One Woman’s Reactions to M15 (Gallery Interface First)
White – Whoops!
Actually this is more like One Project Manager’s Reaction to
the M15 Visual Gallery Interface Design.
Very First Thing:
I don’t like how hard it is to read the artist’s name on the
new card frames in the preview set. I was afraid of this when I first saw the
reduced space for the artist credit it makes it very difficult for people who
are not motivated to find the artist and feels like a disservice to them. The official Wizards card Gallery also
does not let you click for a larger view of the card. This has always been a
problem for me visually but now it’s worse. The black of the card frame plus
the black of the background on the new website makes the credits and numbering
virtually unreadable even without any visual ability differences – really
uncool.
This is not
a critique of the card frame- the frame itself is probably much more functional
in live meatworld format – this is a combination of the choices made for the
card frame AND the choices made for the interface template interacting with
each other.
Also I can’t see the card numbers – disappointing. That is a
lot of information that we use to navigate and interpret the cards during
spoiler season that are now inaccessible from the card gallery where I know
I’ve used the gallery for those things in the past.
Navigation Bar on the Gallery:
The horizontal navigation that allows you to select how much
of the preview that you see doesn’t let the user know which view they are in by
color – this may have been true in the previous version of the site but I never
noticed because I wasn’t trying to navigate out of my chosen view because I
couldn’t read bits of the cards I was looking at.
The text based “cards added” takes up a ridiculously large
amount of interface real estate for a visual gallery – I have to scroll down to
get to the navigation for the Gallery and the cards themselves.
Clicking on any of the selected galleries still puts all of
those things at the top. This is my desktop space when I link to it my first
instinct if linked it to click assuming that I got the incorrect link because
of a problem. Scanning the navigation doesn’t even tell me there is a gallery.
I do not understand where the User Experience Design team is on this. Is there
a Usability position on the team at all?
For instance when I click on the link to the site I see this
first:
I went to see the Gallery or Visual spoilers – I’m showing
the screen cap for my entire screen here – I don’t see a gallery or mention of
either.
I have to scroll down because I didn’t find navigation to
the gallery – I know it’s a new site. Maybe it’s lower. Scrolling down one full
screen I see this:
OK fine that’s nice- I came here for the Gallery- none of
these things are the Gallery. I did actually follow a link here but maybe it’s
the wrong link – I clicked on Pre-Release but that didn’t help. At least when I
hit my back button it took me back to my position on this screen. I scroll down
another screen’s worth.
Uhh – hey this is a whole screen about booster packs? A
whole screen? Where’s the Gallery? Is it the M15 Button in the big circle? Oh
no that’s just a big full screen description of the difference between a
booster pack and a fat pack. You don’t leave the page- where is the gallery –
why does this need to be so incredibly big? What function does this serve for
people looking for the gallery – or events? Or new people to the game – I don’t
get this, the brand Identity has already been prominently positioned on the top this feels not just excessive but if it doesn't provide a functionality it's also creating extra calls to action for 2 definitions that could easily have been put on the same area instead of with a navigating animation that has to load. And I'm wandering all my thoughts away from the Gallery . Maybe if I scroll down.
The next screen’s worth of scrolling:
It’s More TEXT? Huh?
I see card tops…
Scrolling…
Ahhhh... Finally.
If there is a usability position, and I mean this kindly –
is it user flow focused and does it have any veto power ?– Because without veto
power that position will be shouted down by any number of competing actors and
team/tech needs. I would like to believe that’s what’s happening here.
Possible Solution – Highlight and underline the segment of
the Gallery you are in right now there is only a white rollover and the
navigation bar is text only. There is a LOT of text on the page and a lot of
things that text-based bar is competing with. This would only be a minimalist
clean choice for a nav bar if it were at the top of the page, but it’s situated
in the middle. It might benefit from more attention since supposedly it’s the
function that the content page is for. I’m assuming that this IS the function of the page because I cannot
navigate to the gallery in any other way that I found quickly while writing
this review.
*Please note I am literally writing this review in live time
as I experience the issues.
Readability: Title Edition
Titles are now under the cards – this means that you look at
them as if they are the titles for the visual cards below them instead of above them because of Western
culture visual conventions and perception. The black card bases on the black background field blur the spacing so the titles look like they are floating between the cards more than they would otherwise. Instead of being perceived as directly underneath their associated cards and reading like captions the
eye passes over it and it looks like it’s the title for the card below it. In user
terms, because the white glowing thing in black over the card looks like the
title it is a stronger impression than the printed title on the graphic of the card. The dissonance between the card title on the graphic and the art is going to be
reduced (basically for most casual viewers or people actually scrolling), they
will think they have read the title and pay less cognitive attention depending on their personal focal and processing points, they will concentrate on either the card text or the art.
At least on the white cards I am starting with, the art
makes some cognitive sense with the graphic on the lower line. It took a minute to realize there was something off. For instance the similarity between the floating names and the card
art made Battle Mastery look like a Leonin.
Possible solutions – Move the titles to the top of the card
– or add the bottom of the card data that is unreadable to the titles at the
bottom of the card and move the spacing even closer to the card base treating
that information as caption information using a clearer convention and
metaphor.
Navigation – when I reach the bottom
The “Top” navigation indicator is kind of floating and lost
in a bunch of visual noise at the bottom of the gallery – I am done in this
picture with White and would like to move to Blue because the reason I am
separating by color is to be able to absorb the information I just looked at in
manageable chunk. Now if I weren’t doing this review I would have missed it
and just scrolled back up creating additional cognitive symbol processing load
– looking for navigation or making decisions about navigation distracts from
the brain-work of moving the information on the page from short term to long
term processing.
Oh the “Top” button doesn’t take you to the top of the
Gallery Navigation – it takes you to the top of the page up where the M15 and 4
screens of non-gallery information are.
Practical solution: Please repeat the horizontal navigation
for the base of the scrollable gallery so that users don’t have to take an
extra step or three to get to the next page. The Gallery is supposed to be
informational and every single thing on the page distracts from the purpose of
the page giving more attention, time, real estate and cognitive load to the
things that are incidental or opportunistic to the content itself.
This is the opposite of what a content site is supposed to
do. The product placement and redirects and branding are supposed to be
attractive because of the content – not a barrier to the content itself.
Also having the navigation to the other galleries repeated
in the horizontal navbar would clearly signal a separation between the gallery
and the “Where to Play” functionality. Remember the purpose of the a gallery
site it the content of the gallery, if you make a user stop thinking about the
content itself to think about "what is this thing at the bottom' you blur the
usefulness of both the content and the thing because you’ve added to cognitive
load.
There is a lot of potential in this redesign and I
recognized that part of the mission is making it a responsive website, but the
application of minimalism for responsiveness should still follow some
conventional standards or each item becomes a floating object without skimmable
context and must command attention equally. Equality is great for people but
less so for design and functional elements.
Desperate Plea:
Right at this point in time, I would assign every single
person who works with the Wizards Digital properties the classic usability book
that even CEO’s can read on one overseas flight. It’s called “Don’t Make Me
Think” by Steven Krug.
It’s in its 3rd Edition. Really this is for all
developers of all interfaces. Please read it if you make things humans have to interact
with on the Internet.
Or call me – I’m kind of busy with an ethnographic study of
Cultural Actors in Magic but I didn’t stop being a user or a person with 15
years of usability experience and I love you guys. I’ll make time to help. It’s
purely selfish really; I want to be able to use the mothership first.
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