced user engagement with art. I know from my own experiences that my audience engagement (comments, favs, etc) was reduced by 48% effectively overnight, and has not recovered since the launch of Eclipse.
Provide a way to opt-out of the update. Users should not be essentially forced to beta-test, especially not if staff are then going to ignore user feedback. Right now, it very much feels like staff doesn't give a damn about building a functional art website.

With this latest update, I honestly feel there is little reason to continue using deviantart. I will try to stay here for as long as I can....but I am not going to waste my time trying to navigate the worst, least intuitive update this site has ever rolled out. I will leave, if it comes to that. I can see other artists branching out to other sites, and I plan on doing the same. I'm currently dipping my feet in the water over at Buzzly, here's my account: buzzly.art/~Lopoddity.

As always, I post art much more frequently on my patreon (there's a ton of content there that hasn't made it's way here yet): www.patreon.com/lopoddity

Complaint over. Thank you for reading, and thank you all for the support over the years. <3 You all are the reason I've stayed here as long as I have, and the reason I'll try (emphasis on try) to stay longer.