EPTSo the first thing was that we received a LOT of responses. I originally asked for around 100 users to participate and received over 200 responses which made finding the right cross-section of users (one that represents all types) much more reliable. That's great, but what about when people actually had to respond? Over a period of one month I got 96 responses (including staff), which is pretty unbelievable as statistically speaking the average number of people you actually get for surveys tends to be very low (around one quarter of what you shoot for). Of course knowing this, the real target I was hoping for was about 30 people to write out detailed thoughts as regarding user experience tests and metrics this is a solid number for getting reliable data from a bunch of tests. We got a great group of different types of people on the list, from lurkers, to developers, wiki contributors, staff (added on top of the 100), and anywhere from new people, to longtime members of TL (ca. 2002). Whats even more amazing was that nearly everyone wrote A LOT, which was somewhat scary as that meant that I would be losing 3-4 weeks just trying to get a handle on all of the data we got and condense it down to something usable.
And speaking of data, now that my fall semester is over I wanted to share the results of what we did so that people have a sense of how people feel generally about teamliquid, so here we go:
- Business Goals
Many people in their responses referred to TL as a large multi-esport community (as a single entity), but the most succinct description people gave was that TL wanted to be "the ESPN of esports", with some additionally citing an emphasis on community support and interaction. - Top Priorities:
In terms of what people think is important on TL, #1 were news & articles (the breakdown was 17% News, 43% Articles, and 38% as both being equally important), #2 streams, and #3 normal discussion topics (community topics). News, Events, Community... That sounds like a tag line.
In the second Q/A I asked for more specific breakdown of stuff and what I got was that Analyses and Preview/Recaps were highly important, followed by Interviews, then Community News, Tournament Announcements, and finally Power Ranks. - Topics
In terms of what kinds of threads are important #1 was Live Reports followed closely by Spotlights, Blogs, and General Game topics. I'd qualify live reports in that position a little bit, when you see below in 'Top 3'. There are possible avenues to explore different approaches to this.
To go a little deeper I also asked how important each forum was to people and the top 8 answers were thus:- Game General
- Tournaments
- General Discussion
- Game Strategy
- Blogs
- TL Community
- Other Games
- Media & Entertainment
I do need to highlight that analytics notes that Tech Support is a heavily trafficked forum (I think this has to do with UI usage in that people tend to browse tech support subforum index moreso than navigating to the actual topics). - Game General
- The 2013 Filters
Remember these things on the navbar? Overall this was more positive than negative (in people liking them), but many people did say they were not obvious enough for the less initiated. - User Notoriety & Prestige
The most cited reasons people get known on TL were pretty much what you would expect. Posting a lot, being a content creator, being a known figure in esports, but what was very prominent among the responses was the mention of the actual content of the post mattering far more than anything else. People really like substantive discussion here, and that is a great thing. - The Whole Forum, or Parts
WARNING: this data is not entirely accurate as the intent of the question was misread by many
While I tried to make this question clear, quite a few participants misunderstood the scope of the question due to some perhaps, clumsy wording on my part. Even so, it still provided some interesting and very useful insights into user behavior regardless. The general takeaway however is that users tended to browse the forums in parts moreso than the whole forum. Essentially, people pick and choose their own content they want from TL and don't browse wholesale as often. - Events + Streams, or just Events
Overall people largely preferred to browse events and streams together, but within that grouping they highly prioritized events over regular streams. Normal streams were mostly couched in the idea of a 'backup' should no events be on, though a few mentioned a dichotomy between being entertained, and learning to get better at the game. - Twitter Feed
64.8% said yes to having an esports related twitter feed on TL. - Ranking Posts, Popularity Sorting
By far one of the more heated questions. 67% of people said "no" to this, however the details are more insightful. While the most common concerns to not have this system were: devolving conversations into a 'like' competition, or promoting mob mentality or circlejerking, some users stated that ranking posts did have some significant benefits of flagging important content easily. A few noted that they didn't want it, but if we could figure out how to avoid the toxic elements they'd be ok with it (one cited ars technica specificaly). An older BW user wished he could sort through the great comments better, but the question was of course, how to do this and not have the negatives along the way.
The other important bit was that people vastly preferred the timeline approach because it gave context to the dialogue and promoted more thoughtful discourse overall, and that even with shit posting those posts in context are important. - Tags or Forums
No to tags primarily, but mostly because many people couldn't conceive of how that would work overall. Quite a few mentioned that supplementary tags to help the search functionality would be great. - Buried Features
Some people couldn't answer this but the most recurring answers were TLPD, FPL, and Liquibet, especially the latter two. This also highlights some features that if lucky got 1 mention like TLFE, or Replays. Other things like the Gallery, or Buddy Lists went completely unmentioned. - Missed Features
Of things missed the most popular by a large margin was StarCraft Power Ranks. The other ones that groups felt important were actual live reports, but much moreso, and :sadface:.... TSL, TL Attack, and Pony Tales were highly mentioned. - Top Features
This was all over the place but the consistent answer from many was "I want some kind of live chat" option. A few noted that they disliked twitch chat a lot.
Finally I collected some important other notes that people randomly peppered around their answers that gave some interesting insights. These were notes or requests:
- A few people wished for more ancillary content like VODs, interviews, investigative journalism pieces, other media (podcasts were mentioned)
- Having user photo galleries or better profiles.
- One of the more astute and longterm members mentioned that consistency in community building is key.
- Some felt that we were also an archival source for esports history
- The outer columns on the site are used a fair bit, however ~30% of everyone polled mentioned that the front page was far too dense, and even some cited that the left column was a significant cognitive problem. A staff member mentioned that the left column is "simultaneously our greatest strength and our greatest weakness" and that's pretty apt as it's the biggest issue/consumption model we have to solve in the redesign.
- There was a desire to have a Q/A section for getting set up or better at esports, or easier help on a topic. This is related to the issue that more than a few people cited the search functionality as not so useful in finding more specific kinds of topics.
- Some of the sites feel pretty empty since the splitting of them (LH and LD were specifically mentioned here, dota moreso)
- Hearthstone Power Rankings are siiiiiiick. This was heavily cited by people. wp monk.
Overall, almost every question I asked was understood by the respondents save for the Forum/Parts question, though it still had very valuable responses. It just meandered off the intended focus a bit. Also a big thanks to everyone who's participated in this process! I really can't overstate how incredibly detailed everyone was in their responses and it is a testament to how strongly people feel about TL in general.
Finally, on this blog, I'll post more of these on this process as it develops (e.g. as there are things to talk about), but I should remind everyone that this is going to be a slow process because of the nature of TL. We could absolutely bang out something in a few months now that we have solid data to work off of, but whether everyone would be on board with that, or to what degree is what will take time to polish. Hopefully we'll come out with something really modern and new, and something that really works for everyone. If you have questions about this process feel free to PM me and I'll try to get back to you as I can.
<em>Participants: Emix_Squall, Rehio, GhandiEAGLE, Beamo, DJNana, StarMoon, Superouman, swag_bro, DSK, Gilbyjazz, MysteryMeat1, TDVapoR, Spinoza, Beastie, Shkudde, afreecaTV.Char, Yurie, AtomicSpyder, mrhobbers, Thieving Magpie, ratki11er, Geisterkarle, Slaughter, chipmonklord17, Mataza, muLe, Drock, ringelpups, Vexillarius, MannerMan, Sonnington, Genietl, StarDraKe, Badjas, DamCx, figq, Subversive, Kittan, Vo-one, stichlasser, Lysenko, Alryk, Half the Sky, YoTcA, Beirut, AzaghalsMask, goldendwarf, Powerpill, Cluster__, Sir Alex, Mr. Wiggles, Fecalfeast, Crusnik, padiseal2, KaiserCommander, Hondelul, Kthan75, KOFgokuon, farvacola, Geo.Rion, graphnic, pugowar, Iplaythings, nachtkap, Jampackedeon, IdioticGenius, Pursuit_, TheDougler, BlackLilium, boxerfred, kitaman27, icyF, pengwin, Cricketer12, Yourmomsbasement, sYz-Adrenaline, Striker.superfreunde, PhoenixVoid, bluegarfield, Jelleebeen, y0su, Ayaz2810, Tactical, EkiMGnaW, Ephemerality, Krobolt, WGT-Baal, Grettin, Karis Vas Ryaar, BlacKcuD, monx, Kotreb, estrion, fireg8, looknohands119, lokes, Ragnarork, StarStruck, evos, Atoissen</em></div>
Let's see where this is going! 
