IMDB has changed its layout to something shockingly worse, as other entertainment databases have recently done, alienating users with bizarre contemporary design philosophy.

Full disclosure, I can't recall a major change to web design that felt equal or better to what it was before the change, but I've never seen a trendy thing that felt important enough to post this many words about, either.

This recent pattern has finally pushed me to a rant.

Like every recent and terrible redesign, IMDB feels even more like a mobile app, and as this web trend has altered other sites I used to frequent because they've pretty much cornered the market in what it is they do, I've stopped looking for information about entertainment. Not entirely, but it's a fraction of the amount.

The pictures are gigantic, and flashy visuals take priority over now minimalist text and information. It takes longer to scroll through, with less info immediately available on the page. This is partly because there is so much more white space as it displays on my computer now that it feels like massive voids exist between each bit of info, but also because the spacing and location of that info is abysmal. I don't care what data they have on the human eye's relationship with UI/UX from top ranked university research endeavor, this is fundamentally horseshit.

When I finally get to what most people are looking for when they visit IMDB, the cast list, I can no longer glance down a vertical list of actor names because they are spaced out in two side by side columns of big circle pictures of actors, whose faces are poorly framed because those pictures were never intended to be cropped for a social media style circle. My eyes dart all over the page trying to read visual information, and straining to do so even when looking directly at any part of it.

Rottentomatoes and Metacritic are distant memories with no adequate replacement, thanks to recent overhauls very much like this one. I disliked all of the changes they made in previous years too, just as I did IMDB when it became more stuffed with pictures and videos, but this recent trend feels especially drastic and desperate.

Making the pain of this more intense, each redesign of this type comes also with an PR writeup about how they heard our calls for a cleaner, simpler experience, proudly framing their hard work as directly incorporating user requests and feedback into an exciting new vision that NOBODY WANTS. I've seen no evidence of a human being outside a graphic design department indicate anything positive about the direction of these sites.

I'm horrified, and here's why:

As other sites have done this, I've given up on visiting. It's too hard to navigate, and too hard to look at. I'm simply less informed, and as I no longer have a relationship with these databases, I'm losing interest in movies, television, games, comics, journalism... I'm consistently disappointed by the world of information that surrounds them, which makes the art itself less interesting to engage with.

What I still, after years, don't understand is: Why does this continue?

How does the data not show that with each overhaul, engagement slips, and if the data shows engagement rising, how could that possibly be the case when so much negative feedback exists asking them not to do the things they are now doubling down on. It's forced through each time, with each site. How are they not knowingly poisoning their own wells?

Submitted May 21, 2021 at 11:35AM by hombregato https://ift.tt/3v6s5ZO