Dear Twitch
by S4B0T4G3FIRE | October 07, 2018, 8:00 AM EDT
Recently, the community has not been fully satisfied with the functionality of the Twitch platform. Among surveying a sample of Twitch users, the following categories of improvements, all of which consider the overall user experience of Twitch’s sizable population, were brought up: easier access to important information, enhancements to current features, and bug fixes. On behalf of the Twitch community, this letter will address the specific improvements to the platform that would like to be seen in the near future.
1. Accessibility
Mobile app users, who account for approximately one-third of Twitch’s population, have a few simple requests to make it easier for everyone to access information.
a. “Please make it easier to access streamers’ information panels while watching them on mobile”
Currently, the steps required to access a streamer’s information panels while watching the stream are:
- Tap on the video (this cannot be done while viewing an advertisement in the streamer’s channel, so users must wait until any advertisements end before proceeding).
- Tap on the streamer’s profile picture.
- Tap on “Info.”
This procedure should not require three (3) steps to complete, especially since completing it requires leaving the chat and minimizing the stream.
Swiping to the right while watching a stream used to reveal Whispers to users. Not too long ago, swiping while watching a stream would bring the user to a different stream. Now, however, swiping while watching a stream does absolutely nothing. This makes a solution quite apparent.
Allow users to swipe left and right to switch between “Chat” and “Info” while watching a stream. The video can stay visible. All that needs to change is the bottom half of the screen, as shown below.
Quick access to this information would not only make it easier for viewers, but it would also make it easier for streamers since users would be able to find basic information on their own, without having to repeatedly ask streamers the same questions.
b. “Please make it easier to access friends and whispers”
This has only become an issue for the community after the latest update. “Following,” “Friends,” and “Whispers” used to all be together on the home screen of the mobile app. Each one was accessed by swiping left or right from one panel to the next. “Friends” and “Whispers” have since been hidden behind a separate “Social” button, as shown in the following pair of images.
With the “Social” button located at the very top of the app, switching between “Following” and “Social” is far more difficult than a simple swipe. It now requires more extending and more precision to view social information, as well as an additional button press to return to the “Following” list. Unless Twitch plans to bring new swiping functionality to the home screen, the previous layout maximized accessibility and did not require changing. It would be preferred by the community that the previous layout be brought back or the “Social” button be lowered to the bottom of the app.
2. Enhancements to Features
The community has come up with a few new features and a few ways to improve existing features to make them more appealing and functional.
a. “Pop Out mode on the mobile app disconnects the user from chat”
While this does not seem like too big of an issue since “Pop Out” mode does not allow users to see chat anyway, the mode did not always disconnect users from chat. “Pop Out” mode has always been a great feature, but it was nice being able to return to the Twitch app to see chat messages that were missed while using the mode.
Perhaps this feature should be returned to its former state. It would certainly be nicer than returning to see “Connecting…”; and it would be way nicer than returning to see “Disconnected from chat” and being forced to reload the stream. These are all minor inconveniences that deduct from the user experience.
b. “Please add the option to sort channels by the number of viewers they have”
Twitch allows users to “Browse” games to see which channels are currently streaming which games. However, channels are not exactly sorted from “most viewers” to “least viewers” or vice versa. By providing the option to sort channels this way while browsing games will allow users to easily find popular channels or new/small channels whenever they wish to do so.
If not this, then perhaps just add another search filter when Browsing, so users can filter out streams with certain numbers of viewers. For example, perhaps users would be able to search for streams with “between 25 and 50 viewers.” It could look like something similar to the image below.
If implemented, users would have a much easier time finding newer/smaller streams, since they would not need to scroll through all of the larger/more popular streamers.
c. “Please allow users to categorize the channels they follow”
Since users often follow/subscribe to a multitude of channels, the community believes it would benefit greatly if users were allowed to sort the channels they follow (into specific, custom categories).
For example, perhaps users would like to sort the channels they follow by game (Hearthstone, Fortnite, League of Legends, etc); or perhaps by the size of the channels they follow (100, 1000, 10000, etc followers); or perhaps into more-customized categories (friends, games, IRL, Esports, etc). Perhaps the “Esports” category could then be hidden from the “Following” list since channels that host Esports are not always relevant. These are just some ideas.
This new feature would encourage users to follow more streams (since their “Following” list would not be a jumbled mess), and it would make locating specific followed channels much easier.
3. Bug Fixes
Though the number of bugs plaguing the platform is quite substantial, these are just a couple of the more notable bugs mentioned by the community.
a. “Twitch randomly unfollows me from channels I follow”
This issue has hurt the user experience for well over three (3) years now. It has been brought up on popular social media websites, including Reddit and Twitter, but Twitch has never addressed nor fixed the issue. Until they do fix it, users will continue to be unfollowed from their favorite channels at random. As popular Twitch streamer, Kate Stark, described the issue earlier this year, “there’s a @Twitch glitch where it’s mass unfollowing people from channels.” Her followers’ reactions ranged from “this has been happening to me for 6 months” to “I was auto-unfollowed from around 300+ channels.”
Kate Stark informing her audience about bugs within the platform
Having to re-follow numerous channels (sometimes more than once) is a headache to deal with and should not be something users need to worry about. Furthermore, by Twitch’s standards, this is unacceptable, and the community believes it is a bug worth immediate fixing.
b. “Videos on Demand (VODs) are never guaranteed to load/work”
Like the previous bug, this one has also affected many users for many years. Users will begin watching a VOD, only to have the video either pause and fail to load (to no fault of their own Internet), or skip to the next VOD (even though there was still more time remaining in the one they were watching). While it is a problem that seems to come and go, the identification of a root cause and a fix would be appreciated by the much-deserving community.
Twitch is growing every day. More channels. More streamers. More followers. More games. More money. In order to support the expanding community, users strongly believe that many of the changes mentioned should be implemented into the platform for everyone to benefit from. Perhaps we will see some of these improvements soon.
Like this article? Perhaps you will like some of my others!
A Thorough Guide to Being a Twitch Moderator
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I look forward to continuing this discussion! You can also find me on social media!
