Content and Usability Report

Autum Hosler English 420 Final Project Professor Daniel Tripp Penn State University table of contents.

introduction.! 1 accessibility.! 2 tutorials.! 2 help page.! 3 usability.! 6 posts editor layout.! 6 messages.! 7 notifications.! 8 tracked tags.! 8 character limit.! 9 additional suggestions.! 10 dashboard customization.! 10 blacklisting.! 11 tag features.! 11 replies.! 12 chat.! 12 conclusion.! 13

Tumblr Content and Usability Report! i introduction.

At the request of Mr. Karp, CEO of , Inc., this report examines tumblr.com. Specifically, it seeks to assess the usability, accessibility, and design of the website from the standpoint of both new and everyday users. It also makes suggestions as to possible improvements for the website in order to make it easier and more enjoyable for its users. This report observes that several changes have recently been made to the layout of tumblr.com which are actually detrimental to its functionality, while other features that should be changed have been left untouched. Overall, this report recommends that several changes be made to the layout and design of tumblr.com in order to improve its functionality for its users.

This report will address three main areas of concern pertaining to tumblr.com. The first topic addressed will be accessibility. This category will assess the ease with which a new tumblr user can navigate and learn the site and make suggestions as to how tumblr can become more accessible to potential new users.

The second topic addressed will be usability. This category will assess the main features of the tumblr website that are used most frequently by regular users and make suggestions as to how to improve these features for easier use.

The final topic will cover additional suggestions pertaining to new or existing features that can be added or changed in order to streamline use of the website and make it a more enjoyable experience for frequent users.

We hope that you will find this report helpful when assessing the possibility of future improvements to tumblr.com.

Tumblr Content and Usability Report! 1 accessibility. tutorials. In order to begin research for this report, we created a new account on tumblr.com to assess the the clarity and ease of use for a new tumblr user. We were intrigued to find that there is no introduction tutorial upon completion of a new account. This could potentially cause confusion for anyone who is not familiar with tumblr, as many of the functions on tumblr are represented by icons that have no immediate description (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The tumblr dashboard as it appears immediately upon creation of a new account.

Although it can be assumed that many of these icons are intuitive in their representation of the functions they portray and descriptions of these functions can be accessed by hovering the cursor over the icon, this assumption may not be correct in all cases and could alienate new tumblr users. Tumblr.com is a website rich with content and options

Tumblr Content and Usability Report! 2 to create the user’s desired blogging experience, and the lack of description could impede the experience for new users.

To solve this issue, we propose creating an interactive tutorial that begins as soon as the user is transported to their dashboard for the first time. The style of this tutorial could be similar to the type that employs when introducing new features to its users. These tutorials consist of pop-up boxes that appear near the feature in question and give a short description of its function. The pop-up boxes could include a link that the user can follow for more information on the feature and a dismissal button for when they are satisfied with their understanding of the feature. We suggest including these tutorials whenever the user accesses an area of the website for the first time (dashboard, new post type, messages, customization, etc.). We also recommend allowing the user the option to completely dismiss all tutorials, as not all new account creators will be unfamiliar with tumblr’s functions. help page. In order to further assist new users, we suggest revamping the help page as well. As Figure 2 shows, the help page consists of a search bar, a list of frequently asked questions, and a box that contains some bulleted advanced topics. There is no section that includes information on some of the site’s more basic features. We even typed a simple question in the search bar of the help page, “what is reblogging?”, and were awarded no results that pertained to the question (Figure 3). Due to this, we are led to believe that no information exists to these simple questions on the help page. Adding pages describing the basic features of tumblr to the help section could be beneficial to any new user, and would be very simple. The links could be added to the main help page, perhaps above the F.A.Q. section for easy access.

Tumblr Content and Usability Report! 3 Figure 2: Default tumblr help page.

Tumblr Content and Usability Report! 4 Figure 3: The search results of the question, “what is reblogging?”.

Tumblr Content and Usability Report! 5 usability. post editor layout. Recently, tumblr.com implemented a new layout system for creating new posts and reblogging. Previously, whenever a user created or reblogged a post, they would be directed to a new page where they could then proceed with creating or editing their post. The new system opens the post editor directly on top of the dashboard, effectively stalling all other possible interaction with the dashboard while the user is posting (Figure 4).

Figure 4: The dashboard as it appears when creating a new post.

Tumblr Content and Usability Report! 6 Although this new layout was created in an attempt to streamline the posting process and make tumblr seem more similar to other social networking sites, such as or Facebook, it actually makes the process more difficult for users. This new system makes it impossible for the user to interact with the rest of the dashboard, or any other feature on tumblr, while accessing the post editor. If a user wishes to reference something on any other section of the website, they would be required to open a new tab in order to do so. Another issue with this system is that upon the creation of the post, the screen “jumps” to the top of the dashboard and then back down to the position that the user was at when they opened the post editor. This issue is extremely jarring and distracting. Our recommendation is that the post editor should automatically be opened in a new tab, allowing users to reference other areas of the site if they so wish. messages. In its current state, the tumblr messaging system has several issues. The most prominent of these is that whenever a user answers an “ask” that they receive, the message is automatically erased from their message archive. If they choose to answer the ask publicly, it is posted to their blog and dashboard, and can then be catalogued via the use of tags. However, if the user answers the message privately, it is then sent back to the asker, and the user has no way of accessing the message again should they need to. We suggest changing the messaging system so that all messages are archived, giving the user the option to reference them later, or delete them if they wish.

Another issue with the current messaging system is that all messages appear in the user’s ask box in the order that they were received. This causes the message archives to be very unorganized, and makes it difficult for users to find and reference old messages. By implementing a cataloguing system, users could organize their messages by sender, date, or any other number of categories, much like an inbox.

Finally, there is a character limit on all tumblr messages. This poses a problem because unless a user has the submit option enabled for their blog, there is no way for users to send messages exceeding 500 characters. Instead, they are forced to send multiple messages, which can get confusing and clog up inboxes. Removing this character limit would make communication between users much easier.

Tumblr Content and Usability Report! 7 notifications. Whenever a user creates or reblogs a post, they receive notifications on their dashboard anytime someone else likes, reblogs, or comments on that post (Figure 5). As tumblr has a wide network of users, some posts can get upwards of 100,000 notes. Each of those notes will show up on the original poster’s dashboard in the form of notifications. This means that any user who creates a popular post will have their dashboard “clogged” by notifications, possibly detracting from their tumblr experience.

Figure 5: Notifications as they appear on the dashboard.

Currently, there is no way for users to disable notifications, but allowing them to do so on a post-by-post basis would prevent the annoyance of clogged dashboards from popular post notifications. tracked tags. When users wish to stay updated about new posts concerning a certain topic, they can track the tag pertaining to that topic. In order to access their tracked tags, users must navigate to the search bar on the dashboard, at which point a drop-down list of tracked tags appears (Figure 6). This makes accessing tracked tags more difficult than necessary. Allowing the tracked tags to appear as a list on the right side of the dashboard, underneath the blog stats, would make them more accessible to users.

Figure 6: Tracked tags accessed via the search bar.

Tumblr Content and Usability Report! 8 tag character limit. Many tumblr users use the tagging system as a way to add commentary to their posts and reblogs, rather than commenting directly on the post. As such, they may have the desire to create very long tags. This is made difficult by the fact that there is a character limit for individual tags. Once the character limit is reached, tumblr cuts the tags off with an ellipsis (Figure 7). There is also a limit to the number of tags that a post can contain. Because of the importance of tags to tumblr users as a form of expression, both of these limits should be lifted in order to create a more enjoyable experience for users. In order to avoid dashboard clogging with tags, we recommend creating a mask that will cover up the tags on a post once they reach a certain number, with a button to reveal them if the user wishes to read them.

Figure 7: Tag cut off feature.

Tumblr Content and Usability Report! 9 additional suggestions. dashboard customization. The default dashboard design (Figure 1) consists of a simple blue background with white post backgrounds. There is an extension for Google Chrome and Firefox users called Stylish, which allows users to customize the look of their dashboards by installing certain themes and styles offered on the Stylish website (Figure 8). Incorporating a native dashboard customization feature into tumblr.com would keep users from using 3rd party alternatives and prevent any coding conflicts that might occur from using an extension.

Figure 8: A dashboard customized using Stylish.

Tumblr Content and Usability Report! 10 blacklisting. Another browser extension available to tumblr users is Tumblr Savior. This extension allows users the option to “blacklist” certain words or phrases that they don’t wish to see on their dashboard. It further allows them to either be notified when the post is removed so that they can view it if they wish (Figure 9), or to remove it without notification. This feature not only helps keep annoyances off of a user’s dashboard, but also serves as a safety feature, as users can blacklist any words or phrases that may cause psychological triggers. We suggest that a native blacklist feature be integrated into the tumblr website.

Figure 9: A notification that a post has been removed due to a blacklisted phrase. tag features. Currently, whenever the tag characters exceed the space provided by the post box on the dashboard, they are simply cut off. If the user wishes to continue reading the tags, they must click in the tag area and drag their cursor to the left in order to scroll through the rest of the tags. This is very inconvenient, as tags often contain useful information about a post. By adding a simple line of code, the tumblr tags could be “wrapped” on the dashboard, which allows them to appear in a block and erases the need for scrolling (Figure 10).

Figure 10: An example of wrapped tags on the dashboard.

Another useful addition to tumblr would be a saved tags feature. Many users catalogue and organize the posts on their by using specific tags so that they can go back and reference this content later. Tumblr currently saves some tags and offers them as

Tumblr Content and Usability Report! 11 suggestions in a drop-down list when the user beings typing in the tag box, but the tags are saved arbitrarily, with tags used only once being saved while frequently used tags must be typed out completely. A feature that allows users to choose which tags they want to be saved and then offers them as suggestions when the user begins typing in the tag box would be more useful.

We recommend giving users the option to keep the original tags when reblogging a post. This way users would not be forced to retype tags that they may have otherwise kept, and can streamline the reblogging process. As a final feature, we also suggest allowing users to edit the tags on their posts directly from the dashboard without having to go into the post editor. replies. Tumblr offers its users the ability to reply to certain posts on their dashboards as a way of interacting with followers. These replies show up on the user’s dashboard in the form of notifications. In order to reply to these replies, the user must either screenshot the notification, or copy its text and paste it into a new post, which can be a nuisance. This can be solved by adding a link to reply notifications that will automatically redirect the user to the post editor and copy and paste the reply text for them so that they can reply to replies easily. chat. Finally, we suggest adding an optional chat feature to tumblr.com. While there are currently several ways for users to interact with their followers and the people they follow (asks, submissions, and replies), all of these can be quite inconvenient if users wish to communicate in real time. A Facebook-style chat feature could allow users the chance to communicate more efficiently, while giving them the choice to turn the feature on and off, allow communication from all of their followers, or only from mutual followers to allow for security.

Tumblr Content and Usability Report! 12 conclusion.

Tumblr.com is an exceptional website that allows its users the chance to express themselves via rich features and options. However, many of these features could be changed or improved upon in order to make the experience more efficient and enjoyable for users. The suggestions offered in the accessibility section will help ease confusion and prevent the alienation of new users who may not be familiar or comfortable with tumblr’s features. The usability section offers recommendations that will help fix some of the more major issues with tumblr’s design and layout. Finally, the changes offered in the additional suggestions section should help make all of tumblr’s features much more streamlined and efficient for all users. These suggestions will ensure that tumblr’s users stay loyal while also attracting new users to the site so that tumblr can continue to grow. We hope that you have found our recommendations helpful and thank you for your business.

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