Anime and manga info pages have an updated design

Halex said:
  • The custom lists need to show more than just 2. Here the name is what is important and they usually have long names, so it will be beneficial if you just show the lists that are available. You could have them scroll inside a box so you don't use a lot of vertical space. I would recommend placing them below "If you like this anime, you might like..." as they are essentially recommendations from grouped by other users.
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*hugs Halex* This issue of barely seeing any lists has been bothering me most (since I use the custom list feature a lot) and you're the first one to mention it. Anna no longer feels alone!
:drinking:
 
I really hope we get an option to get back the old design function where we could see our own watching status on related anime. I used that a lot.
It was very useful to look at.

For example:
Before, I was using Fate/stay night page as a reference point to watch other Fate related anime to get ready for this season's Fate Grand Order.
But now all I see is..
uVMDcvY.jpg

Which no longer helps me, because I'll have to open each one by one to see if I've got everything or not.
I do this with a lot of other anime too.

Pls.
 
BlaizeV said:
Honestly reading that originally (the sothis bit) I felt like I was alone, thankfully this thread has taught me otherwise. I was baffled how such a critical feature for tracking Anime could be described as infrequently used and just removed to make something look prettier. I was very frustrated but it's not my website so I kept that to a minimum but yeah I'm glad that others agree with me that this feature needs to return and hopefully it will.

I have zero idea how these decisions are being made (I mean that sincerely) but I hope many decisions being taken behind the scenes are taking into consideration the more 'hardcore' users tracking Anime rather than just those more casual. I'm sure they are but this decision has led me to question that regardless.
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You probably already know, but Sothis and the developers do read all the comments on these threads :)
User opinions are always taken into consideration.
 
Kari5 said:
You probably already know, but Sothis and the developers do read all the comments on these threads :)
User opinions are always taken into consideration.
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+1. Quite a lot of research (analytics/where people click, UX research, long-term thinking, etc) goes into any decisions that are made. We certainly will pivot if needed. We ask that everyone keep in mind that there's an extremely small group of volunteers who work on A-P - we aren't owned by a big corporation with a ton of resources. We have to selectively choose what gets worked out, and there's usually a strong reason behind it. We do always keep the user experience in mind, always. It's why features sometimes take a very long time to release, because we try to make sure we get it right.

As to the specific relations feedback:

Our goal with the entry homepage redesign is that it's about *the entry*, and making data about the entry more easily scannable, accessible, and visible. Over time the page has become quite cluttered with lots of "other things" you can do that are tangential. Marking an entire franchise quickly isn't a core part of a single anime (versus, say, getting metadata about the anime, similar anime titles, reviews, etc. Or, quickly being able to get to *the* sequel or prequel, or some other entry page) - it's something that clearly some folks (there's 4 million monthly users, and a handful of people replying here so far) think is nice to have. So if we do make a change to this, it would likely be looking at how to provide this functionality in another location, versus reverting and making it a core part of every single anime's info page.
 
Quin15 said:
What happened to the 'Stalled' and 'Not Watching' numbers that were displayed on the overview tab?
You can view the numbers in the 'User Stats' tab but why were they removed from overview?
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Please re-read the announcement as it explicitly mentions this.
 
What can I say about the new changes? Some of them are nice, some will take some time to get used to, but one of them, already mentioned by others, is a definite downgrade in usability. I am talking, of course, about "Related anime" section. Firstly, take a look at this:
J9WeGjH.png


Here you can see a lot of entries with names "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone...", since full titles are too long to be shown in cards entirely. Now that there is no way of knowing which is which, navigating through that is a complete mess, as for some reason there is even no hover for cards, unlike everywhere else on the site. Clearly, something must be done about that.

Secondly, I understand that you decided to remove the feature of marking these entries from this area and I am fine with that. What I am not fine, however, is the inability to see the status of these entries on my list. Indeed, I think marking and viewing are different issues and it should be possible (from the design viewpoint) to have one without having the other. I don't want to rely on my memory to know what I have seen and what I haven't, nor do I want to check each page separetely. Seeing as there is still some free space left on cards, I think it can be possible to add the now missing information.
 
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sothis said:
Marking an entire franchise quickly isn't a core part of a single anime [...] - it's something that clearly some folks [...] think is nice to have.
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I think most of the complaining has been about the removal of the ratings on the new related cards, not on the actual ability to mark. The loss of the ability to easily see which of the related anime I've watched and what I thought of them seems like a pretty big loss to me. I mean, I don't know if it's a bug or part of the design, but I'm not even getting any information on mouseover anymore. I guess I'll wait to see what the rest of the redesign looks like. Maybe there are answers for the missing pieces.

The thing I've always liked about AP is the efficiency of getting the information I want. I religiously use table view for everything it's available for, because it's super efficient at displaying information.

To be fair, I think it looks nicer now, it's just a lot less functional than before.
 
I'm curious why folks aren't using their personal anime lists more often to determine rating and status information?
 
sothis said:
I'm curious why folks aren't using their personal anime lists more often to determine rating and status information?
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I may be misunderstanding the correct question here, but I personally use the anime info pages because they are more convenient. I have 250 anime watched and digging through each page to find all the Sailor Moon anime I have watched takes considerably more effort than just typing in Sailor Moon, clicking on any of the results, and checking that way to see which I still have to watch.
Also, as someone who transitioned here without a MAL or other anime tracking site, it helped tremendously with long running series to mark in bulk using these anime info pages.
 
Is it me or does the website feel oddly white? I'm not sure if anything ways changed in this regard recently. This is more of a 'modern website' pet peeve but making everything white feels like a hiarchy of vision wasn't even bothered with and everything is dumped onto the page. At least if the negative space was gray, that would be easier on the eyes.

I do agree the current top bar navigation is odd. In particular I would really like the "tags" to be included as currently I have to begin from either the ANime or manga page and it can be hard to find even then.

Also not discussed here, but I would prefer to hide or remove automated recommendations. I'm guessing that was because obscure series were neglected, but I prefer a human being when it comes to taste. For example, Cat Soup has some slice of life cat series recommended. Which is not what the manga is at all. Instead, maybe do some sort of badge/achievement to incentivise people to make recommendations on series that are lacking in them?
 
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