New UI - Aesthetic feedback

[Plagueofdeath]

Why is the website design and layout literally catered to mobile users? You guys are a pc modding website.

[HighlightedSkye]

Not that a single voice chiming in here will do much, but I (a long time lurker and mod consumer) want to bring in a perspective as one of the "mobile users" a few people have both mentioned or brought up that these design changes might be catering to.

And first and foremost, I think it's important to outline what "mobile user" actually means in my case. I browse Nexus on mobile while I am on the go and away from my computer. I browse to take a glance at the newest uploaded mods, maybe track one or two to look at later, and then move on. It's a temporary mode just to take a glance at the latest if I'm away from home. Not as a primary mode of viewing or downloading. I always return to my PC to review each mod in more detail and view images before determining if I will give it a go or remove it from my tracking and forget about it's existence.

Now, having completed that...let me expand upon my opinions on these design choices on both mobile and PC side.

Having an additional extra area at the top of the page that shows both the game icon and name is spaced very poorly on my mobile device, taking up at least 40% of the top of the page view. I already navigated to my preferred game using the menus. I know where I am. I don't need to be told again. This section takes up less space on desktop but it is still intrusive and really unnecessary in my opinion.

The sizing of the trending mods on mobile forces me to scroll past them for an extended time. They aren't stacked in into a more condensed view like on desktop, but rather shown each individually in order with the same sizing. I understand that sometimes design choices on mobile views are more limited, but this still feels a little excessive in terms of how much I have to scroll through to reach anything else. On desktop, they could use better borders to distinguish them. The old UI had each of these more contained in their own boxes, this new layout feels more like they've been slapped into a half-finished page element that didn't load correctly.

Collections. As many, many others have echoed...I think this section should be completely removed or at the very least something we can toggle. I don't use collections. If I wanted to browse collections, I would open the collections page. The current addition of them not only eats up page space on both mobile and desktop, it's not even showcasing a rotation. It instead only offers the top collections -- meaning I see the same two collections. Every. Time. I. Open. The. Page. Every single time. I wasn't interested in the top two collections for games I mod before now, and having them in my way every single time I open the main page doesn't make me any more interested in them than I was before.

The more mods view could use some tweaking. On mobile, this area more or less follows the same setup in terms of mod tiles as the old one did. I think the text of the titles could be a bit smaller, to allow more room for the text. The thing that is by far the most annoying to me, on both versions is that since the page no longer displays the same amount of mods due to the new spacing on the UI, clicking "more mods" at the end of the section now leads to me having to scroll through more than half a page of things I've already viewed on the main page before I reach the last 3 or 4 mods it failed to show on the main game page. Why is this even a thing? The old layout displayed enough tiles that clicking "more mods" would allow me to land on page 2, not page 1 with 3 mods I didn't already see. It's wasting time, space and probably server load to serve them to me again. The main page should include these missing tiles to allow a seamless transition to page 2 as the old layout did.

I don't like the new spacing of images on desktop or mobile. It feels like it takes three times as long to escape them to get to the bottom of the page for site news. It would be great to be able to toggle them off completely, as I'm uninterested in them altogether, but at least improving the spacing would be nice. I'd like to have to scroll less, like the old UI allowed for.

And speaking of site news...Why are the tiles so large? I maybe wouldn't mind it as much if the image were smaller and more text occupied a bit more of the space instead but...this current setup feels like, as most things in this UI "update" do, to be a waste of page space. As another user stated, I can't even view more than 3 of these tiles at a time on desktop. The sizing of their tiles is just so obscenely large that it prevents me from doing so. On mobile, I can only view one tile at a time in it's entirety. What is the purpose of this? It just seems...excessive and not very well thought out in terms of user experience.

The mod view page definitely could use some work on the spacing on desktop. As others have said many times, it's a lot of wasted space. The ability for filters and categories to be viewed side-by-side with your "search results" is nice, but I would prefer to be able to place it along the right hand side. Having it on the left feels clunky and unintuitive. It feels like I have to go out of my way to reach and use it. The spacing between mods could be reduced by several pixels and there's definitely enough room to allow for the viewing of more mods per row. They all feel way too distanced from each other. For both versions again, why are we showing and listing the game we're on again? Just a simple line of text would suffice if you are determined to have something there.

The individual mod page view is acceptable on mobile. It more or less is the same setup as before, with slightly different buttons, alignment and colors. However, I do have some complaints about it as far as the desktop view. The top of the page displaying the main image, preview images, tracking, tags and other information is more or less acceptable, though the higher contrast is causing some eye strain for me, which is not something I usually struggle with. The new section tabs (description, files, images, etc) are harder to read now that they are just text on the same colored background with little distinction. That orange in particular is an issue. The changes in sizing to "About this mod" are a little intrusive to me, and could be reduced in size. I've already viewed most of this information in a smaller tile on previous pages, I don't need to have it flashed at me like a warning sign when I'm already on this page to read the longer description of the mod anyway. Also, the background to individual mod pages has an abrupt line in the gradient where it appears to begin the gradient again near the top of the mod, just before the end of the main image if you're all the way the top in 1920x1080. I'm not as opposed to gradients as I think some people are, but this really bothers me aesthetically. It looks like someone shoved and image in there and didn't check, so now your background is repeated oddly with a very obvious seam like a website built by a high school student in 2001.

As far as the search, I can only speak to the experience here on desktop. I do not use search on mobile. The new search does nothing short of infuriate me. Why are you making me go through extra steps to confirm that I am only looking for mods for the game which I already have active? If I wanted to search for a specific (new) game other than the one I'm viewing, I'd go to the games list you offer on the Nexus Mods homepage. If I wanted to search for a collection, I would go to the collections page. If I wanted to search for literally anything other than mods for the specific game I am already viewing, I would navigate to the specific page for those things. The new search is terrible. Honestly to me, this is one of the worst offenders in the whole new setup. And I have to go through this annoying process all over again any time I want to search for a new term. At least offer me the ability to set the view to search for mods only -- the same way it already does if the resolution of the window is smaller, like if the window in side-by-side mode with another program. The mods are, at the end of the day, what we're all here for -- as creators and users. This section really just seems to add things that really should be more of a "toggle on" feature rather than the default. I can't imagine what purpose I would need all of these search "sections" for even as a potential beginner user.

 

 

Overall, I am pretty disappointed in this update to the system but in particular about how the Nexus team has handled the response to this. You stated that there was more support for this appearance, but many of us (myself included) never received the option to even participate in your survey while this site layout was in testing. The testing period felt very, very short from a user perspective for something so drastic. It very much feels like the change to this section of the forums was made to reduce the amount of negative feedback that was viewable to everyone in the wake of the immediate backlash from the community about the changes. You talk about collecting data, but you aren't very clear on sharing that information with us, the users. A response in the form of site news with some updates you are at least considering working on is a step in the right direction for sure, though it is a far cry from making me feel completely assured about the future of the team responding to the concerns (current and future) of the user base.

[Agirlnamedmichael]

I don't like this new bloated look for the site. I don't care to see half a page of "trending mods" or "collections" when I'm looking for new mods. I prefer tabs for that stuff. It was cleaner and easier find what I wanted that way. The new look is cluttered and not pleasant to navigate at all. I also didn't appreciate being forced to use the overly complicated section on the left to do a simple mod search instead of being able to just type it into the search bar at the top. I want that for typing in my search parameters for mods which is what most use. I don't want it to be just for searching for mod authors, which is all it brought up. The left side should be for more detailed searches or mod authors and the actual search bar should be for what it has always been for. 

I don't like the new design at all. Before it was clean, simple, and straight forward. The tabs were clear and easily accessible and I didn't get face-smacked with a bunch of stuff I am not interested in.

[jbwenu]

I do appreciate that you're taking our feedback into consideration for possible future changes/improvements.   You're right, you can't please everyone; but it seems you are earnestly trying to figure out how to incorporate some of the most frequent suggestions.

On the topic of spacing and scrolling changes:  I would appreciate more tiles per page for less scrolling.  However - if more scrolling is inevitable, some kind of break between sections that is not empty space would still be an improvement.  Even a thin horizontal line crossing the screen between sections (such as between Collections and Mods, and between Mods and Media) would give an easy-to-spot landmark when scrolling down that says 'hey, you just reached a new section'.  Alternatively, put each section (Mods, Media, etc.) in an outlined box.  Put a game-specific icon in the middle of the screen in between sections.  I'm sure there are more creative minds than mine that could come up with other aesthetically pleasing options.  Just anything other than blank space...   The key point is that empty space is not much of a notification that I scrolled too far, or have reached  the section I was looking for.

Somewhat unrelated - will we be adding/keeping a way to see who we have given kudos to, and who has given them to us?   And is there somewhere I can find an explanation of the different earned badges that show on our profiles?  Most are self-explanatory, but some not so much...

Thank you for all the hard work, for listening to us, and for being home to what has been completely responsible for me spending waaaay too many hours on games that I otherwise would've been done with years ago.

[Ebonhawke]

I've used the Nexus for 14 years and I have to say this is the worst that I've seen it.   I hadn't logged in a while and the firs thing I said out loud was "What happened to the site?".   Please revert it.  This current version wastes so much space and is not aesthetically pleasing.

[TwistedSisler]

I know this is probably a long shot, but I would love a sorting option in the search (Or even when just browsing mod lists) for mods you've previously downloaded for that game. There are several times when I'll come back to a game a year later and cannot find a specific mod I used to have because I couldn't remember the name of it, or when there are unofficial updates to certain mods and you're not sure which one you had last time.

As far as other feedback, it's really just the new search that I don't like. Seeing mods for other games when I'm searching, or irrelevant content when I'm looking for a mod is less helpful, not an improvement.

[meegja]

In the new UI when going to the mods section, it's very hard to find/see anything because it's al way to big and very eye straining: looking the whole time with rather big jumps from left to right is really not okay. For Media it's okay, there are only thumbs. But for the mods section it's really no fun now
Having a choice in this view or in a normal, easy to watch and easy to read list view with normal sized letters, would be great.

[Sebiale]

• I think I would recommend emphasizing the Mods, Collections, and Media at the top of the game pages. Guide users into drilling down into one of those categories since what's shown on the top level of the game page is only a brief preview of the most popular items in the categories. Most people are going to want to search or filter once they hit this page.
• When you're inside of one of those categories the search bar should default to searching that category. If I click into all trending mods on the following page the search bar should automatically select the Mods if I pull up the search.
• Be nice to have a collapse/expand option on the filter, besides just hiding them entirely.
• Details on the filter options, such as language tags not being required so selecting one may still exclude mods or use cases for why you'd want to show only updated mods. Really we could use a whole document on the filter and search parameters.

[Harken53]

How can I get rid of the background image? It's the same color as the text, which, brilliant, guys. I have to ctrl-A to select the text in order to read it. I haven't looked at the rest of the new UI, because I CAN'T SEE IT.

[sukhi1]

The main feature that is missing for me is the ability to look at screenshots without having to click on the mod page