The overall design of OGS web page seems to be incompatible with modern web pages? Does anyone want to redesign it to make it more beautiful and easier to use?
BTW, I am a developer, so if anyone has a good design scheme, would you like to try to update the overall style of OGS together
The whole front end is open source on GitHub if you have any ideas you would like to sound board, that’s where you will likely get the best interaction. Though a post here too isn’t bad for ideas and discussion.
… though I think the “development” side of it is the easy bit.
… that’s the hard part 
Agreed 
We’ll probably end up with worse design than we had like it often happens, e.g. reddit redesign.
New reddit is way better, people just complain about change. The idea that OGS needs a redesign is a very common one on the forums. Certainly some people won’t like it but that shouldn’t stop us from trying if/when someone qualified to help comes along.
After a comment like this, one usually explains one’s reasoning – why do you suppose this is the case?
I keep on hearing the opinion that OGS needs a redesign, with very little explanation.
I imagine that the reason why is because it was designed before modern web practices came into play.
Personally, I can’t see how a functional “app-like” site like OGS is amenable to the scrolly-bannery look of modern web pages - I’d be interested to see a similar “app-like” site that is done the modern web page way.
It’s difficult to put in words because almost every element of the site could be modernised in some way, and it’s complicated to wrap that all up succinctly, hence the dilemma of design being trickier than implementation.
Could you elaborate on this? What exactly is incompatible? Are there some specific technical issues in how OGS interfaces with other websites and/or browsers? Or do you mean in some sort of vague sense of the design aesthetic being different?
What are some ideas to make things more beautiful and easier to use?
To me the main pages of OGS look fine when compared to other web apps (disclaimer: I use it on mobile most of the time).
By main pages I mean the home page, the player profiles and the playing/observing page.
The only problem I have on mobile is that the home page breaks when there are too many board previews to generate or the modals that are not very mobile friendly.
Besides, I the problem is the 95% features that do not seem to be used enough to get some dev love.
Like the puzzles page, the tournaments, the chats, the groups, the library…
I think the premise that the problem with the OGS design lies in the purely graphical/visualization domain is not entirely correct. Design, UX is about making a product more efficient and effective in solving users’ problems. Graphical design comes next. So I would start with a list of prioritized scenarios of interactions between user and the website. Lichess.org is fantastic in this sense. One of the key strategic decision to make before developing a new design is whether OGS focused on live or correspondence games. Lichess is heavily optimized towards live games. Current ogs design is a mess. Lovable, usable, but a typical mess of a design, when new features are added without having a grand UX strategy. The only way to move towards a new design that I see is to have a volunteer UX designer from the community.
If features are not used enough, it might mean two things: users don’t know about the feature, or the features is not something that users need.
Discord is superior to OGS chat and groups.
BadukPop and others made amazing gamification of puzzles, motivating people to play more.
Tournaments is still a mystery to me, but it’s not very convenient to use them.
SGF library is very user-unfriendly, impossibile to download, share or sync in a convenient way, and it’s hidden deep in the insides of the menu.
To give a different perspective (at least about some points):
I’m not aware that Discord allows you to run Go tournaments.
Yeah, personally I don’t need a puzzles here on OGS.
I have some minor issues about the information on the tournament list - I’d like to see more there - but otherwise? Join and play. Easy enough for me.
Another feature that I personally don’t need on OGS.
hidden deep in the insides of the menu
OK, the ordering of the OGS menu is a tangible topic.
Here’s the menu. I’m happy enough with how it’s ordered. Does anyone think it could be improved, how and why?
I’d like to see some concrete discussion for once, that would lend the topic of redesign any merit, since all that ever seems to appear is vaguaries.
Remove Leaderboards 
I’ve heard quite a few people ask for the leaderboards to be removed.
I think very few users understand what measures they catalogue (and I’m not one of them).
Agreed about Leaderboards. Also move chat down and tournaments and ladders up.
So many things!
It’s so long that it didn’t even fit on the screen for a start. Where is settings?
“Home” “Play” and “games” - this is a site whose main job is to enable playing a game. Why are there three options that all sound like they might do that? This should just be one thing and the opening page anyway.
“Demo board” - great! It’s right after “play” soi suppose I’d go here for a demo… Switch this with “learn to play go”, which is surely the next most important thing after actually playing games. Between these two, most users shouldn’t even need the rest of the items.
“Leaderboards” delete this obvs
“Chat” put with “forums” at least and probably “groups” too.
“Tournaments” - move this up (or make it a feature on the “play” page)
“Ladders” - basically a type of tournament so do the same thing as for “tournaments”
“SGF library” - combine with “demo board” and maybe just call it “my library” or something.
“About” and “documentation and FAQs” should be merged. “Help/about” or something.
“Logout” should just be an option in “profile” or something.
That should make it a bit more approachable and fit on most screens.
The truth, I think, is that they don’t really measure anything they used to work, but they don’t work anymore.
