💬 New Trakt Feedback

[robinklocksley (Rob)]

I’m a fairly new user so idk if my opinion is as useful as some of the people who’ve been here for years.

The biggest problem to me is the new UX seems to be broadly the same on desktop and app whereas a lot of the layout and features only really work on a desktop. Most websites will have a desktop and a mobile version because the way we use each device is wildly different.

UX that involves multiple taps to expand areas (like the ratings) are useful on a phone, we’re in portrait mode usually, there’s limited space and we have a touch screen (I know some desktops are too but it’s not by any means universal like with a smartphone) this makes the UX (while still missing many of the features I like) at least actually usable on a phone.

However, it’s just tedious on a desktop. You have a lot of space (especially in most modern setups) available to you in the desktop mode of a website. Use that space. It’s far easier to scroll and read large areas of content on a desktop vertically, it’s landscape and we use our roller if we have a mouse, horizontal scrolling is far less user friendly on a desktop in general. There’s more space to separate areas of the webpage and maintain readability for a desktop site/app. A lot of the “new desktop version” is blank grey space. Not only does this look agoraphobic, it’s a waste of space.

To me, even if you absolutely need to drastically change the UX on desktop:

• Get all the features that exist before ready before forcing the change.
• Don’t sacrifice uniqueness and customisability, many users love that. It’s one of the reasons I personally bought VIP.
• Tailor a version for desktop use, if you don’t have the resources keep what’s there. It works fine.
• Keep the experience vibrant and engaging, by this I mean don’t leave all that grey space. You have a lot of space on the average modern-day monitor. Take advantage of that, “sleekness” and “minimalism” is not useful on desktop apps to the same extent as it can be with phone apps.

Hope the feedback is helpful and thanks for restoring use of the old version for the time being.

[golbit (Bruno)]

The new app is not intuitive to navigate.

Where’s the episode writers? And other details?

Where are the episode’s guest stars?

On the series page the seasons are way down the page.

Ratings with dual click on a star for 0.5 points is weird, not intuitive and must be explained

[allyssonsouzam (Kry)]

They really made a (bad) iPad UI and thought “Desktop users are gonna love this!”

[Sopherian (Sopherian van Ettinger)]

Imagine if they put classic behind a pay wall… I wouldn’t be surprised lol

[jadeevans05 (Jade Evans)]

I still have easy access to V2. V3 did show up for a bit, but my saved/favorited sites were still able to be accessed.

V3 is crap though… And I was having a hard time trying to locate the info I access on a daily basis without referring back to my saved sites.

[jarvis-6165 (Silvia)]

Before the Trakt app for Android was released I starting using TV Show Tracker. It doesn’t have all the functionality of v2, but it actually is easier for tracking TV shows. And right now it’s better than v3 app or website. I paid a nominal amount for full access, I’m not sure what it costs now, but I’ll continue to use it. I cancelled my VIP membership, but it renewed in December so I will hang around this year and see what they do to fix things before they remove access to v2.

[zaheer12a (Zaheer Khan)]

I can’t rank my favorites on my profile. It’s showing them in an order which I don’t like and I can’t find an option to change the order.

When going to the Lists page, there is no button/arrow to go back. I can click on an arrow next to “My lists” and then open one of my lists. Why is there no button to go back one layer, so I can continue on the “My lists” page and open another list?

Continuing with lists, I can’t select multiple items at once. If I want to delete a bunch of movies from a list, I have to do it one by one?

There are no rank options in lists either. I want my lists to use the order I put them in, but also have the option of temporarily sorting them on popularity, imdb score, etc.

There is no option to turn on/off the watched titles being faded out for lists.

The fading out is also pretty poor. It needs to be faded out way more to easily tell the difference at a first glance.

This is my feedback after using the ‘new’ Trakt on desktop for only 20-30 minutes. It’s so much inferior to classic at this point that I won’t be using the new one much, until it has been improved.

[kuuzo]

You obviously haven’t read through the hundreds of posts here, there are dozens of long, well thought out explanations and constructive feedback for all of the features that have issues, need to be changed/corrected/preserved. They go into great detail. But as the devs don’t respond, people go from trying to be helpful to becoming angry that the devs are ignoring all the feedback in the VIP forum.

[daybreak1012]

Here is what I will say: If you take away v2, I will immediately cancel my VIP membership and find an alternative. What I want for usability is exactly what is offered in v2. I attempted to navigate v3 and within minutes was frustrated because I couldn’t do what I wanted to do – ease of use is key and this v3 garbage is the least intuitive thing I have seen in a long long time. Second, going from a nuanced rating system down to five stars? I will tell you what happened when I found out that StoryGraph offered a 5 star rating system with quarter star increments for books: I dropped Goodreads, where I had been a user since 2008, migrated my library and never looked back at such an archaic rating system. I have zero qualms about pulling up stakes here, after joining in 2014 and being VIP for 5 years now. Just give me a reason – and spelled out for you: that reason would be to take away all access to v2.

[Neko]

I don`t like v3 either, many functionalities I use are missing:

I started using trakt because I could add private notes. These are missing from v3.

Also I love rating, and marking automatically as watched after rating is a good feature that it’s not included in v3 either.

Moving from one episode/season to the next/previous from the episode page is great and now missing from v3.

Beign able to rewatch shows… missing too

All time stats??

How can I change a list to private/public?

I will continue using v2 as long as it is available and if its features are not migrated to v3 I’ll have to move to another app.

[miguelecas (Miguel)]

Man, I gotta tell you, I’m pretty frustrated. You took something that was actually working and made it way more complicated than it needs to be. For example—having the calendar right there in the app was huge, and now it’s just gone overnight. Look, maybe it’s just me and I’m not the most ‘tech-savvy’ guy out there, but this is a headache.

[apttodo (Gill Patterson)]

This is feedback specifically for the android app. I haven’t been using the new version of desktop and have remained switched back to classic trakt.
Android app 3.1.1 (331)

• Check in - missing this functionality (I think this has already noted by the PM on the to do list) - it is certainly displeasing when I have to go to desktop on mobile when I want to check in
• Details - can’t see the writers in the details section
• Details - I’d like to see the director in the details section too (as well as where it is currently, below the title)
• Rating - decision to change from 10 stars to 5 stars (with half stars) is something I don’t personally like
• Episodes - it is now slower to move forward and back through episodes or seasons. I’d like to be able to swipe left and right? At the moment I have to scroll down to the season and select the next episode. It’s slower and more frustrating
• Lists - manage lists not there? I want to add and read notes. I want to rearrange media in my lists. I want to be able to select multiple items to delete them.
• Lists - when adding something to a list, why do the lists show in alphabetical order, instead of my manually chosen order in the main lists page? (had a quck check on desktop lite, the lists show in the correct (my) order, not alphabetically)
• Episodes - I cannot see season regulars and guest stars split out? I like to be able to see the split
• History - I’d like to be able to sort this by shows and films from the home/profile page (without having to open to the history page

That’s it so far.

[stub1969]

The real long term problem here is not so much the missing features - I can believe that they will add back functionality to the new interface over time. No, the problem is that the underlying paradigm is flawed.

When I use a mobile phone app I do so with a (relatively small) touchscreen, with a clumsy imprecise finger which I can use to swipe in any direction, and to pinch and to single click (or, rarely, press and hold). And I’ll probably spend a relatively small amount of time on it doing simple tasks, or checking for basic information.

When I use a website on a desktop computer I do so with a precise pointing device, which is primarily designed for vertical scrolling, on a big screen. I might spend some time doing complex workflows and might need to be able to obtain and easily assimilate potentially large amounts of information. And because I have a large screen I can expect to be able to see large amounts of information at once without having to scroll or click through.

So the idea that the phone app and the website should look the same is fundamentally wrong and basically denies the factually reality of the different user interaction devices:

• on a phone app horizontal scrolling is, gesturally at least, as simple as vertical (although frankly it’s still inferior in terms of UI experience), but on a desktop it fundamentally disables the actual design of my interaction device. Horizontal scrolling is an abomination on a desktop webpage frankly. And as for scroll bars that only appear when you hover over them (and remember they are proportional to the available scroll, so I have to know in advance how long the scroll is and where I currently am placed in it to guess where the bar is), words literally fail me.
• on a phone app the screen space should contain relatively low density of data - the screen’s not big enough, clickable areas can’t be too small and need to be well spaced, and I am doing simpler tasks; on a desktop I want my whole screen in use so that I can see everything I want to see in one place
• on a phone app I expect to have to click through to see more data, and will use a small number of simple finger gestures; on a desktop I want potentially left and right click functionality, hover behaviour (don’t ever make me guess what your icon does), maybe even drag functionality and keyboard shortcuts. And because my screen has plenty of space it can be edged with a relatively rich range of fixed navigation buttons and menus so that I can always get straight to where I want in a single click

Note all the above applies to phone vs laptop as well although the difference can perhaps be slightly less stark. It’s also important to note that none of the above stops the look and feel (in terms of colours, branding, icon design etc) from being consistent, but with different UI paradigms.

I’ll wait to see if the usability and functionality improves but if the UI paradigm stays app-like I won’t be renewing my VIP sub.

Devs, please please read this… Why the Same Design Fails on Web and Mobile Apps

[CanePlayz (Jacob P.)]

I’m curious to know which parts of the UI exactly you consider too much app-like in the web version? Some precise areas of the website where you encounter these issues.

I know that keyboard shortcuts for going to the previous and next episode will be coming, and I’m positive that the remaining horizontal scrolling will be removed.

Regarding tooltips, I’m in the process of writing up an issue on GitHub for that. That’s definitely something that needs to be added.

[stub1969]

Well, at the moment it’s pretty much exactly the same, with a small amount of rearrangement (main navigation icons at the side rather than the bottom for example).

If you’re going to remove the horizontal scrolling what are you going to do instead? If the answer is open up that side tab on the right hand side and put a vertical scroll in there then, no thanks.

The point is if you are ever going to come close to replicating the depth of functionality and navigability of the existing website you simply can’t stick with the existing layout copied from the app because the app would become far too busy, or the website would end up with tortuous and clunky navigation pathways. That’s rather the point - they will have to diverge, but the current setup has them worryingly similar.

Indeed I suspect you were rightly motivated to change the app because it already was too busy and too data-dense. I don’t mind the look of the new app. Although I think releasing it with such a reduction in features was rather foolish if you want to keep your users onside - why gut the existing sort/filter options for example? Either you’re going to bring them all back in which case why not just do that already, or you’re not, in which case users are right to be suspicious.

But I don’t wont the website laid out in a similar way - it is simply less effective in that UI setup.

(PS incidentally for “you” read “one” or “they” or “trakt”, I don’t mean you personally! )

[CanePlayz (Jacob P.)]

Well I’m not saying I disagree with you, but that doesn’t really answer my question.

Which parts of the web UI are hard to navigate because they’re too much like an app, except for the horizontal scrolling?

[stub1969]

I’m afraid you’re rather missing the point or I have maybe not made it clear enough.

It isn’t a case of listing areas where I could log an issue to get a piece of functionality added, or where a small UI change might add some incremental improvement to the web page usability. It is that a phone app and a website are two fundamentally different paradigms that are used in different ways, with different UI “equipment” and which therefore need different layout and design in order to avoid compromising the usability of one or the other.

I maintain that it is inevitable that trakt will not be able to fully replicate the current rich functionality of the website (which people clearly want) and still maintain the current high degree of layout equivalence between the app and the website. Either the app will become too cluttered and dense or the functionality of the website will be hidden behind unnecessarily complex navigation pathways. As a consequence, when a version is released that is as feature-lite as v3 currently is, users of that current rich functionality inevitably become suspicious that it will actually not be replicated in full.

Perhaps a trivial high level example is that currently from any page on the website I can, with a single click, get to my lists, my progress/continue watching page, my history, my overview dashboard, the settings, my ratings, the calendar, the general movies, tv and discovery features, my statistics etc etc etc etc. If you try to add all that as single click functionality to the app you undermine the required simplicity of the app design, whereas conversely if you add that functionality but through multiple layers of click-thru you compromise the ease of use of the website.

And on the horizontal scrolling point it isn’t just a matter of getting rid of the horizontal scrolling on the website. It’s about recognising that the layout (which suits an app) that gives rise to the existence of horizontal scrolling (ie a series of full-width sections going vertically down the page, where each can be scrolled sideways) broadly speaking doesn’t fit a webpage. It looks jarring and is inconvenient to use on a large screen with a pointing device.

Yes it may be that you can take each of these issues and say “here’s such-and-such a way we can fix that one” (or actually maybe there isn’t without diverging the layouts), but that doesn’t fix the underlying problem. There is tension at all levels because the app and the website are simply different. They should look and behave differently. By all means there should be consistent styling, themes and branding but if you start from the assumption that they should also be laid out the same way and try to religiously maintain that you end up falling over.

For what it’s worth I think the v3 phone app, in terms of layout, is much better than the previous one. It is cleaner, simpler and if you were coming into it with no knowledge of what had gone before I suspect you’d like it. I think it was insane to release it so early with so much functionality downgraded, however, that was just guaranteed to anger users and make them suspicious of your intentions. But I don’t want it on my desktop/laptop.

[I11uMINat3 (Siva Shankar)]

Hey @kcador

Sorry im late, the Trakt new version is kinda cool and fast, im appreciating the trakt team for the efforts and look forward more..

Since there are lots of things to get used to in this trakt new as I’m very much familiar with trakt classic, my small feedback is if you can add the ability of trakt classic’s “Add to library” - that collection icon green colour to the “Trakt new” it will be great & would really appreciate!

I’m still or not used to this “Add to watchlist” feature, since I used it for my most favourite movies/shows yk… thanks!

[daleylife (Eric D)]

I don’t want it. The “old” site was perfectly fine.

I do not like how it is basically a mobile app. I like the old design where everything is at the top, as it should be with a desktop site. I like how everything is laid out. I really like the original rating system.

Don’t do this. Listen to your userbase. You are killing your site.

[twopie]

Ugh. I can’t say I enjoy the look of the new site. I dislike the horizontal scroll, the lack of features, the dead space all around