696

We've launched! Please give feedback here.


Today, we're shipping the new "Activity Page" of the Profile here on Meta SE, so you can test it out and hopefully share some feedback and suggestions before we ship it network wide. Hate words? Assuming you're signed in, just click your face up in the top bar, and you can see it right now. Or, keep reading...

Quick Background

You may recall that we're breaking the current "profile" page into two views, to address two use cases:

  • The "Profile Page" - When you click someone else's user card, by default, you'll see a view designed to give a better overall summary of who they are: Their location, their "About me," what tech/tags they're most active in, their top posts, etc. This page has been live on MSE for a while, and you've given us a ton of great feedback, most of which is already live.

  • The "Activity Page" - When you click on your own user card, you should see a page emphasizing your actual activity - what you've done, how big an impact you've had helping others, and what you can go do next, if you're so inclined.

Note that both pages will still be visible to everyone (although some fields aren't, for obvious reasons). So, you can look at other users' "Activity" page, and your own "Profile", that's just not the tab that'll be displayed by default.

The Old Activity Page

Let's think about when you're looking at your own page, and start with what the old page (still live on the rest of the network) was good at. Here's the bottom of the page:

The Old Activity Page Bottom Half

It's efficient, and evolved over time, based on what power users told us they needed.

So, let's change it for change's sake! New Things are SHINY, and lead to a brighter - if poorly thought out and short lived - future! Huh. That's actually a pretty awful idea. So, let's leave the content, and pretty much everything else down there exactly how it was, and not mess up anyone's workflow. With the exception of some minor styling tweaks, the actual activity section you interact with today - both the content and the layout - is unchanged.

Now, lets take a look at the top of the page. Remember that the top part doesn't change when you drill down to different activity tabs; it's always there. Again, think of the case where you're looking at your own profile:

The Old Activity Page User Details

So, personally, I'm not that frequently going to my profile to, say... double check what my name is. Or confirm what city I live in. Or see if my age has changed. (Actually, the last one may feel like a waste most days, but ~0.3% of the time, it reminds me it's my birthday - YAY!)

Now, the point isn't that this was dumb design; it wasn't. When the page had to serve both use cases, this info made sense, but when you're looking at your own profile, there's no reason to always be showing you a bunch of things that A) you know and can't realistically forget, B) almost never change, and C) only do get changed by you.

So, we've replaced them, with a new section designed to better summarize your overall activity and contributions. And we've tossed some totally new features in, too.

The New Activity Page (aka "Top Boxes")

New Activity Page (Redesign of top half)

The basic goals were:

  1. Don't mess up the bottom part that's working, or make the top part any bigger
  2. Replace static, known personal data with dynamic, big-picture summaries of users' contributions
  3. Do more to help users track their contributions beyond rep and badge counts (more prominent stats on edits, flags, votes, and the new "People Reached" stat.
  4. Show users at all levels "what they can do next" and help more new ones learn the ropes gradually
  5. Address power-users needs better

I'm not going to walk through all the changes. I'd rather let you go touch it and share your thoughts, but here are a couple of features worth highlighting:

"Progress to next badge" bar automatically selects the badge you're closest to earning (or that's most logical to go for next), and tracks your progress toward earning it. It also helps walk new users through a slightly more guided intro, nudging them to read the "About" page, etc. For most badges, it not only explains how to earn 'em, but also links to a (mostly) logical place to go try to do so:

Badge Progress Tool tip

Progress to next privilege better conveys an attainable milestone, so users have a target to work toward that's a little less daunting than "catch Skeet". And it adapts for our most valuable users, too. Once you have earned all the privileges, you should first and foremost take a pause to celebrate how many frigging people you helped. (The "People Reached" stat is a nice rough estimate). Have a drink, maybe. But after that, we want you to be able to track goals, too, so the "next privilege" bar automatically switches to tracking your progress toward your closest tag badge. Plus, you can change it if you want to pick a different one (like this poor soul might want to do):

Badge Progress Loading Bar

The broader context:

As of now, both pages are live here on Meta, so you can try out how they work together. We're rolling out a couple of new features on the "Profile" side as well:

  • Dedicated fields to share your OSS projects or online presence (Dedicated fields for Github, Twitter, etc.) and new fields in the edit page for them. Note that they're totally optional, and leaving them out won't leave weird blank entries.
  • New "Hide a community" from my profile feature, (found on the "Edit & Settings" tab.) This came from community feedback, and helps users who may not want their SO Profile - which their boss might stumble upon - to prominently feature their top questions from, oh, I dunno...The Workplace, say. (It's not a true privacy setting, as the connection between accounts can be made with some work, like through the API, but it lets you control what sites are or are not featured on your profile page.)

Note: If you can, please post any suggestions or feedback on the changes to the "Edit/Settings" or the "Profile" page (the one others see) as a new post here on MSE. Ideally, we want to keep the answers here on this post focused on the activity side ("Top Boxes"), since that bit's brand new, and we want to see what suggestions there are important to the most people.

We LOVE it. But, as Joel keeps telling me, no one cares what I think.

We want to know what you think. Go touch it. Play with it. Tell us what you like (seriously). More importantly, what tweaks or adjustments should we make before we ship it network wide? Anything missing that you use all the time?

There are some places where we know we want to make some changes, but we wanted to wait for feedback to determine what approach makes the most sense. (For example, we're fairly sure more tooltips are needed, but having them everywhere makes a mess, so we did them for the most obvious places, but waited for your feedback before adding more, to see where they may be needed most.)

As always, thanks in advance for your feedback - it always helps us ship something better than whatever we started with.

94
  • 100
    The new badge progress page is awesome! But I fear it might lead to a lot of actions just for the sake of gettng the badge and not to improve the site.
    – juergen d
    Feb 23, 2015 at 13:18
  • 106
    I love how Balpha's next tag badge goal is for the status-declined badge. Way to encourage him! :-P Feb 23, 2015 at 13:25
  • 15
    This is really minor, but the tooltip for "1,760 votes cast" says it includes accept votes, but I added my up & downvotes together, and it equaled 1,760, so I have a feeling it doesn't include accept votes.
    – hichris123
    Feb 23, 2015 at 13:45
  • 11
    This isn't that bad.. From all the old designs I thought it would be terrible, but it's not that bad.. Now can I have the old design back please?
    – ɥʇǝS
    Feb 23, 2015 at 15:28
  • 11
    @ɥʇǝS, we'll accept that as the absolute best compliment we possibly could have received from you. And it's appreciated (for real).
    – Jaydles
    Feb 23, 2015 at 15:29
  • 24
    @Oded did you see how many words there are in this question??? Did you expect me to read them all? I just wanted clicky and oooo shiny. Is that too much to ask?
    – user1228
    Feb 23, 2015 at 15:35
  • 10
    @Won't - I'm with you. If only that was mentioned at the start of the wall of text.
    – Oded
    Feb 23, 2015 at 15:36
  • 19
    @Bigood, I know, right? (Everytime I draw anything in public, Jin, our Creative Director files a "hostile workplace" complaint with HR.)
    – Jaydles
    Feb 23, 2015 at 16:42
  • 10
    Tracking progress of every single badge: something that should have been in since version 1. So glad it is added now, and I can't wait until it's network-wide.
    – TylerH
    Feb 23, 2015 at 17:16
  • 15
    Don't have very interesting numbers on Meta... excited to see what the SO one looks like (and to know what my "next" badge is).
    – Hogan
    Feb 23, 2015 at 19:41
  • 60
    I can't really judge this based on my (tiny level of) meta.SE activity (I really don't care that it thinks my next most achievable badge here is Critic for example). I'd need to look at how it works on my most active SE site(s). I think it might be good, but how could I really tell, unless I can see how it would work on the one I deal with every day? If there was a link on my user pages "check out how the new page would look" ... that would let me give real feedback! I can get some idea from other people's pages, ... but it doesn't really show me the things I am actually most familiar with
    – Glen_b
    Feb 24, 2015 at 0:42
  • 21
    can we please have it now its so prettyyyyy Feb 24, 2015 at 8:29
  • 55
    Gimmeeeee on SO now
    – mplungjan
    Feb 24, 2015 at 10:15
  • 11
    @NoviceSEMetaGeek, it's always dangerous to estimate shipping dates, but managing expectations can't hurt: There is some unrelated back-end design work on other sites that needs to happen first, plus we're cranking through changes based on the suggestions here, so I think we're hoping for something like 4 weeks until we can push it network wide. A little faster than that is possible, and a lot longer is always a risk, but we're hoping to come in a little under a month.
    – Jaydles
    Feb 24, 2015 at 19:44
  • 10
    That's a remarkably elegant piece of writing: beautifully poised, and doing a great job of expectations-management and change-management. Kudos to the author(s).
    – 410 gone
    Feb 24, 2015 at 20:51

147 Answers 147

5

In the profile page, please don't put the username inside the 'about me' box. As it is, when you scroll down in that box, you can't see the user's name any longer. I see no reason for that.


enter image description here


enter image description here

5

- with you in the next build.

If I hide one of the communities, the count does not change.

Ooh look I'm hiding something

That's not such a problem if I'm logged in but it's still like that if I'm logged out so anyone can tell I'm trying to hide something. If I want to make something private it should be private, no clues allowed.

5

The ranking text size is a little too small for some people to read. If you are not paying attention, you might miss the ranking text. If possible, can the size of that text be enlarged so it can be clearly be seen but not too big? Here's the screenshot: enter image description here

And here's the screenshot for Meta.SE: enter image description here

Please make that text bigger!

2
  • For completeness you should post the view on Meta Stack Exchange (since it's the only site currently showing the updated activity page)... Stack Overflow doesn't have it yet.
    – Werner
    Mar 24, 2015 at 23:03
  • Your email address is visible in the top image - might want to fix that. Apr 22, 2016 at 22:03
4

I get used to thicker borders of tag scores, can you please bring back the thick tag scores? Those borders are just too thin:

4

My next privilege is the "Edit questions and answers", and when I click on the progress bar, there is an extra ")" at the end of the text.

Edits to any question or answer are applied immediately)

screenshot

1
4

- as others have said in comments, the icons have been updated, most screenshots are from before that.

Why are there 2 different sets of icons for the IMPACT box? I see the following set of icons:

enter image description here

My "posts edited" has a paragraph icon, my "helpful flags" has a flag completely attached to the flagpole, and my "votes cast" has an up arrow that has a stem. At least one other person in this thread has those icons.

But most people in this thread who've posted screenshots have a different set of icons:

enter image description here

That shows a pencil for the "posts edited", a flag with space between it and the flagpole for the "helpful flags", and an up arrow without a stem for the "votes cast".

5
  • 1
    Apparently, they changed the icons. Most of the screenshots here were posted before the change.
    – user259867
    Feb 27, 2015 at 5:16
  • @FamousBlueRaincoat Interesting. I think the pencil icon makes a lot more sense than the paragraph icon for "posts edited". Feb 27, 2015 at 5:41
  • 1
    Maybe, but in other places they use the same pencil icon for "click here to edit", so I can see how this could be confusing.
    – user259867
    Feb 27, 2015 at 5:43
  • @FamousBlueRaincoat Oh really? I've only seen a similar pencil icon next to comments that have been edited. Feb 27, 2015 at 5:48
  • 1
    In the same new profile, there is this editing icon near next badge.
    – user259867
    Feb 27, 2015 at 5:49
4

Would you please increase the font size of question count by tag (and badge count) by 1 or 2 points? It's very straining on the eyes to read the numbers.

I have included an older design from Anime & Manga for comparison.

4

- please post this as a new feature-request. This is one of the parts that were not changed as part of the profile page redesign (barring a small number of style changes). We are asking for feedback specific to what did change.

Profile tab already shows my badges for top tags:

Can this also be implemented for the tags in the "activity > summary" and "activity > tags" please?

1
  • Declining this as it isn't about items that changed, but a request to change something that's been that way since before the redesign.
    – Oded
    Mar 3, 2015 at 20:42
4

- We struggled with the layouts here for a long while. For many people, vertically aligning top network posts with top posts would cause an overly large amount of whitespace. We needed to consider many use cases, and settled on what you see.

The big wall of blue text hits me in the face ....

Also,

make these two equal

Align these two columns, for a calmer look (which means either pushing Top Posts down or removing one of the network profiles:

enter image description here

1
  • We struggled with the layouts here for a long while. For many people, vertically aligning top network posts with top posts would cause an overly large amount of whitespace. We needed to consider many use cases, and settled on what you see.
    – Oded
    Mar 3, 2015 at 21:07
4

- we are working on click consistency across all the top boxes. We do not intend to have every single element clickable.

The "Reputation" header, rep number, and new rep changes should link to the rep page, while the graph should link to its Father Graph in the network profile.

4

Can we lower the reputation graph a little so there is the white space like in the other groups? The graph now seems to 'break' the space from the header.

enter image description here

5
  • 9
    Disagree. It is more important to keep the height of each box identical.
    – Mooseman
    Feb 23, 2015 at 14:38
  • Then make them all a little higher, or change the layout so it doesn't break. Feb 23, 2015 at 14:39
  • 4
    Can we shrink the huge boxes? I could sleep in them now, how large they are.
    – yo'
    Feb 23, 2015 at 16:00
  • There is a lot of empty space, I guess they are going for the "clean look".
    – Tim
    Feb 23, 2015 at 20:41
  • The space isn't my problem. I have a large screen. The gaps is my problem. Feb 24, 2015 at 7:06
4

- this is not an improvement in readability.

This seems like it might be breaking some contrast check standard:

progbar1

Doubly so when hovered:

progbar2

Triply so when only half-full:

progbar3

Possible fix?

progbar4

Seems a bit "Windows 95-ish" though. Maybe having the label on the progress bar - which already contrasts highly with its own background - isn't the best idea.

7
  • 2
    The "possible fix" looks cool, but I'm not sure it is as easy implementable as one might think. As far as I know, the webdevs should duplicate the text Established user and then with some JS goofiness calculate how far the bar has filled and then add some clipping to the upper layer of text. Seems a lot of work for something as simple as that. Apart from the practical side, I don't think it is better readable than the current design. The brain expects a single word to be same-coloured. (Damn racist.) A lighter green with a darker brown/black should do just fine. Mar 2, 2015 at 22:33
  • 1
    I must respectfully disagree with the decline reason @Oded - It's not that hard Mar 4, 2015 at 14:09
  • @NiettheDarkAbsol That's a smart solution but I'd still not do it because I find the text hard to read when you have 2 very different color next to each other.
    – Stéphane
    Mar 4, 2015 at 14:25
  • I do agree though, I don't find this better readable at all, and I've never liked superfluous markup for something as trivial as this. Mar 4, 2015 at 14:30
  • 1
    (It can be done with no duplicate HTML markup, but as expected this is not cross-browser friendly: jsfiddle.net/BramVanroy/xy4tr6ab/2) Mar 4, 2015 at 14:47
  • @StéphaneMartin I'm inclined to agree with you - I touched lightly on that in the last line of my post, I just wanted to point out that "non-trivial" seemed like the wrong rejection reason ;) Mar 4, 2015 at 15:06
  • Smart approach. Didn't think about that...
    – Oded
    Mar 4, 2015 at 15:11
4

There is a mouse-over tooltip for the reputation gained on the top tag which seems superfluous:

enter image description here

3
  • Superfluous for small numbers, sure, but when the number is large and is abbreviated as 9.8k, the tooltip will show the exact value. Mar 4, 2015 at 15:46
  • 3
    @FishBelowtheIce: The representation of the number matches that of "what happened since you last clicked on the reputation tab". How long would have to wait to view a 9.8k reputation change in some specific tag?! I doubt that number would represent "total reputation in that tag".
    – Werner
    Mar 4, 2015 at 15:51
  • For you and for me and for most mortals, perhaps not. For some, though, who gather reputation points by the boat load, being a way for a day or two might result in a reputation total on a tag >1000. Mar 5, 2015 at 13:55
4

In the community-hider, this phrase:

New sites that you join will be linked to your other communities by default.

might confuse users. It seems that by "other" you mean "visible", could it be stated more clearly (replacing "other" with "visible")?

4

- as the basic requested functionality already exists.

- as it isn't exactly as requested here.

I want to be able to track my progress toward an arbitrary tag badge.

If I click the 'choose which badge to track' button, it lists all the built-in badges, but there are no tag badges. If I type 'discussion' in the search box, for example, there's no results.

It would be nice if as you typed, it showed built-in badges and tag badges that match the search. I don't think it's a good idea to try and find a way to fit all the many tags I could be working towards in the non-search lists, but if I'm searching, I want to see everything including the tag badges.

TL;DR:

Please add the tag badges to the 'choose which badge to track' search results when you are doing a search. Don't include the tag badges in the default list of Available badges when that popup opens, only include the tag badges when you do a search, and sort them so they come after the built-in badges.

1
  • 1
    The ability to track tag badges comes in after all privileges were earned - at that point, the place where privilege tracking was shown will have tag badges (and allow for selecting which one to track)
    – Oded
    Mar 16, 2015 at 13:28
4

- with you in the next build. I had to read this a few times to get what you meant.

If I win a badge, the tag badge window shouldn't say "Track the next one" if I don't have all the privileges yet. But in this case privileges are tracked, not tag badges.

4

The help center needs to be reviewed and updated to match the new layout.

For instance the image in How do I delete my account does not reflect the new shinyness. I.e.

How do I delete my account

needs updating.

4

I looked through the other answer and I don't think this has been reported yet. I just earned my bronze badge in because of the rather excellent prompt. So I'm ready for my next tag badge:

Sad panda

I know I can manually select the next tag badge to pursue, but wouldn't it be better if that were done for me automatically? In addition, the progress bar shows I have 19/20, which bugged me ever since I posted my answer. But I figured it would be updated when the badge was actually awarded. I understand it could be a performance problem to update everyone's profile every time the do an action that might change one of these displays since that's basically all actions. But it would be nice if the display was updated when the badge was awarded.

4
  • pretty sure this is a caching issue. I think we've just gotten the "next [non-tag] badge to update in real-time on pageload, but Jarrod's still working on a more live refresh for the tag badge. I think that'll fix your issue.
    – Jaydles
    Mar 19, 2015 at 14:16
  • @Jaydles: Nope, I'm still stuck at 19/20 answers on shell. The congratulations is pretty nice on my Curious badge, however. ;-) Mar 20, 2015 at 0:34
  • 1
    I pushed a fix for this last night; is it still an issue? Mar 23, 2015 at 18:02
  • 1
    @JarrodDixon: Looks good. Thanks. Mar 23, 2015 at 18:03
4

- declining this as it isn't feedback on the changes to the profile page. This can (and should) be posted as a separate , given that it has nothing to do with the announced changes to the profile page.

It would be nice to see how many +1's your activities received in the activity->activities tab. Additionally this can be expanded over most of the tabs on that page, e.g. accepts, posts, comments. Yes, comments as well. As it is now, there is no way to see if your comments are appreciated in any way other than visiting the posts in detail.

It should be worked out in more detail, but for instance in the 'posts' tab, when a post is 'asked', the details of that post can be visible. I am aware that this is already visible in the other view of questions, so this is not my main concern. The upvotes for comments, however, seems like a nice addition.

2
  • 2
    You are giving feedback on something that wasn't changed in the new profile (bar some style tweaks) - by all means, please post this as a new question - a feature request. We are trying to collect feedback here on things that have changed for the profile pages specifically.
    – Oded
    Mar 3, 2015 at 17:08
  • @Oded Done. Mar 4, 2015 at 10:59
4

- No more 0/0 bar now

I assume 0/0 below refers to the second requirement of the Socratic badge. However, I'm not sure how "maintained a positive record" implies 0/0:

enter image description here

3

- we cannot "demo" this on all sites at this time. There is a lot of backend work on our .less files to make them consistent (and allow us to push features like these pages across the network faster).

From reading the description given it seems like a great idea; by quantizing your contributions it really helps to motivate you to contribute further. However, I would suggest providing the demo of the new version to all accounts in the stack exchange community, as I am currently unable to really test it out because I have made absolutely no contributions to Meta Stack Exchange, so the interface for me is pretty much 3 grey boxes.

2
  • 1
    MSE is the playground for this kind of stuff, so if you like it: participate! Feb 24, 2015 at 9:58
  • 1
    Eh, you can look at others' profiles though, since they do have proper randomized statistics. Demos for beta profiles seems a lot of work to be short-lived.
    – Unihedron
    Feb 24, 2015 at 11:56
3

- this is much too small of a hit target and would be totally unrecoverable.

In the "profile" tab, after my top tags, those badge icons link to the corresponding tag badges. Please implement there, in the "activity" tab, similar functionality.

3

- we don't like to steal focus - this is something that should be decided by the user.

When I want to select a badge to pursue, the form does not get focused. Hitting tab does not help – it jumps between links on the profile page and does not get (within a few hits) to the search box. I’d expect the badge search input field to get focused immediately after the badge selection form pops up.

1
  • 1
    Is it possible to at least give the textbox a reasonable tabindex?
    – Palec
    Mar 4, 2015 at 10:43
3

- this box would obscure something wherever it is located, and we feel need to remain contained inside the badge box it is relating to.

The current badge recommendation overlays with the badge progress (top-right):

enter image description here

Perhaps moving this into the bottom-right corner will provide the least likely opportunity to overlay with anything. Alternatively, consider making adding this to the outside top-left so it seems like a "file folder tag":

enter image description here

3

There something wrong in the updates of the badge progress information:

enter image description here

Not sure whether it's due to caching... Also not sure whether this is specific to Electorate, but the secondary requirement needs some help.

3
  • Yes, badge progressions are currently updated once a day. We are looking at making them update more frequently.
    – Oded
    Mar 5, 2015 at 9:45
  • @Oded: ...and fixing some of the secondary requirements.
    – Werner
    Mar 5, 2015 at 15:19
  • Yes, we are actually taking a deeper look into that.
    – Oded
    Mar 5, 2015 at 16:05
3

Consistency in the display of information associated with badge progress would be appreciated:

Electorate (shows progress bar):

enter image description here

Strunk & White (no progress bar):

enter image description here

Marshal (nothing):

enter image description here

1
  • We show progress bars (2 - not 1), when the badge requirements need two separate things to progress. Doing so when only one bar exists would completely duplicate the information on the bar you just clicked...
    – Oded
    Mar 6, 2015 at 14:38
3

My reputation gained tooltip does not look nice:

enter image description here

Also, the title-text shows up too with the same text. Is there a way to stop it doing this as it's extra-messy having the same text rendered twice.

Chrome, Mac.

2
3

"Web Presence" portion of editting profile

Oh noes! The link, the stack overflow, and the kitty are hidden when you type something into the box!

Also there's no birdie or whatever Twitter's logo is.
I can see the birdie now, but the logos are still hidden.

6
  • 1
    This has been mentioned already.
    – Werner
    Mar 5, 2015 at 1:15
  • What browser? What OS? And what versions?
    – Oded
    Mar 5, 2015 at 9:44
  • @Oded Firefox 38.0a2 (2015-02-28) on Ubuntu 14.10
    – user188031
    Mar 6, 2015 at 0:12
  • Is this still an issue?
    – Oded
    Mar 6, 2015 at 12:14
  • @Oded The birdie is still missing :P
    – user188031
    Mar 6, 2015 at 22:44
  • @JeffreyLin - we don't support browsers in alpha/beta. This kind of thing is just to be expected when using cutting edge.
    – Oded
    Mar 10, 2015 at 9:48
3

Can we have a separator in the tooltip here too, just like in the actual text?

enter image description here

1
  • @FamousBlueRaincoat: Agreed, but they tend to do it nowadays. (take a look at the 10,000 rep behind the tooltip. That should be consistent in my opinion. Mar 2, 2015 at 14:06
3

Here is the display I got from my profile, it seems buggy comparing to the other screenshots I've seen of other users of the new privilege feature:

privilege

Same thing for the badge notification:

badge

I'm on Arch with Chrome v42.

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