🌱 this article is still a seedling!

i've been reading the ux case studies of people who were responsible for redesigning deviantart eclipse which have been interesting. obviously a lot of it has to be vague for nda purposes, but the core values, as per the communities very vocal feedback, were identified correctly.

but the design opportunities proposed....in what world does "being able to choose three color options for your thumbnails: black, white, and grey" reflect "customization that isn't limiting and doesn't conform to modern design"? eclipse was the ultimate conformation into modern design and pushing the site from "community-centric" to "social network," despite the core values being identified as exactly the opposite.

a proposed way of improving to the community-centric part was having a space for specific critique feedback questions (however, the example questions were extremely "fine artist" geared, which I don't feel like reflects the primary userbase of DA), but i don't even think the critique feature is something that exists in eclipse anymore...apparently it was prone to mass trolling...the common workaround for non-core members was to post in critique groups (feels more community-centric) which seemed to be less trolled b/c it requires more effort to look at those, but was a very ymmv experience.

i was surprised that the mobile design was proposed as a way to redesign deviantart without affecting the familiarity of desktop, or to quote: "offer change without disruption" because i feel like most people saw eclipse as a redesign for a mobile-first mindset. when approaching design for a mass audience nowadays people are always advised to approach them with a mobile-first mindset because retaining all the features you want on such a small screen is the hardest challenge....but then leave desktop as an afterthought, if not just a scaled up version of the mobile experience.

responsive design is truly such a headache though. the usability vs. creativity debate has been going on for years (x). on the other hand, there a friction for old sites between mobile users wanting to do something that they used to be able to do on mobile because it was still "desktop-formatted" and no longer being able to do it.

core is also an interesting when viewed in the lens of "bad loser experience design" (this is not really a common term, only brought up here and here but reflects a common sentiment) -- where "products and platforms turn into ghost towns inhabited by thirsty would-be “influencers,” howling desperately into a void that was once occupied by curious, casual users". anyways the first article linked does feel like a reflection of what modern social media has become.

twitter verification used to feel like a delineator btw who was important and who wasn't, they tried fixing it by bulk verifying 'trustworthy journalists' and now it has rocketed back to an even harder delineator of 'who elon musk likes and doesn't like'; the "rich get richer mindset" of algorithms reward those who are the most on top of gaming the system (see: young artists who follow trends to the point of burnout); and finally - treating the casual user like a failed user: there's a comment on the article that refers to DA Core Membership as a prime example of this: you are met with CTAs to promote to Core at every single point in your experience with DA which causes users to (1) leave out of annoyance that they can't even use basic customization, (2) beg for core or work really hard to gain enough points for it, (3) cave and buy, orrrr (4) buy because you actually want to support the site. while these visual indications of status are what many many platforms use to make revenue (from core to premium club penguin to airline classes)........in some ways it feels like an early introduction to social status/classism (x). while most platforms do retain a "discovery" feature that is reflective of slower "rooting through" of ye olden web (i.e. webrings) i feel like most are still rooted somewhat in popularity ranking (spotify discovery albums i feel like are the most successful version of this).

idk. at the end of the day the people who really care about it will develop their own workarounds with the fixes that the community really wants to see (see: reddit apollo, tumblr xkit, old DA scripts, recreating the old neopets....etc) because they aren't tied down by the bureaucracy of measuring kpis, what features seem to hold the most increase in monetary value, dealing with broken codebases, etc

reference links for later use:

http://www.daniel-soltis.com/projects/deviantart.html

https://uxdesign.cc/revisiting-deviantart-as-a-ux-professional-6ded0c06a220

https://www.katasikulubya.com/deviantart

https://medium.com/@foley.ell/redesigning-deviantart-6277f8df80ea