Home page noise reduction

[Earthmark]

I think part of the perception that neos is complex is the initial complexity of the home dash area when a user first logs in, they don't understand what most of the buttons mean and that may leave a lasting impression. Towards that end I'd like to suggest shifts to the default dash to try to make it less populated, so new users feel less confronted by information. This is just what I'm seeing as possible shifts, I get that all of this information is important, but I think it can be categorized and made less verbose to the user.

• NCR withdraw and deposit I feel would be part of a dialog under the NCR facet, that way the two buttons are not clutter that new users don't understand anyways. Also possibly making all values in the little facet part of that sub dialog by default, and the facet be a button that says "wallet", that way users aren't confronted by at least 4 different kinds of currencies which can feel quite confusing. Once the market is in place my hope is the facet will move there and out of the dash entirely to wherever the market is. I get facets for showing that info in the dash are good, but I feel the less the user is shown when they first join that's not relevant to them at that point the better.

• the duplicate sync status indicator doesn't provide new information, possibly remove?

• when the inventory menu is updated later on, cloud storage size I feel can move there.

• avatar creation can move to be inventory pane when it's updated as well

• the core world links can probably move to the worlds tab in some way? They're worlds, and should probably be there, possibly prominently if wanted.

• new world button can possibly be in the worlds menu, cause worlds!

• debug possibly into settings when settings gets some more loving?

• online status to friends menu when it possibly gets another iteration?

• full body calibrator to settings when it's updated, also possibly only show if one has full body trackers?

• possibly add default shortcuts to the home screen that say in big inviting letters "Active Worlds", "Friends Worlds", and "Tutorial" that change the active dash screen to worlds and auto select part of the ui. Menu shortcuts like that may be useful for users to make facets act like hyperlinks without a forced world transfer, and it would teach users where to look for worlds in this default case.

I'm probably missing things I wanted to bring up, from what I remember users are very emotionally driven, if the first thing they see in a place is complex the place feels complex, if it's simple the place feels simple. I think if we give the user a place to start and retreat to that feels comfortable and simple to them, but they can customize over time, that will help with familiarity and help users to feel less lost. It'll also help them feel attached to the place, like it's their "home" :).

[Frooxius]

Thanks for the feedback!

The current state of the home page is a bit temporary until more of the UI is reworked, so a bunch of the old things got pushed there, so I'm not sure if I will be making these specific tweaks, since it'd be effectively reworking the UI while in the process of reworking of UI, instead of just reworking the UI if that makes sense? I'd recommend focusing on more detailed feedback then, because right now things are still a bit of in flux.

A lot of the things will be addressed by the rework though:

• NCR will get its own page, something like "Wallet"
• Avatar creation and so on will be part of tools page or something like that, I'm not 100 % decided yet. Similar with debug which will be reworked
• I'm not sure about the core worlds moving. They're really important worlds and we want users to have quick and fast access to them. Moving it to another page would be contra-productive. Possibly the same with avatar creator or full body calibrator, those are things people often end up looking for and moving them to the main page was based on people having trouble finding them.

I'm not entirely sure what to do with this issue, since it's a lot of different things and things that need rework or that are in process of being reworked in a different way, it might be better just using the UI Overhaul GitHub topic we have. I'm not quite sure what would be left of the home page after those changes right now.

[Earthmark]

Very little would be left, that way people are luled into a false sense of simplicity! Then the dev-tip strikes and they're hooked on develpment.

I am advocating for more space on that page, space for the user to feel less cluttered with information that they don't understand. Possibly give them a hint to a folder of facets you'd like them to full the screen with (and it's up to them how they fill it). That way people are slightly less deep-ended. In the end that's my goal, move information away from the central space so the central space looks less confusing.

[Earthmark]

If I may though, what purpose do the core worlds serve in your eyes? It feels like they are a duplicate way to do world joining (just to specific worlds) and that feels problematic to me. I figure do something one way and do it really well, I believe people will find value in being able to learn the least amount of stuff to get the thing done

[Frooxius]

Hmm if there's not much left though, then it reintroduces the problem of new users not knowing where to find the important things. The home screen is meant to put the most common stuff they'd want to interact with to the front, so users don't have to hunt and search for the basic functionality. I do not even want them touching the Customization before they get used to Neos, that's something that should happen later, once they're more used to controls and where things are.

For the core worlds they are a duplication, but sometimes that's necessary. Getting quick access to common places can be important to a new user, because otherwise they don't know that the place is even a thing and that they can browse/search for it. Discoverability plays a role here.

[Earthmark]

I think the home starting as a guide towards helping new users know where to look would be a good mitigation for that first thing where people don't know where to look.

I agree it makes it not contain much (I believe that is a good thing), cause once it contains more than a very small number of items, users don't look at it anymore like with the controls on the dash. I personally think the home having shortcuts for "avatars, helpful worlds, maybe something else" as a launching point to teach where to look for a specific thing is a very useful thing, that way it's not showing a dashboard way to do one specific job, is showing the neos way to do that job.

I think my main methodology is "don't half ass two things, whole ass one thing" - Ron Swanson, I'm not saying any bit of that is half assed, it's that there's two ways to do anything means the effort was split.

[Earthmark]

I think my methodology for duplication is that if duplicates need to excuse, the first thought should be why the staten failed to facilitate that behavior in the first place. Any duplicate system is another thing a user has to learn, hence me being very gung ho about reducing duplication, less a user needs to know I feel the more power the user has to use the statem.

As a comparison I look at the csproj format, it used to be very complex, a lot of data about project initial hashes and source inclusion paths. It was very hard to do something by hand correctly and that was an issue for users who needed to diff those files. Now with the new format, most csproj files are about 5-10 lines of easily understood and hand modifyable code, that reduction in what a user needed to know helped people feel like the project format was less complicated and gave much more confidence that the system was understandable. I have firsthand experience in this, I managed our migration in my previous company between the two formats, and watched devs who previously were very scared of those files and felt it was not worth the time investment to learn, to people who were hand modifying and were confident about their changes.