UI/UX Feedback #4891
Replies: 2 comments 4 replies
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Best way to describe it is that for the average user the performance and UI/UX is a one two punch. Fixing the performance issues is great, but the UI/UX is still going to punch new users in the face. Advertising Res without fixing both major issues will only backfire. We might get some new users to stay, but most will leave when they get frustrated by the punch that is the UI/UX |
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honestly that is something i feare as well, performance was NOT the reason i left original, it was the ui. bad performance i can live with but (at the time) confusing as hell (ive since learned to live with it) was why i left, i coudlnt figure anything out at all and mostly wanted to do it on my own. 100% the performance is gonna gain us a good chunk of people but i dont foresee it being as big as possible right now |
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We know this is to now be true. We did advertising push last year, before performance and UI updates and it helped - we saw it in the numbers. If we wait for everything to be perfect, it'll hurt us more, than doing marketing pushes and getting conversion rate than is lower than it would've been with more improvements, but still higher than zero. This is one of those "perfect is enemy of good" situations. |
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We've done a thing in the past, where we've been thinking "We'll promote after we finish this. And then after we finish this. And after we finish this." And it ends up just... postponing it forever. It's a hole I don't want us to fall into again, because it just hurts the project when people don't hear about it for a long time because we're trying to get everything perfect before we push it more out there again. It'll be the UI. It'll be the IK. It'll be avatar setup. There's always more. I like to think of this as every time we promote, we "cast a net". The net will have holes - some people will slip through because of UI. Some because of IK. Some because of other things. But if we patched a big hole - performance, now more of them will be caught. And what we gotta do is just keep casting the net (promoting) while at the same time patching more holes in it. It's an ongoing project. We just got to keep the cycle of development to grow. If we stop casting the net, then we stop growing. We stop getting more support. Which makes it harder to continue developing. You got to do both. |
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i guess that is true. i did come back after all lol. the product is too good for me to pass up even if the ui is a touch clunky and the performance is a bit ass at times (just pushes me to optimize my creations even more) |
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Edited this to not be as urgent sounding :) Like mentioned above, it makes sense to bring people in with waves. Keeping this up since I think it could be valuable for discussion, but focusing it on just the discussion side. It'll happen at some point, let's not stress everyone out over some misplaced sense of urgency <3 |
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This started as just some observations, but I wanted to drop some thoughts on UI/UX for future consideration.
Overview
When I talk to people about Resonite, the things I hear the MOST are "well it's cool, but I don't want to play it right now because it performs poorly AND the UI is confusing/really hard to learn how to do basic stuff/made for developers". While I think many VR super-enthusiasts will be much more interesting in socializing and experimenting in Resonite post-splittening, I think one of the biggest barriers for entry right now is that latter point.
I think one of the biggest issues in terms of user penetration, currently, is that the current world browser, contacts page, and inventory are very counterintuitive. You have to be taught how to use it before you can even start using it. Most users don't even know that they are in multiple worlds, for example.
These are fairly vital things for what most users coming in from VRChat will be interested in - socialization, and the intrigue of Resonite's items. There's also minor things, like how to set a user profile picture.
Some of this will be helped by the new help tab and the avatar station, but I think something that would certainly bring more players in is putting the inventory, contact, and world UI reworks to the front.
World Browser
Say I'm a new user to Resonite, and I want to start exploring right away. I open up the world browser to find a place to go - places with people in them, worlds to hop into with friends, etc. What I'm met with is a mysterious grid of images - each with different meanings. I don't know what a session is in Resonite context, or what an "open world" is in this context, or how to find "instances" in VRChat speak. I might even be frustrated if things start slowing down because I'm in 15 worlds at once or something, without my knowledge.
In other words, there's an information architecture problem here - one that's especially an issue when most users are coming from one model to a very different, more complex one. It's also a problem for users who have never used a social VR platform before. Both will come in with informational gaps or incorrect assumptions, and the current structure doesn't explain itself for people to become self-sufficient.
Having a separated row for open worlds at the top, as well as higher visibility for multiple sessions for a world, would be very beneficial here. This is both because it's not immediately apparent there is a "tab-style context" for open worlds, or even that you can be in multiple.
Sessions also start collapsed when you open the world page, and the button for showing them is just an arrow pointing back - which doesn't really scream "click here to see the currently open sessions for this world"!
A big issue right now with the world screen is that headless and current sessions have the same semantic level as a world (with headlesses often being separated from the world itself) - this is very confusing, especially for users who don't know how Resonite's current session system works.
Discoverability is also a little bare - we have a few categories, but they're mixed in with "function" categories, like my worlds. I think there needs to be more clear delineation between groupings on these categories - and the search needs, likely, to be either be its own screen, or open category needs to be more apparent, since it's difficult for new users to understand why they're not seeing a world if they have a category open.
Inventory
I'm sure you already have plans for how to fix up the inventory, so I won't go too much into it. But things like previews, item names inline with thumbnails, folder organization, a favorites bar, etc. come to mind. A redesign of the "actions" bar would also probably be in order - putting per-object actions on a sidebar with the preview might be something to consider. Then global actions can stay near the top.
Contacts Page
As for the contacts page - Not too many notes here, but "contacts filter" and "user platform search" should either be different semantically, or have different groupings on the contacts list page, especially since I don't believe a user shows up unless you have their exact username? It makes it unintuitive to know how to add or search for a user to add them as a friend. Perhaps current contacts could be at the top of the list, then a separator, then non-contact users - or a different "add contact" screen entirely.
It's also definitely unintuitive how to send items to other users (I didn't even know that was possible until someone showed me how) - I would consider explicit "add from inventory" and "send held item" buttons! Maybe also put an attach button in the message field, where "send and request invite" can be located.
Currently open sessions for contacts isn't really confusing, but could definitely be more resourcefully placed on the page, and it could be made more apparent which session they're actually currently active in, in specific. Maybe borrowing the visual model for open worlds, if you end up separating that like I talked about above.
Misc. UX Concerns
Having just an "upload image" button for the profile picture would definitely help. Being able to drag and click should stay, I see that as an intuitive "gesture" for power users, but I always firmly believe that there should definitely should be explicit controls for all functionality - gestures make things easier, but they are inherently discoverable.
And, I know the radial context menu is a longstanding design pattern for Resonite - and it's definitely intuitive in some cases, so I wouldn't want to change that. But once you start getting a very large amount of items in the context menu, it increasingly becomes very unusable, as buttons and targets get smaller and space gets cramped. It's actually very easy for this to happen, honestly. Perhaps considering an optional traditional list-based context menu would be best.
There's also some missing design patterns coming from VRChat for the radial menu, such as sliders or a back button primitive (since that has to be manually created for all menu structures. I definitely think some of these should be implemented, as well as perhaps being able to set button size percentages in some way?
To Conclude...
If I had to summarize the top 3 UX pain points for user retention right now:
I know that's a lot, but I've thought a LOT about UX as I've used Resonite so I wanted to make sure I shared. There are other places ripe for opportunity to improve - like developer workflow - but as far as getting new users in the door and retaining them, I think these are some of the most important pain points (and a few minor ones to sort of guide towards thinking about how to improve discoverability and self-sufficiency).
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