Usability thread

I want to make this site as easy to use as possible so I would love to know things you find confusing or annoying or things you used to find confusing or annoying as a new user.

Heres a few I know about already :

1. Hard to delete an item from a list
2. No links to edit favorites from profile page (?)
3. confusion over list types : owned/wanted read/unread/reading see thread

Perhaps a help section would be useful to new users? Going through a tutorial would certainly help users new and old in exploring all the options available on the site. I know I've missed out options in the past and it could really be of help to people (although it might be best to implement after big changes are made since it would take a while to change again...).

Just an idea. :)

I'll second the tutorial idea. For those who've been around a while and/or are more comfortable with site navigation don't need it as much, but I can see people's parents/ grandparents/ less tech-savvy friends needing a little something to get them started.

Maybe even have a "New Users" tab at the top of the groups? Then new people can find it, and those who are more experienced can help them.

Idea #3: Have a "Need Help" (or New User?) link up at the top until the user has a certain number of points? Then it would be easy for them to find help if they need it, but can kind of be left alone if they don't...

I just joined and what I still find confusing is why I have three lists to start with. I use Listal primarily for books and it appears there are three default lists:

Owned
Wanted
Read

Here we hit the first confusing part. Why is there a seperate default list for Owned vs Read? Those are the two most likely lists to be the same, unless you're an avid library go-er or book borrower - in which case you can set up your seperate "Read" list later. Don't confuse me with redundant lists right off the bat.

Furthermore, once an item is on a particular list, I can change the status of the book between Read, Reading and Unread. Meaning I can add an item to my "Wanted" list, but mark it as "Read". Or add an item to my "Read" list but mark it as "Unread". Why not just have ONE list with a status that includes "Wanted"? The redundancy of lists and status is very confusing and reduces the efficacy of the site, IMO.

Lastly, when I search for a book and get a page of matches, I can check the one(s) that apply (cool), then choose between "Add to Collection" or "Add to Wanted List" or "Add to Read List". But I can also individually mark items on that search page for addition to my "Owned", "Wanted" or "Read" lists. So what happens if I check multiple items, assigning each one to different lists, then click "Add to Wanted List" at the bottom? Does it ignore all my individual selections and add all checked items to my Wanted list?

This is bad UI. I like the ability to individual send selections to different lists, but the button at the bottom should be a generic action button such as "Add to Selected Lists" - to make it clear that whatever lists you've selected with each entry will be where those books end up.

Anyway, I don't mean to sound ingrateful. The site is really cool, but suffers from some significant usability issues.

I believe amalgamation of similar entries of the same book has been discussed elsewhere. IMO, this is a critical feature that needs to be added.

"I believe amalgamation of similar entries of the same book has been discussed elsewhere. IMO, this is a critical feature that needs to be added."

I agree with this as long as we still get to see which exact version we own and the specific cover of our version.

"I agree with this as long as we still get to see which exact version we own and the specific cover of our version."

Thats where it gets complicated, I do want to do the merging thing pretty urgently though.

I know LibraryThing manages the system somehow. It's something that seems important to me really. If it's a database of my items it might as well be my actual items. ;)

"I also agree that the list/status combinations are confusing and in places make no sense. For instance a book on the Read list can be set to the Unread status."

Thank you. I am glad someone else finds this confusing. IMO, this is a big barrier to entry for newbies. You almost need an IA to streamline some of this for the site. That example re: a book on the read list being marked as unread is a big problem. Also, why can I rate books on my "wanted" list? If I want them, I haven't read them yet, so I shouldn't have a valid opinion on them.

And yes, I know there are boundary cases where someone wants a book BACK that they've read before, but those cases will be far far fewer in number than the people who mark a book as wanted because they haven't read it yet.

Anyway, the interaction redundancy needs to be addressed.

Thats why I want to get rid of the 'Read' list and just have rated/owned/wanted, then if you rate a wanted book it will be place in rated and not appear in wanted anymore. Some people are against this change though, see here for more discussion :

www.listal.com/groups/viewthread/1057/

The problem with the own/want/read lists is that there are so many different combinations, and there are going to be conflicts between different ways to implement them based on the relative anal-ness of the people discussing it.

Possible combinations:
Owned and read
Owned but not read
Owned and currently reading
Read but not owned
Reading but not owned (i.e., have from the library)
Owned and want to read (probably don't need, since you wouldn't have bought it if you didn't want to read it)
Read and want to own
Neither owned nor read, but want to read
Neither owned nor read, but want to own
Neither owned nor read, and don't want anything to do with it

Me? I'm really anal. So I would like to be able to show what I've read, but don't own, what I own but haven't read, what I've both read and own, what I want to buy and what I want to read (NOT the same thing).

I would really like for it to automatically put it on my "read" list as soon as I rate it, because I couldn't rate it if I hadn't read it, right? If I mark it "read" in my "owned" list, I would like it to automatically add it to my "read" list. Right now, I have nearly 400 books in my owned list (about half of which I have read), and 20 in my read list, which I have manually added. Now, if there's a fast way to check all the books I've read from my owned list and mass edit them to put them in the read list, that would be an amenable workaround, but as far as I can tell, I can MOVE them to the read list, but not ADD them. Two very different things.

I think the 'wanted' category should be clarified, because there are a lot of books that I just want to read, and a lot of them that I want to own, which I may or may not have read yet...these are two different things to me, and I'd like to keep track of them both.

As far as moving away from ownership, I disagree with that, simply because I'd like to use the owned list URL to give to my friends in order to facilitate borrowing and lending.

I do love the site, though, and Tom's responsiveness...it's definitely the closest thing on the web to what I want that I've found so far.

the last post got me thinking, yes there's tons of combinations. so what can we do to please everyone? how about giving users option to assign their own 'list status' type? Everyone has two default ones at the start: read, and want to read (or played, and want to play, watched, and want to watch). basically, the 2 main default status applies to everyone, from heavy duty list-o-philes, to casual social-web users.

and then, allow users to set their own 'status type' additional fields to anything they want, and have those new fields show up in the menu, and if you're logged in to your account, they also show up for quick-select on all entries in listal.

for example, for movies, there's just two categories, 'watched' and 'want to watch'. every movie in your list HAS to fit in one of those categories. casual users would be happy with this setup (or with only read/want to read for books, etc..). and for the list-o-philes in here, we can add custom status categories such as 'owned', 'rented', 'borrowed', or whatever we want. heck, i could even make custom fields like 'lost' for things you used to own but can remember who you lent it to or where you last placed it. Or if you have a house and cottage, or family member has lots of movies, rather than making him join up and get him to update a list, you can add it to yours and then add 'bob's collection' as status type. or even in DVD section, you can make 'VHS' status type as well.

or maybe perhaps all this would be best addressed through private tags and such?

I sort of like Prelude76's idea. Some users will think all the options are overkill, and shouldn't have to deal with them, but the options should be there for other users. Now, perhaps it would be better to get rid of half the combinations and say "deal with these by custom lists or tags or something", and that would be fine--as long as you could get RSS feeds for every custom list, or each tag. (I haven't looked closely at the RSS options lately--maybe you can already do this and I should shut up and use that.)