I find the white text on colored backgrounds hard to read. In particular, some cells have white backgrounds and a white font which only offers contrast via a thin shadow outline. Also, the font color stays constant, but the backgrounds don’t, which makes for a somewhat jarring experience of reading text in adjacent cells.
When I move my cursor from hovering one cell to another, the art instantly changes, in a way I find pretty disorienting.
Overall, it feels like there’s way more flickering on the page than on the rest of LW.
The section headings (e.g. “Rationality”, “Optimization”) cannot be read from left to right, but require tilting one’s head or something, which seems suboptimal.
The “Show All” UX is confusing: first you hover a cell in e.g. “Rationality”; then a small plus sign appears in the bottom left, which is apparently clickable; and only then a “Show All” appears all the way in the bottom right. In particular, it’s weird that the buttons are in different corners, rather than in the same corner.
Other feedback:
Major kudos to the LW team for continuing to work on stuff like this <3.
I’m not loving the name “LeastWrong”.
I agree with some of the other objections, e.g. how this sounds from outside the community.
Also, while a title like “Best of LessWrong” would be more wordy and less funny, it seems clearer and easier to understand. E.g. I could link someone to “Best of LessWrong” and the name would be self-explanatory, whereas linking to “LeastWrong” is more of an insider. And it’s not like this community suffers from an insufficient supply of jargon.
Also, does “LeastWrong” even capture the spirit of the yearly LW Reviews? Truth and accuracy are important considerations, to be sure, but we as a community don’t actually have the manpower to 100% vet the reviewed posts. Furthermore, tons of other things are also considered during the review vote: like “this post was important to me”, “I referenced this post a lot”, “this post (or author) makes LW better (or worse)”, etc. Not to mention that there’s guidance by the LW team for what an upvote/downvote is supposed to mean, and this meaning has changed over time! E.g. IIRC at some point we were asked to consider whether a post contributed to intellectual progress or some such. It seems to me like “LeastWrong” doesn’t properly capture all that, and rather makes it sound like we as a community have decided that these are the most accurate posts on LW.
When I move my cursor from hovering one cell to another, the art instantly changes, in a way I find pretty disorienting.
Yeah, I’ll experiment a bit with putting a longer delay on the hover transition. I agree that it feels currently a bit too flickery. I do also want it to feel responsive when you hover of an individual post.
On readability: I currently made the tradeoff to make post titles that are unread quite readable (with a heavily darkened background). Curious whether the unread/darkened items still seem like they have readability problems for you.
I’d already clicked on most of the articles, so I also didn’t realize that some cells were marked as unread, but I agree that titles with the unread background are comparatively easier to read. And the readability on all titles benefited from the stronger shadows you’ve implemented. Overall my impression is that those stronger shadows make the page slightly less pretty but a lot more readable.
My guess would be that you are one of the few users who has clicked on practically everything in the best of?
For most random users I sampled during testing there is a very clear and identifiable pattern for read-statuses that users understood reliably, but it becomes less obvious as the percentage you’ve read goes above 80% or so (and indeed I cannot test on my own account for I have read all posts and so am seeing a pretty outlierish UI state).
I guess this isn’t terribly important information to communicate in this particular context, anyway…
I do actually think in user testing, seeing people fill the urge to “fill out the picture” by reading a lot of the content, or at least checking it out, seemed like something that brought people a bunch of joy.
Thanks for making this :).
Feedback on aesthetics and UX:
Art and layout are pretty!
I find the white text on colored backgrounds hard to read. In particular, some cells have white backgrounds and a white font which only offers contrast via a thin shadow outline. Also, the font color stays constant, but the backgrounds don’t, which makes for a somewhat jarring experience of reading text in adjacent cells.
When I move my cursor from hovering one cell to another, the art instantly changes, in a way I find pretty disorienting.
Overall, it feels like there’s way more flickering on the page than on the rest of LW.
The section headings (e.g. “Rationality”, “Optimization”) cannot be read from left to right, but require tilting one’s head or something, which seems suboptimal.
The “Show All” UX is confusing: first you hover a cell in e.g. “Rationality”; then a small plus sign appears in the bottom left, which is apparently clickable; and only then a “Show All” appears all the way in the bottom right. In particular, it’s weird that the buttons are in different corners, rather than in the same corner.
Other feedback:
Major kudos to the LW team for continuing to work on stuff like this <3.
I’m not loving the name “LeastWrong”.
I agree with some of the other objections, e.g. how this sounds from outside the community.
Also, while a title like “Best of LessWrong” would be more wordy and less funny, it seems clearer and easier to understand. E.g. I could link someone to “Best of LessWrong” and the name would be self-explanatory, whereas linking to “LeastWrong” is more of an insider. And it’s not like this community suffers from an insufficient supply of jargon.
Also, does “LeastWrong” even capture the spirit of the yearly LW Reviews? Truth and accuracy are important considerations, to be sure, but we as a community don’t actually have the manpower to 100% vet the reviewed posts. Furthermore, tons of other things are also considered during the review vote: like “this post was important to me”, “I referenced this post a lot”, “this post (or author) makes LW better (or worse)”, etc. Not to mention that there’s guidance by the LW team for what an upvote/downvote is supposed to mean, and this meaning has changed over time! E.g. IIRC at some point we were asked to consider whether a post contributed to intellectual progress or some such. It seems to me like “LeastWrong” doesn’t properly capture all that, and rather makes it sound like we as a community have decided that these are the most accurate posts on LW.
Yeah, I’ll experiment a bit with putting a longer delay on the hover transition. I agree that it feels currently a bit too flickery. I do also want it to feel responsive when you hover of an individual post.
On readability: I currently made the tradeoff to make post titles that are unread quite readable (with a heavily darkened background). Curious whether the unread/darkened items still seem like they have readability problems for you.
I’d already clicked on most of the articles, so I also didn’t realize that some cells were marked as unread, but I agree that titles with the unread background are comparatively easier to read. And the readability on all titles benefited from the stronger shadows you’ve implemented. Overall my impression is that those stronger shadows make the page slightly less pretty but a lot more readable.
I would not have guessed that there is any read/unread state marking going on, FYI.
My guess would be that you are one of the few users who has clicked on practically everything in the best of?
For most random users I sampled during testing there is a very clear and identifiable pattern for read-statuses that users understood reliably, but it becomes less obvious as the percentage you’ve read goes above 80% or so (and indeed I cannot test on my own account for I have read all posts and so am seeing a pretty outlierish UI state).
Ah, yeah, that makes sense. (I guess this isn’t terribly important information to communicate in this particular context, anyway…)
I do actually think in user testing, seeing people fill the urge to “fill out the picture” by reading a lot of the content, or at least checking it out, seemed like something that brought people a bunch of joy.