Hey, it's been a while so thought I should better let all you good folks know what's happening in regards to our site redesign.
We started off with all of the survey results which I covered in a previous post. These turned up a lot of interesting and useful ideas, some pet peeves and lots of suggestions for the future. There was definitely plenty to go through and we thank every single one of the current 26,577 people for all the time and effort that you put into these.
Next up was finding a suitable UX/UI Designer to help with the translation of all this data and begin to think about how people interact with the site. We posted up the role a while back and got a large number of very suitable applicants, I went through each and every one that led me to eventually get a short list that I could liaise with Robin on. Due to the ability of the people in this list we needed some way of seeing their vision so we asked for them to produce a quick sketch of how they could see the front page of the Nexus. We once again got some incredible results, but one person stood out due to the detail that they put into their submission - that person is Phill Collins.
Phill has joined us on a contract basis to help shape the Nexus. His role is to make things more modern, more intuitive, more powerful and he brought with him a ton of experience to do exactly that.
He has hit the ground running and has bombarded both Robin and I with a ton of questions, ideas and suggestions. Phill took it upon himself to complete the unenviable task of reading through all of the survey results and once he’d done that he went over some of the different pages within the site (roughly 36 of them) with a fine tooth comb and made several hundred comments asking for reasons things had been done a certain way and offering advice left, right and centre.
To say this is the beginning of an exciting time is (to me anyway) an understatement.
So what’s next I hear you ask?
Well we’re still in the discovery and concept part of a UCD, this means that we are working out how everyone uses the site, what they use it for and how they navigate. With the amount of users that we have and the possible navigation flows this is a fairly long procedure as people use the site for all manner of reasons. For some it is primarily a social community and their first port of call is the forums, whereas for others they come on to find the latest mods, others may be here to look at images or videos and some may be here to try and find some golden nugget of a mod buried deep down within the site. We are looking at process flows to see how we can bring all of this to the surface with just a few clicks.
We need to look at the site from all angles and from all eyes, so we create what are known as personas. Imagine the character creation section of Skyrim and all the various possibilities of person you can choose, each one having a very different range of skills and abilities, history and beliefs. Well, there you have it! We create ‘people’ from different ages, backgrounds, livelihoods etc. and with that we begin to see what they use the site for. We then look at the site from this users perspective, making comments and approaching each page with a different mentality. This will hopefully allow us to see the site differently and approach pages for various reasons.
Competitors are another major part of the redesign. We need to look at lots of other gaming sites and see what we think they are doing right and where they too could be improved. You can learn a lot from other sites and I find myself navigating other sites purely to see how it all fits together. Within the survey, one of the questions was “Please enter one of your favourite websites in terms of look and functionality”, this has proven useful to see where people believe a good user experience and interface lies.
So we’re onto wireframes and design, which is where we would like to begin thinking about introducing our focus group. The idea being that these people will be the first to see the wireframes, mockups and process flows etc for the site and offer feedback. I would like people who are able to offer constructive criticism and who want to shape the face of the Nexus. edit: 28 Oct 15 - The focus group is now full!. I’m going to limit this to 25 people at first - this might not sound like a lot, but when you need to go through all the submitted comments it certainly is time consuming. This may or may not expand in the future but for now it will be a random pick from the emails I receive.
Cheers all
124 comments
Comments locked
A moderator has closed this comment topic for the time beingThis is why Google/YouTube introduce their little changes one at a time. Of course YT has gone through some major changes in the past, they generally follow this little rule.
Now, having said that, I am obliged to say that I hate all sorts of change, and in this case even more, since Nexus has one of the best, coziest, user-friendly UI's I've ever seen.
Seriously, visiting your website is a delight, and the ads arent very bad, compared to other sites.
The color scheme is great and fits each game nicely, and the buttons for all important functions are clearly visible and good looking.
What I'm trying to say is, you dont need a redesign from an UI perspective, but since you are aiming for one, please at least try to keep things looking (visually) similar to what you have right now.
And if you are going to introduce major changes to how the sites look, then do them one step at a time, making sure us change-haters sort of ease into it.
Thank you.
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
NEXUS!!!!! LISTEN TO THIS PERSON!!!!!!!!
- The buttons do not need to be any larger than a user's finger-tip
- Buttons that are too big take up space for other information
- There is always the option of simply making a Nexus Mods App with a mobile-friendly interface.
- As for an interface schematic, I would try to go with something close to the interfaces of the Amazon or Ebay mobile apps - but only instead of buying real-life things your downloading mods (and potentially donating to the mod developer if you like the mod)
- Do not go over-board in trying to simplify the interface - Keep the information, just put it somewhere more convenient
I also agree with morpheas.
looking at the term of service, i think a regulation must be done by forum administrator/regulator, for offence and bad beaviour, instead of giving the ability at the modder to hiding even a constructive comment.
this is almost an improper use of the forum, and what it represent since the very first days of it appereance.
in other word, i do not see any motivation to collaborate posting, if my belive can be deleted without any reason.
so in the future redesign of the site you may want to keep in mind this report.
lot of reguards
EDIT: Wow that was fast. 30 seconds and it's back. You guys rock!!!
The point isn't to fix, the point is to innovate and improve with modern times, technology and needs.
Now maybe the back end of the site needs a redesign due to poor coding or coding that simply was designed with fewer users in mind, but I wouldn't say that it needs to be modernized, probably just fixed (though since I can't see the back end code it's a lot of speculation). I mean, hell, look at C++, that language is old as dirt but it's still the backbone of a lot of back end math engines and is still used quite a bit in the business field. I mean, COBOL is still used by Scott and White Hospital where I live and that came out in the 60s.
With all that said, as a professional programmer and amateur web admin I simply don't see the need here to mess with the user interface since code optimizations can generally be done without affecting the UI or the user at all, other then maybe faster site load times, or functions working more consistently.
Edit: It is also entirely possible I'll change my mind once we see the new site.
My greatest fear is thet they make it all white with the 'flat'' design-trend you see nowadays.
Nexusmods' ui is already so cozy
No offense of course but that's such a faulty/irrelevant comparison :/ He's just worried that the redesign will ultimately be unintuitive and/or more hampering than what the site is now when it ultimately works already at the end of the day.
Did you know that Google now adds weight to sites that are mobile optimised with their latest search algorithm release?
Did you know that some of the biggest responses we got on the surveys was that the site doesn't scale, or that we don't use tags very well to find content, that search is under-utilised and broken? We can address all of these and so much more with new web innovations, optimised code and some love and affection put towards a responsive design.
The survey results, our analytics and our users tell us a lot...
We are and will continue to try our hardest to provide you with a site that will help you find the mods that you are after, be they huge campaigns or little graphical tweaks, additional missions or a complete overhaul.
We are working to the ethos of: intuitive, functional, visual.
The site will be a long time in development, this is not an overnight project and will be released alongside the current site to enable people to report anything they find and get used to it. I have every faith in our team and users to help us achieve all our goals.
Yes, because advancing through entire civilizations and technologies = the same as a web-redesign of a site. /sarcasm
This little phrase of the Ages can be used to justify any sort of change, be it small or massive.
But in any case, this analogy of yours is very very poor. Mostly because the "innovations" that you are implying are not true innovations, its things that have already been done by other websites, and the technology that you mentioned is already tried and tested.
Also, the Dark Ages were horrible times that humanity wishes it never happened since it brought us back in the past, for a while, it did not move us forward.
P.S. Not trying to bash on you guys, its just that this analogy is very poor indeed.
And as he said, renovate to meet modern times it's not the looks only, but the structure as well. WebDesign has evolved, HTML5 and CSS3 is here and it's always improving, JavaScript is a lot more powerful too. The new tools are here but aren't being used. Why is that important? Cause it can make everything faster and prettier. So yes, I does need a complete redesign.
Regarding Windows 8. The problem never was that it's hard to use, but that it was different. Elder people who never used any of system for a long time always found Win8+ easier to use. It seemed "hard" to old win7 users cause they pretty much lived in that, and then they got something different.
Are you saying you're tracking us?
Javascript is evil.
and i probably dont need to say this, but if you really wanna make this try to share the design process with us. maybe put up some votes and screenshots. after that dev, site demo and then switch.
- No windows 8 box fetish
- Keep the color!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Keep navigation generally the same
- ADD WHAT IS NEEDED BUT DO NOT TAKE AWAY WHAT IS NOT BROKEN
- Test your new code for glitches
Otherwise I'm glad to see that this is progressing.
That is the single most obnoxious thing this site does and if another site had the content and didn't harass me for *more money*, then I'd leave immediately.
Such bad form.
maybe you should get an idea what it takes by making a simple chair in a 3d prog and then try to uv it properly. i bet you gonna hate it. but these guys are at it for hours and all we do is simply clickedy click click click.
nvm trying to make a nice armor, which would include weight painting it and then having to fiddle around with the bones to look for any poke throughs.
truly its not a cookie cutter job.