Jesse Schibilia

Dear Daniel, Nicole, Brian, Jay, and Kevin,

Let me start by saying that I am not a user interaction designer by trade.

I want to let you know that the new interface for Digg (my finger on the pulse of the planet since early 2005) has left me shaken and upset beyond the point of new design disorientation.

I am happy that you have utilized the wide screen format (I am a PowerBook user).  The new layout takes more advantage of my screen real estate, and for that, I am thankful.

I understand the idea behind moving videos into their own portal.  Digg is getting to a point where there is critical mass on story submission; videos do not necessarily fall under the news umbrella.  This move is only logical (plus it parallels with the portal for Podcasts).

My main gripe is that you have gimped my filtering and searching capabilities!

I use Digg as a link repository.  When I read a story that I like, I know that I will want to share it in the future.  It just so happens that I was trying to show my co-workers something on Monday morning when the changes were made.  I was unable to search through my dugg stories.  This was not a trivial matter for me.  It took me about 15 minutes to find the story that I had already dugg.

I can also no longer filter my search by a category.   For example, if I were digging in the Gaming section, I would be able to search just the Gaming section by clicking the radio button for ‘Gaming’ next to the search box, entering my search string, and hitting enter.  Now, I am forced to search all of Digg, all the time!  I’m not telling you how to run your servers, but that is probably expensive in the way of database queries.

I often cannot look at Digg for extended periods of time while I am at work.  Some days, I can’t touch Digg (which is a travesty for me).  That is why the ‘Top Stories - Yesterday’ filter was very helpful to me.  Now, I don’t have that option, instead being forced to look at an entire week of dugg stories.

There is a strong difference between the top dugg stories in the last 24 hours, and the top stories today.  The last 24 hours filter is a constantly rolling series of stories.  I loved being able to stroll in to work and see what has been dugg to the front page that morning by clicking the ‘Top Stories - Today’ filter.  This made my digging manageable, and gave me a baseline of what had already happened that day on Digg.  I could leave Digg and actually work for a few hours, come back, and know exactly what had happened since I left off.

The rolling paradigm does not order chronologically, which places a heavy cognitive load on me that the system used to handle beautifully.

I have noticed that you guys are bringing Digg up and down during the day.  I hope that other folks are having the same problems and are being as vocal as I am.  I know that you are a great company and I have been with you since very early in revolution.  I know that you listen to your users, because without us, you wouldn’t have a service.  Thank you so much for providing this indispensable part of my life.

Sincerely,

Jesse Schibilia (Digg user: schibs)
Instructional Designer
Office of Instructional and Research Technology
http://www.schibs.net/blog

This is the first major Digg interface overhaul that has drastically changed the architecture of the site itself. Digg has moved to a widescreen format for their content. This forces the navigation to the top of the screen. This disoriented me. One of the last things you want to do in unleashing a new UI design is to disorient your users. They become insecure. I can get over the disorientation, but I am going to miss the AJAX disclosure of the sub-categories in the left menu.

They have changed the way that you can view your news chronologically. The interface used to offer a link to yesterday’s top stories. Conceptually, this would make a call to the database that would show you the top stories from yesterday. I will dearly miss this because I often miss out on a day’s top stories because I am at work all day. Now you can only get today’s top stories, this week’s top stories, this month’s top stories, and this year’s top stories.

They have moved videos into their own category of the site. I think this is an important move for them, because videos generally do not fall under the category of news. The way that I used the site before, however, was as a giant repository of media. I would be able to search everything on the site in one fell swoop. Now if I want to search for a video, I have to enter the video portal. I then have to go back to the news portal to search for news. This is an inconvenience to me as it forces me to change my usage habits.

The worst part for me, is that I can no longer search my own profile (my dugg stories). As I mentioned, I use Digg as a link repository. The fact that I can no longer restrict my searches to the things that I have already dugg will severely limit the way I use Digg in the future.

My concerns may very well be invalid. I may just be disoriented with the new interface in a way that I am not sure where things are yet. However, I am sure that I am not the only one with these concerns. Fortunately, Digg has shown that they listen to their users. Their users are what power their service. Without the users, Digg would be worthless.

EDIT: I just realized that the new chronological filtering gives you the top stories in the last 24 hours, not today’s top stories.  This gives me my recent news in more of a rolling format.  It also orders these stories by diggs, not by time.  This takes away my ability to visit digg throughout the day and start browsing stories from where I left off earlier in the day.  What a gimp.