Yeah that’s a good idea, and fwiw we have something like that on the game page (the estimator/analysis/info etc drawer)
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Yep, same concept, I just used the game tools drawer as an example, since it is already on OGS.
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Isn’t this functionally similar to what OGS does with the game tools?
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Oh lol I had to scroll up another comment beat me to it 
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Not really, because it’s in a popup. Popups are understood as modifying the current page in a way that is generally not significant enough to prompt a route change, unless it explicitly leads outside of the current page. Here’s an example of how it is used commonly:
And here’s a more similar example from Jira. You have it on the Search page and it sets the search filters to what you choose in this drawer. Effectively, it configures your page.
The current popup-drawer on OGS is used in the same way. All the functions there affect/configure the page. Coupled with how it was designed I think it’s one of the better designed modules of the website.
When it comes to the core features of an app/website, usually they’re given much more weight and visual significance. When something pops up temporarily on click or on hover it instantly reduces its importance, on top of changing its understanding. This is why navbars are almost always static, and often are also pinned to your window to follow you as you scroll through the website. All of this adds to their significance and makes you look at them.
@Samraku isn’t talking about the main menu on the left. If you visit a game page on desktop, there is an example of icons that turn into more descriptive text if you hover. I think this is very similar to the examples you are giving
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How is that different than what YT does? I see no difference in how it would affect my workflow: both leave me only a single click away from anything currently in the hamburger menu.
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I’m talking about applying the auto-pop-out-ness of the icons menu in a game to the current hamburger menu.
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Yep, I don’t think @esoka knows about that one (at least it seems from the comment that the game toolbox thingy was not mentioned). Are you at desktop? Maybe you could share a screenshot?
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Yes, I think they propose to do the same for the drawer on the left, to which I object.
As I said, they’re understood as 2 different design elements. You can read further here:
Modal Side Sheets - Material Design (the what I call popup drawer)
Standard Navigation Drawer - Material Design (this is what youtube uses and what I propose)
Understanding navigation - Material Design (general info on how to design navigation)
So I guess what I’d want is a “Permanently visible drawer: When users need to switch destinations frequently (and screen size allows), a permanently visible drawer can be used.”?
The important thing to me is that I can access all the options in one click, I think both of these things do that, and thus I don’t see the big deal about differentiating between them.
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Yes sure, having a permanently visible drawer would be quite normal.
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That’s one of the tricky parts of UX design, sometimes it’s hard to see what the difference is between individual elements until you throw them all together and the site doesn’t flow well 
it’s not an easy field to just sort of feel your way into, it’s kind of like high dan gameplay where they can think “I want a stone here to be sente” and then figure out what sequences work to get that end goal, even if other local sequences would have been fine or maybe even better, it’s about how they all work together.
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Lots of good ideas here - So, what will it take to move forward?
I’d be happy to try my hand at help organizing. I don’t have much open source project experience, but I have relevant professional experience (6+ years as a mobile dev w lots of interaction w UX & designers, as well as more recent project management experience though I’m no expert yet).
Proposed project goal: Create an organized initiative to identify areas of improvement for the site UX, build consensus around solutions, then resolve those into actionable dev tickets we can carry to completion.
Would people be interested in that?
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Definitely.
From what I’ve heard from the community, the main areas are:
-
a redesign of the home / overview page.
Many requests for features here, a primary one being some kind of autoplay button on the above mentioned initial landing page. -
Redesign of the menu system, and easier player searching (many don’t notice it currently until it’s pointed out)
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For those of us who don’t want to read 230 posts, could anyone post a bullet point summary of the features under discussion?
I mean that almost amounts to “can somebody else please read 240 posts, and summarize it for me”.
I mean the thread spans like a year and a half, I’ve probably read them but can’t remember them all 
There’s a lot of little things scattered around but the most recent one probably follows on from
basically suggesting how to improve the home screen, for people who want to jump into a game quickly.
There was a really good explanation of some ideas on why the UI/UX is cluttered or maybe not user friendly
and that includes the home page, and the navigation bar at the top, and the side menu that people have a hard time noticing is a menu.
Some suggestions on how to better divide up/design the home page
Anyway I imagine if @opsuty can get people organised they could maybe make one main issue on github which could have a big to do list of things to get the whole redesign moving, like a bunch of smaller task that might make the bigger job doable. Then much smaller goals can be done by whoever is interested. I believe that’s the idea?
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I just hope the tone of the thread doesn’t end up becoming “Let’s do these things that we agreed to do amongst ourselves in our small group six months and a hundred posts ago, without making clear to the wider community what our plans are.”
eg. “make the UI more accessible” is an extraordinarily vague phrase to use in conversation. “Make the home page icon more understandable”, or similar, would give people a better idea of what’s going on.
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Actually it isn’t. Accessibility is measurable and there are established solutions for improving it. What comes out of it and what solutions are to be used though is unknown.
To add another seed to the conversation that many people probably overlook: the website’s biggest audience are correspondence players rather than the live players. I don’t have a confirmation to this so it’s just from looking at the active games and challenges, but I would bet it’s close to being true. In that case it will affect the ux approach as the correspondence-related user stories will have a higher priority.
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