I heard that votes have been changed to behave closer to how people would expect, and boost is staying here as well. So I had an idea how to bring it all together in the interface.
Sidenote: you don’t have to click the links here, the images are also posted inline in the comments below.
An app (either Artemis or an official one) might use a swipe gesture to visually hint at the relation between upvoting and boosting, as shown in the attached animation. Here’s a static app mockup with both swipe levels displayed. I’d also imagine that there should be a setting that auto-upvotes posts when boosting.
And on the web, it’s probably a good idea to consolidate all the voting buttons into a single block by adding an additional button at the top.
Edit: I’m disappointed in you guys. How come no one noticed the memes? :)
Not a fan. This would make swiping gestures for more useful functions, like going back, impossible.
Nope, those functions coexist. Have you used Apollo? Or any native apple app, for that matter. For example, Mail and Notes use the same gesture combination. The difference is you swipe from outside the edge to go back, and start somewhere on the screen to open a swipe drawer. It’s pretty intuitive to use and is included in Apple guidelines.
So no functionality would be lost.
No, of course I haven’t used any Apollo app because of course I don’t use Apple products. That gesture exists in Android too though, system wide, but it’s not really an alternative to fluid app gestures. I tried wefwef for example, which is close to what you’re suggesting, and I just end up accidentally voting & boosting while scrolling.
Web block mockup with both clicked and unclicked buttons.
Mobile app block mockup
I like the overal effect but it’s hiding the true nature of boosting.
Boosting shares a piece of content with your followers. Favouriting does not. Kbin does not yet contain a follower feed, but it is planned. This is what that looks like on Mastodon:
yeah, its good to mention that boosts is also really relevant for the microblogging side. I actually found out about this post because i follow ernest on calckey, and he boosted it. Thats for me an important usecase of boosting kbin stuff. This looks really pretty, but it does put boosting too much in the category of ‘superlike’ for me.
I know, but you probably won’t be able to explain it to the whole user base, in my opinion. Making it somewhat visual might add to the general understanding. And probably increase boosting without extra incentives.
imo the boost symbol should be replaced by something like the retweet symbol or the symbol tumblr uses for their reblogging. That would make it clearer what it does. I’d also rename “boost” to something like “echo”.
That in turn kinda hides the part where it actually boosts the post. Idk, but I feel like it’s a separate entity, not simply a retweet.