I just happened to start browsing cams the other day and some things really stuck out to me about the UI.
Why are the sorting functions so limiting? It's such a pain to keep track of any streams. Why is there no alphabetical order or something? The best way I've found is to sort by "top / all time". That at least keeps the order somewhat stable. I assume using "time online" could be similar but would also be radically different from day to day. AND! Why can't I select girl streams only?! I mean, isn't that like the most basic filter of all time?
The "For You" page is strange as well. How can a specific stream be "for me"? It makes sense with videos, but from what I've seen, most cammers seem to do a smorgasbord of things depending on who's tipping them. You know what's absent from the "For You" page though? Actual streams that I've favorited. Insanity. Nothing would be more "for me" than the streams I've specifically marked as such. That leads me into my next point...
Favoriting streams isn't that great either. Since it was my first time, I went through and just started favoriting streams with cute girls and good quality video, so that I could narrow down the selection. Only, the favorited streams only appear as a name on the right side of the UI. I can't see what the cammer looks like or is currently doing, which is kind of important since I'm not gonna remember who all these names are. I can't even get a page that just shows my favorites or anything. Heck, if you log on to the pc site, you can't even see what streams you have favorited. It's only when you come across a stream with a heart that you know you have favorited it. And, I can't even just easily cycle through the favorite streams, which leads my next point...
Navigating streams is not fun. I want to just be able to jump from one stream to the next in order. Maybe you can do that with the next video button (mine is not bound) but even so, would it make any logical sense without being able to sort the streams somehow? At the very least I want to be able to cycle through the favorites list without having to back out to the overview all the time.
Also, this point was going to be tacked on to the previous but I think it deserves it's own point, why are all the stream views incredibly delayed? I mean, what's the point of even showing anything beyond their profile pic if what's shown isn't even remotely close to present time. Why can't you see a preview of the live stream when you hover it? That has to be minimal bandwidth to show a tiny 2d thumbnail.
What I really want to see is an option to only show my favorites and to be able to see what is currently happening live without having to laboriously jump in and out of every stream.
The rest of the site has a pretty decent UI, so I'm not sure what to make of this. Maybe some of the hassle is intentional to try to give every cammer a fighting chance of being seen? That would suck for users, but I can't see why else the options would be so limiting. At the very least, I'd settle for a "hide" type of feature for streams I'm absolutely not interested in.
