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Matthew Isaac Sobin liked the forum thread, New Discover Page
I recently stumbled on what I see as a divergence in philosophy between how many of the visitors perceive the browse experience on Inkshares and how how it was designed.

The browse page seems to be designed for exploration, and thus emulates strolling through a brick and mortar store, drawing your finger along the spines and picking them up as they jump out at you. 

Online purchasers tend to like the maximum amount of information density possible for their time visiting a page. For me, and some like me, the browse is slow because I am used to finding books on sites like Amazon, where I can find books through a list of genres that dial down through breadcrumb list into even more refined genres.  In this search format, I can find all the books of a certain genre quickly, sort through reviews, find recommendations based on other books I’ve purchased, all in moments.  

I’ve seen much of this functionality in the backend of Inkshares. The search box provides access to genres, once you back one book the site brings up recommendations of others you might like. (Just some quick examples.) But what isn’t currently on Inkshares is  quick access to information about books in the same way it can be found on Goodreads or Amazon. We’re still in a brick-and-mortar mindset about user experience, and that slows access to many books.

Now if Inkshares is fine with browse continuing to be a meandering sort of experience, that is fine. It feels much like Netflix in that you come on hoping to find just a nice fantasy book, but end up scrolling through covers until you find something that *might* fit the mood you’re in. 

I just find that for users like me who are used to online book purchasing, I expected less of a treasure hunt when it comes to finding books. 
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    Matthew Isaac Sobin liked the forum thread, New Discover Page
    This is fantastic feedback everyone, thank you!

    The idea behind the horizontal scrolling mechanism (’shelves’ as we call them) is to give users a number of curated segments to quickly scroll through (’the vertical scroll’), once they find a shelf they like, they can browse more books by scrolling to the horizontally.

    @Jamison Stone I like your suggestion of incorporating these segments as options on the search page.

    @A.C. Weston great point about the depth of the search functionality. Will definitely add some text that makes users aware that this feature searches LOTS elements: titles, names, descriptions, genres, etc...

    Keep the great feedback coming!

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      Matthew Isaac Sobin liked the forum thread, New Discover Page
      I use the "Search" a lot. It’s great to not only find new books, but also great way to sort the ones I know exist and am looking for to comment or check up on, etc. I also REALLY like the top down scrolling. Not really a fan of the side scrolling of the "Discover" page. I’m going to agree with @Elan Samuel  "- I’m not sure about other folks, but I find the side-scrolling mechanism (like the Bookshelf and Browse pages) to be a slow browsing experience that doesn’t draw me toward any title in particular."

      All in all, love the search function and would love to see some of the "discover" options on the far right hand side of the "search" page, i.e. "Recommended by Inkshares Readers", "Staff Picks", "Syndicate Picks", "Trending" and "Funding" etc. 

      Hope that helps! Thanks for all your work on this site, it really shows! Looking great!
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        Matthew Isaac Sobin liked an update for Deus Hex Machina

        I’m currently in the middle of a staycation here in the Orneck household. Movies, minimal cooking, discovering old restaurants made new...it’s heaven.  It’s been great to get my creative juices flowing, so I am sitting down to sneak some planning in for Chapter 8, the big set piece.  

        In other news, recently I wrote an article about DHM over on Game Geex that is worth reading, and I was interviewed over on The Warbler, which was amazing. 

        It’s Monday, a fresh week with fresh possibilities. I can’t wait to see what’s in store. 

        Love,
        Amanda
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