I made a post last week on the site that went mildly viral - or at least I think, who knows without any numbers to pat my ego - where I suggested a solution to a problem that was, I believe, reasonable, achievable, and could serve to further delight users with a unique and endearing experience. Seeing that staff prefers feature requests be shared here, I'll restate my thesis as simply as possible:
A small yet significant user experience issue with Cohost is a lack of responsiveness when the website is lagging. One taps or clicks a button and finds no response, and can be led to wonder if the site is simply processing the request, or if they in fact misclicked or mistapped. Confusion, frustration, and unwanted behavior can result. The lag itself is not the issue, but rather the lack of acknowledgement from the site that it has registered your action and is "working on it," so to speak. The issue could easily be resolved with the addition of simple loading animations.
I of course nominate the eggbug, simple yet charming mascot of the site. Perhaps a single small animation, perhaps a rotating selection of random animations, or perhaps context-sensitive animations (one for changing settings, one for quick-sharing, one for sharing with added text...)
Imagine it in action - you have finished typing out your addition to a post and click "Share" but the website does not respond immediately. Instead of waiting in uncertainty for several seconds, the site dulls to the background as a small eggbug takes center stage on the screen, with little glasses on their little face, shuffling papers together in a small repeating loop, with the accompanying text, "Eggbug is preparing your post..."
Of course, if none of the current staff are skilled artists and animators, this would require the hiring of external artists, but the load is ideally light enough that I imagine it would not be too exorbitantly expensive - and honestly I imagine there are already many artists on the site who would be ecstatic to help with the task.
And perhaps I overestimate how simple it would be to implement. Perhaps it would require extensive overhauling of some aspect of the site to insert this "simple" element, in which case, I fully understand if the idea is shelved. But even if it takes a lot of work, I personally think the idea is golden from a user experience perspective, I can't see unobtrusive animations like that being anything other than endearing and adorable, while also providing valuable user feedback that would make the site feel more responsive even if it took the same amount of time to process a request.
Currently the only "loading" animation is the quick share's spinning circle. I think the site would benefit greatly from having this feedback across the entire experience.
Pendell
I made a post last week on the site that went mildly viral - or at least I think, who knows without any numbers to pat my ego - where I suggested a solution to a problem that was, I believe, reasonable, achievable, and could serve to further delight users with a unique and endearing experience. Seeing that staff prefers feature requests be shared here, I'll restate my thesis as simply as possible:
A small yet significant user experience issue with Cohost is a lack of responsiveness when the website is lagging. One taps or clicks a button and finds no response, and can be led to wonder if the site is simply processing the request, or if they in fact misclicked or mistapped. Confusion, frustration, and unwanted behavior can result. The lag itself is not the issue, but rather the lack of acknowledgement from the site that it has registered your action and is "working on it," so to speak. The issue could easily be resolved with the addition of simple loading animations.
I of course nominate the eggbug, simple yet charming mascot of the site. Perhaps a single small animation, perhaps a rotating selection of random animations, or perhaps context-sensitive animations (one for changing settings, one for quick-sharing, one for sharing with added text...)
Imagine it in action - you have finished typing out your addition to a post and click "Share" but the website does not respond immediately. Instead of waiting in uncertainty for several seconds, the site dulls to the background as a small eggbug takes center stage on the screen, with little glasses on their little face, shuffling papers together in a small repeating loop, with the accompanying text, "Eggbug is preparing your post..."
Of course, if none of the current staff are skilled artists and animators, this would require the hiring of external artists, but the load is ideally light enough that I imagine it would not be too exorbitantly expensive - and honestly I imagine there are already many artists on the site who would be ecstatic to help with the task.
And perhaps I overestimate how simple it would be to implement. Perhaps it would require extensive overhauling of some aspect of the site to insert this "simple" element, in which case, I fully understand if the idea is shelved. But even if it takes a lot of work, I personally think the idea is golden from a user experience perspective, I can't see unobtrusive animations like that being anything other than endearing and adorable, while also providing valuable user feedback that would make the site feel more responsive even if it took the same amount of time to process a request.
Currently the only "loading" animation is the quick share's spinning circle. I think the site would benefit greatly from having this feedback across the entire experience.
8 people like this idea