My Two Cents (My attempt at helping Pony.fm become better)

[Wonderbolt_Spitfire 235]

Preface:

 

I am not here to bash, belittle, flame the hard work put together by Feld0 and the Poniverse Staff. I am here to give my '2 cents' on how I think many opportunities are being missed by the functionality and layout of the “Pony.fm” site. Although I may come off like a dick here I hope no one takes it to heart.

 

 

With that said, I will begin. (Hold on tight!)

 

User Friendly

 

Although I haven't done any “Professional” web design work I do believe that the way Pony.fm functions and is laid out is nowhere near 'user friendly'. The first thing that comes to mind when I say this is there is no “Search Bar” anywhere to be found on the site AT ALL. Now this is advertised as 'Open Beta' and after some archive searching I can see there was also an 'Alpha Build' and a 'Closed Beta Build'. So I ask this question, Was there a 'search bar' in any of the previous builds? If not, well then I have nothing nice to say about that type of oversight so I'll leave it at that.

 

Another thing is the “Buttons” I know its pretty standard for buttons to be on the side or top of a web page, but since this is a site being a part of the “Poniverse” It would be nice to keep the continuity of “Buttons” at top of Page.When I go from Poniverse.net to MLPForums.com both sites have their buttons on top, but when I go to Pony.fm the buttons are on the left.

 

Solutions!

 

Okay so those are my two current issues about user friendliness. Now how do we fix these two things? (You didn't think I wouldn't have solutions did you?) These solutions are pretty simple, but don't worry I go in depth more later on when we get to my other issues.

 

What do we do without a Search Bar?

 

Add a 'Search Bar', you have one on MLPForums so I don't see it being that difficult to add one to Pony.fm. If I want to find a certain artist or a certain song then I should be able to just hit up the search bar, not have to comb through all the pages of songs and different artists. You have a good idea with the “Discover” button it just needs to be expanded upon.

 

What about Button Continuity?

 

Now to the buttons. Simple problem, simple solution right? Pretty Much. I suggest moving the buttons right underneath the 'Track Scrubber' or above it. It keeps the continuity for all Poniverse sites going and it opens room up on that side panel for other things you might want to do in the future or it allows more room for graphical changes to the site as well.

 

 

Quick side note: I would also like to point out that 'Login' should be on the top right of the page. That's just kind of the standard for any site.

 

Layout/Graphic Design

 

Now its time for some of my biggest issues with the layout of the site to be told. In my opinion I think the layout and graphic design look hideous compared to that of MLPForums. There is really a lot of potential in the idea of a “Brony Based Music Community Site”.

 

When I go to Pony.fm the first thing I notice is the large amounts of White and the almost comical amount of songs that are being crammed onto the page. The human brain can only process and remember 7-9 things at once. If you are on the 'Main' page then there are 60 songs on the page at once and if you are on the 'Discover' page then there are 48 songs on that page. Honestly it's information overload and it makes it harder to find the higher quality music that is made and uploaded to the site.

 

Another thing is the site is lacking a Logo. A well designed logo can help with recognition and also It would be nice for the people who don't put cover artwork onto their songs/albums to be able to use that logo as a default or a placeholder.

 

Solutions!

 

How do you fix the bright white background problem?

 

Well in my opinion you should have an artist come up with something that fits the 'Brony Musician' genre and make something that will break up the white. I'm not saying that white is bad because Soundcloud does a good job of breaking up the white with the large cover artwork thumbnails, but even that has a little too much white still. There is definitely a lot of potential for an artist to give you something very useful as a background to the site. Have another contest just like you did for Poniverse Logo. **I also suggest this idea for getting a Pony.fm Logo**

 

How do you fix the Information overload problem?

 

Now this solutions could will most definitely be controversial depending on what your goal is for the site. If you're a “Everyone gets the same thing no matter how hard you work” type or if you're a “The ones who work hard and produce the best content get rewarded” type.

 

I'm the second of the two types. So my solution is to 'trim the fat' so to speak. There is no reason to have that many songs cramped on a page. For the Main page I would get rid of “The Newest Tunes” and have the top 7-10 for “Whats Popular Today” and add a new “Whats Popular This Month” category with the top 7-10 as well. With the open space that should open up on the main page I would try to feature once a month or week an Interview with one of the more popular artists. This would give people a goal to try to obtain and not make it a given that you will get on the main page just by uploading your song whether or not it is good or bad. The Discover page already acts as the “The Newest Tunes” category so its not like removing it from the main page would do anything bad. With the Discover page I would trim the song amount down just to the point where there is no scroll bar on the page.

 

I Probably Missed Something

 

With that all said and done I believe that about wraps up my '2 cents'. Most of you will either agree or disagree with what I have stated and everyone is entitled to do that. I hope that some if not all of this is read and taken into consideration for altering the Pony.fm site. Like I have said numerous times now “This idea has great potential”.

[CloudFyre 848]

Preface:

 

I am not here to bash, belittle, flame the hard work put together by Feld0 and the Poniverse Staff. I am here to give my '2 cents' on how I think many opportunities are being missed by the functionality and layout of the “Pony.fm” site. Although I may come off like a dick here I hope no one takes it to heart.

 

You would have a hard time offending anyone here, and hopefully you shouldn't feel a need to say something like that - this part of the forum exists for such criticisms.

 

The search bar and login ideas you had are solid. I've been away for a month or two for the sake of preparing for college, but now that I'm back I'm missing...something. It feels wrong not to have the login at the upper right corner. As for the search bar, it just seems like something that should be there, even if it doesn't do much of anything.

 

 

Layout/Graphic Design

 

Now its time for some of my biggest issues with the layout of the site to be told. In my opinion I think the layout and graphic design look hideous compared to that of MLPForums. There is really a lot of potential in the idea of a “Brony Based Music Community Site”.

 

When I go to Pony.fm the first thing I notice is the large amounts of White and the almost comical amount of songs that are being crammed onto the page. The human brain can only process and remember 7-9 things at once. If you are on the 'Main' page then there are 60 songs on the page at once and if you are on the 'Discover' page then there are 48 songs on that page. Honestly it's information overload and it makes it harder to find the higher quality music that is made and uploaded to the site.

 

Another thing is the site is lacking a Logo. A well designed logo can help with recognition and also It would be nice for the people who don't put cover artwork onto their songs/albums to be able to use that logo as a default or a placeholder.

 

This has been nagging at me for some time as well. I'll start by saying that the aesthetics are fine, but it doesn't suit this style of website in my opinion. The sheer amount of information that is thrown at me on the front page is a bit overwhelming. It's one long list of music, and I honestly don't know where to start.

 

The first place I look is the very top, but that's populated with a massive bar of white, where I'd be expecting some menus to help me. The "Welcome to Pony.fm" blurb is halfway down the page, after I've already scrolled past a few dozen songs. I'd be expecting a welcome somewhere near the top left, which is the first place that eyes travel when they hit a page.

 

I honestly think that having the black bar at the top like the MLP Forums would work well. We had it in the beta version of the website, and I'd like to see that return again. Additionally, if we want to showcase all of those artists/songs on the front page, we should either limit it to 5-7 per section (assuming we keep the current embedded players), or we establish themed "blocks" on the webpage that scroll through 2 or 3 lists of music relevant to the subject (Popular this week, etc.).

 

 

There are more thoughts about the site floating around in my head, but I'll make a separate thread for those later.

[Freewave 1,145]

Yeah the front page seems really cluttered at the moment. I'd break it down new tracks, top tracks of the week, top tracks of the month (based on stats of popularity for the truly exceptional). Hopefully with some safe guards to stop multiples from the same users. Everyone should be able to initially make the new tracks section at least so that may be the largest section but it just feels too overwhelming having that many tracks on the page and that are that small visually.

 

I guess I'd like to see some sort of community spirit grow out of pony.fm. There was talk of an album we could put together as a sampler of the best (still a good idea) and then maybe a skype group chat if that would help people bounce tracks and feedback off each other since the fan music is a bit of a "every pony for himself" environment.  Would love to hear any additional ideas for making mlp forums and pony.fm artists more "united".

Edited September 18, 2013 by Freewave

[nlaq 180]

Hey Wonderbolt! If you don't know, I'm the lead developer of PFM now. The entire site was redeveloped from the ground up for this release; and it's important to understand that although it doesn't say "BETA" anywhere it is still considered to be one. Don't get the impression that this is the final release. I personally find "BETA" tags to be... a bit lame, but it may not be a bad idea to add one in to make it clear to everyone that this is still under heavy development.

 

As far as your feedback; don't worry at all about offending people. Being a professional web developer, I think I've developed some thick skin in regards to user feedback. However, I do get very much irritated at people who are like "oh, it's different and it sucks" and nothing more - but since you didn't do that here, you have nothing to worry about

 

Before I say anything else I'd also like to point out that the current design was a combination of something I pulled out of my ass while trying to meet the deadline; and some guidance from our designer. The current design is workable for what I wanted to accomplish for the release (to get people to start testing the new codebase), but I knew from day one it would have to be revisited.

 

I'm currently working with a designer on a new design. We're going back to a layout that has a fixed max-width (it'll still scale down when you resize your window; but it won't fill the entire screen like it does now) as well as placing navigation up on the top. There are quite a few other purely visual things that are being worked on as well that should address many, if not all, of your concerns specifically.

 

In addition to that, I am working on an activity stream and notifications. The activity stream will be prominently placed on the homepage, and will combine activity from the entire site into an easy-to-follow and interact-with stream ala Facebook or Twitter. This will replace the "recent uploads" part (if you want that information, head on over to the "discover" page) and will be made to be less visually dense than the current setup. At this point I'm thinking of a design similar to Twitter. More on that in a bit.

 

The activity stream will combine comments (on anything from tracks to profiles), favorites, new uploads and follows. I've designed a pruning and aggregation algorithm over the last week that will remove duplicate information and address issues such as a single user spamming it.

 

The most important part of the activity stream is that it is interactive. Tracks will have players, and when you play them, will expand to show the download and favorite buttons as well as comments - and a form for you to submit a comment right there. Same with albums, playlists and profiles. The idea is that this should be where a user spends most of their time on PFM if they are interested in keeping up to date with it. The hope is that this will address the concern that PFM feels too "static" and doesn't offer many places for interaction at this point.

 

Also; at this time, the stream will be global. I hope that one day PFM has enough active users to have it only display activity from people you're following; but that isn't the case right now.

 

I don't have a release date for these features; but I wanted to make it very clear to everyone that we are listening to feedback as well as implementing our own ideas for how to make PFM better - they're just not 100% ready yet

 

Thanks!

Nelson

[Freewave 1,145]

Just a heads up to i pulled up the site on chrome for my phone and it was very difficult to read or use. The left menu was half the width of the screen and the songs which were the whole right side had the small text all squished together for the new tracks. I know its difficult enough when planning how a page will look of a phone vs a computer but thought you might want to consider that for those who plan to play from their phones (some people likely)

[ASocialyAwkwardPony 299]

I must say I am completely against the "no new songs on front page" idea and I feel that would defeat the purpose of Pony.fm as a open site that anyone can feel free to join, but otherwise a lot of good suggestions here. Though honestly, I think 99% of the problems with the site could be fixed by just going back to the old design honestly heh, that design was pretty much perfect IMO.

[nlaq 180]

I must say I am completely against the "no new songs on front page" idea and I feel that would defeat the purpose of Pony.fm as a open site that anyone can feel free to join, but otherwise a lot of good suggestions here. Though honestly, I think 99% of the problems with the site could be fixed by just going back to the old design honestly heh, that design was pretty much perfect IMO.

 

The old design wasn't just an old design that I can plop on the new codebase. It wasn't an application, nor did it feel like one. We are working on something that has elements from the old design, but will be applied ontop of our new codebase and be able to house features that were not possible with the first BETA.

 

As far as "recent tracks." Again, that information can be easily found on the discover page. I'm not against making it more clear how to get to that page on the homepage - but it will be made redundant with the activity stream. Remember that the activity stream will include, and highlight, new track uploads - so it serves the exact same purpose while also saving space and encouraging community interaction.

 

Just a heads up to i pulled up the site on chrome for my phone and it was very difficult to read or use. The left menu was half the width of the screen and the songs which were the whole right side had the small text all squished together for the new tracks. I know its difficult enough when planning how a page will look of a phone vs a computer but thought you might want to consider that for those who plan to play from their phones (some people likely)

 

This will be addressed with the design revisions we are working on. Right now I'm waiting for that to launch, instead of spending time on fixing things that will become irrelevant (things like this and the drop-downs being cut off).

 

[Wonderbolt_Spitfire 235]

Hey Wonderbolt! If you don't know, I'm the lead developer of PFM now. The entire site was redeveloped from the ground up for this release; and it's important to understand that although it doesn't say "BETA" anywhere it is still considered to be one. Don't get the impression that this is the final release. I personally find "BETA" tags to be... a bit lame, but it may not be a bad idea to add one in to make it clear to everyone that this is still under heavy development.

 

 

Ahh well that makes more sense. I come from a Game Design background and In my head when something is advertised as "Open Beta" I assume it is pretty much the finished product. This is still in the concept/development/implementation stages as you have made clear. Which makes a lot more sense as to why the site is the way it is right now.