Can I chime in here, not with a link to any specific site, but just as a call out to patterns that I am seeing recently.
A lot of sites now have lists and content that updates automatically as things happen on the back end. One good example is Intercom. I have their screen open 24x7 on the first tab of my browser so I can monitor users on our site. I love how it updates the 'time last seen' dynamically, and I usually have my customer list sorted by the 'time last seen' field.
But sometimes, while the content of the list fields are updated in real time, the sorting of the list is not, and the list goes out of order (i.e. customers who re-login recently are still shown lower down in the list that customers who logged in an hour ago even though the 'last login time' is more recent.
I wish there was a way in these instances to just refresh the list within the page, without doing an entire browser page refresh, which could take up to 10 seconds in the old Intercom UX. Also, while talking about Intercom, jumping between the Customers page and the Conversations page could also take anything from 5 to 10 seconds on my browser, and there was NO indication that anything was happening in the meantime, which increased confusion and frustration. I think we need to bring back the hourglass or some other 'waiting' indicator for transitions that take a while.
(NB: The new Intercom UX has improved on the waiting delay significantly, but not the sort ordering of the customer list).
Someone also mentioned the Stripe design (of their back end, not their marketing site). I tend to like the new design of their admin panel, however their menu hierarchy was a little confusing, making it hard to find things a lot of the time. Also, the redesign tends to break the 'back button' behaviour a lot. I tend to spend a lot of my time on the Stripe admin panel looking at webhook logs etc., and every time I bring up the log listing, then drill down to an entry I can't seem to go 'back' to the list easily without the system rebuilding the entire list each time. Makes it frustratingly slow to try and find the exact log entry I want when I have to spend so much time waiting for page refreshes.
In summary, I think we need to go back to these 'old fashioned' design constructs which aren't considered "trendy" any more:
* Give the user some sort of 'waiting' indicator if a page redraw is going to take time.
* If a list on your page refreshes in the background, and your user can sort the list, make sure you update the sort order as well as the content
* Don't break the back button behaviour if you can help it.
A lot of sites now have lists and content that updates automatically as things happen on the back end. One good example is Intercom. I have their screen open 24x7 on the first tab of my browser so I can monitor users on our site. I love how it updates the 'time last seen' dynamically, and I usually have my customer list sorted by the 'time last seen' field.
But sometimes, while the content of the list fields are updated in real time, the sorting of the list is not, and the list goes out of order (i.e. customers who re-login recently are still shown lower down in the list that customers who logged in an hour ago even though the 'last login time' is more recent.
I wish there was a way in these instances to just refresh the list within the page, without doing an entire browser page refresh, which could take up to 10 seconds in the old Intercom UX. Also, while talking about Intercom, jumping between the Customers page and the Conversations page could also take anything from 5 to 10 seconds on my browser, and there was NO indication that anything was happening in the meantime, which increased confusion and frustration. I think we need to bring back the hourglass or some other 'waiting' indicator for transitions that take a while.
(NB: The new Intercom UX has improved on the waiting delay significantly, but not the sort ordering of the customer list).
Someone also mentioned the Stripe design (of their back end, not their marketing site). I tend to like the new design of their admin panel, however their menu hierarchy was a little confusing, making it hard to find things a lot of the time. Also, the redesign tends to break the 'back button' behaviour a lot. I tend to spend a lot of my time on the Stripe admin panel looking at webhook logs etc., and every time I bring up the log listing, then drill down to an entry I can't seem to go 'back' to the list easily without the system rebuilding the entire list each time. Makes it frustratingly slow to try and find the exact log entry I want when I have to spend so much time waiting for page refreshes.
In summary, I think we need to go back to these 'old fashioned' design constructs which aren't considered "trendy" any more:
* Give the user some sort of 'waiting' indicator if a page redraw is going to take time.
* If a list on your page refreshes in the background, and your user can sort the list, make sure you update the sort order as well as the content
* Don't break the back button behaviour if you can help it.