Dashboard v2 Poll

Results of the new dashboard poll conducted in January 2021

Introduction

Between January and February of 2021, I've conducted a poll to evaluate everyone's response to the new dashboard as well as collect general feedback and suggestions.

As you might remember, in December, I spent the entire month working on a completely redesign of the Dashboard, to make it faster, prettier, easier to improve and most importantly - work on mobile, as if it was an app.

In case you missed the original walkthrough the Dashboard V2, you can catch up here:

📊Dashboard v2

Based on feedback collected over previous months as well as having a small group of testers help me refine it, it was launched in time for the New Year. While it was met with positive reviews, I still wanted some hard data to guide me → Hence this poll was conducted, to see the full picture.

As a result, 189 of you have participated, which was the most answered poll to date (last one had only 80 respondents). Many have provided very detailed and long suggestions as well, which has been great to read through. Thank you everyone who participated. But let's dive into the results, shall we?

Overall Perception

The most important question was whatever the majority liked the new design. I was confident everyone will like it, based on feedback collected and my own gut feeling. And thankfully, that was indeed the case.

As can be seen on the pie chart below, majority (71.4%) prefer it to the old dashboard. Some of you didn't quite see the difference (mostly those who joined recently and never even seen the old dashboard). And finally, as you can't ever please everyone, just 6% of respondents prefered the old dashboard.

I was really glad to see this huge validation of my vision for the new dashboard. Spending a month on something, to find out most didn't like the change, is a hard pill to swallow. Fortunately, that was not the case. Moreover, people that disliked the change was even lower than I anticipated.

If we look at a breakdown of what people like about the new dashboard, it's as follows:

Which was mostly what I expected. This data is slightly skewed, as most of you use it on desktop, so while 21.2% seems small, if you exclude people that don't ever use mobile version, this number actually jumps to a whopping 95%

Areas of Improvements

Of course, with such a big piece of work, I had to cut some corners as well as push some of the improvements and features till later. I wanted to highlight those, so those of you, who've noticed some issues, know I am working on them. Here is the list of the biggest ones I plan to address in the coming months:

  • Fix pressing on the loading indicator, as it would trigger visiting the link, as soon as the loading ends.

  • Hide Delete and Report in the actions bar on desktop, and only keep read and edit as quickly accessible, to avoid accidental deletion and misclicks.

  • Improve hold to select functionality

    • Accidentally selecting when swiping

    • Can select through dropdown menu on mobile

    • Don't fill the element when holding to touch, while scrolling

  • Improved performance

  • Improve accessibility on mobile, to make it easier to use

  • Fix various bugs introduced

So there is plenty to work on, but with good foundations already setup, it's going to be a lot easier to address these issues

Feature suggestions

Finally, I've also taken this opportunity to ask for suggestions, to see if they still match what I am working on. There has been a breadth of suggestions, but here are the most common ones:

  • Showing only English titles

  • Ability to manually input chapter/volume number

  • Reading Stats

  • Hide not yet released series

  • Refresh button

  • Confirm deletion

  • Adding notes per each entry

  • Social features (e.g. sharing lists, exploring other users' lists, following lists)

  • Sort by last read/next chapter difference

  • Importing from MAL, Anilist and Tachiyomi

Most of these are indeed on the roadmap and will be added in due time. If you want to suggest a feature, don't hesitate to join our Discord and leave a suggestion. You can find it here

Closing words

To recap this has been one of the most complex pieces of work I've done for Kenmei and it has been really humbling to see everyone enjoy the work I've put in. I am also very grateful to everyone who took their time to fill out the survey, it has been extremely valuable.

I look forward to your help in accessing future features I develop as well as to more of your suggestions, on how we can make Kenmei the best place for fans of manga, manhwa, manhua and webtoons!

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