So, we have all lived with the new front page design for some time now. In many ways the front page has hit or exceeded the goals we set for it. We are seeing quite a few more clicks from the new front page- about a 15% bump. The modularity of the design has allowed us to easily integrate a custom banner in support of the Black Lives Matter protest. 98% of users have made the switch over to the new front page. Over all it’s been a pretty sweet ride.
Or has it? There have been number of cranky user stories. The design team has read these stories and many of the thousands associated comments and have discussed them extensively. I see two main areas of discontent. One is that frequent, active users have to work harder to find some of the content they were used to finding quickly on the old site. Below, please find a list of design change options which could potentially address these issues and let me know your thoughts in the comments. Would these address the issues you are having? The second, more broad worry is about end of the blog format and what that might mean for the community.
My long-standing and deeply felt position on that issue is simple: Daily Kos’ community is a key pillar of the site. We stay committed to fostering a thriving community, to the early internet values of democratic access to information and publishing platforms, to foregrounding diverse voices- not just those in power- in political discourse. While the blog format in its formal incarnation- reverse cron of all stories- no longer fits a community the size of Daily Kos or the larger internet we find ourselves in, we’re not abandoning those early ideals. We still have the bright orange “Write a Story” (previously labeled “Blog It!”) right at the top of the page, and hope you all do contribute stories to the site. Comments, the most active community feature, was the last major rewrite before the new front page. Finishing up the new front page means we now have time to work on making comments better- yes we’re actively working on the comment tree jumping issue now. And, remember that additional click-through happening on the new from page means more readership for community stories, too!
Below is a list of feature requests made from staff and community in response to the launch of the new front page which are being considered.
In development
- List view- all the “See All” links will go to a newly built list view which will allow you to sort by recency, comment count or recommend count. This condensed list of stories gives quick and comprehensive access to stories, and will be used to display a number of different lists- the recent list, trending list, staff stories, all the stories for any given blog, etc.
Under serious consideration
- Time stamps- moving away from reverse cron means that it is hard to know from just looking at the front page how fresh a story is. Visited link color does some work in show you want you have read already, but it doesn’t help you skip over items you have already skipped over.
- Change the section order: Activism and Civiqs embed further down the page and bring up the More Community section. We love the community. Did I mention that already? It’s true.
- Link to a list view for all recent stories near the top of the page.
Under consideration
- Expand/collapse sections. We know not everybody reads the front page in the same way. That’s good! Users on site have a diversity of interests and a diversity of roles in the Daily Kos community. Some read each and every new community story, while other are here for coverage of a specific issue. We want you to be able to find what you want quickly.
- Recommend counts- we wanted to launch with as simple a presentation as could work, to make scanning over the large number of stories listed on the front page as smooth and experience as possible. So we started with just images, headlines and by lines. But recommendations let you scan for quality, not just topic or author, so perhaps our minimalist by line approach was taken too far. What do you think? A particular conundrum for the display of recommend counts is: is it suitable to show on all sections? For example new stories man not have many recommendations, but they may still be excellent stories!
- Comment counts. Do you want both recommend and comment counts? While the numbers reflect different quantities, they do seem somewhat duplicative on the front page- that is they both show community engagement. Please let me know if the comments which you prefer, or if you prefer both, and let me know the reason for your choice.
- Index at top of the page on browser (like prism). This has similar motivations to the expand/collapse idea- allowing you to move quickly to the content you want.
- Hover- want more information before clicking? Hover text on the old front page would show you some of the intro text of the story. Perhaps this makes it easier to find good stories to check out? Is it really easier than just clicking through? Hover doesn’t work on touch devices, so this mode of preview is falling out of the web design vernacular.
Please let me know what you think!
