UX/UI: Adapt navigation

[oas777]

Most portals will focus on lecture recordings and the current semester will be the most sought after part of the video portal. While many students will get direct links, the question remains how "accessible" the current semester is from the start page: It takes four clicks to get from https://videong.ethz.ch/ to https://videong.ethz.ch/lectures/d-arch/2025/spring while it only takes one (hover-over) click to go from https://video.ethz.ch/ to https://video.ethz.ch/lectures/d-arch.html.

Anything we could do about this?

[LukasKalbertodt]

Your current video portal needs another click to actually arrive at "2025 > spring". And personally, I prefer multiple clicks over navigating a hover-menu, as the latter seems very annoying to me if your mouse ever leaves the menu, closing it.

But regardless of these details, your point is valid: I think we should think about common use cases and make them simple.

In my head, the solution to this will be a "bookmark" system of some sorts. We talked about it a couple of times already. One could bookmark a series or a page or other things and then there is a page similar to YouTube "Subscribtions" page where you see the latest content from your bookmarks. I am also very open to have a small widget on the homepage, if your are logged in, showing a preview of said "bookmarks" page, where you can see the latest 4 things for example. That widget would have a design that clearly communicates "this is just shown for you because you are logged in".

One open question I have is whether this should work purely on manually set bookmarks. As a technical person, I would prefer that as a user. But it is clear that pages like YouTube have been transitioning away from manually maintained subscriptions, in favor of "let just an algorithm decide for you". Probably because people are "bad" at managing their subscriptions, meaning they would see lots of stuff they are not interested in anymore, while also missing out on stuff they forgot to subscribe to. Luckily, unlike YouTube, Tobira's goal is not to maximize watch time, but to make it easier for users to get to where they want to get. However, I still it's worth considering if Tobira should automate some things in anticipation of users not properly maintaining their bookmarks. Obviously not throwing a big machine learning model on it, but simple stuff like "series that you watch videos from recently/often" or "pages that you visit often". Of course, this all requires us to gather some statistical data about a user. So I'm really unsure about this.

[oas777]

Your current video portal needs another click to actually arrive at "2025 > spring".

True, but being at https://video.ethz.ch/lectures/d-arch.html is like being at https://video.ethz.ch/lectures/d-arch.html/spring - even after choosing one series, others are still visible while I have to go to and fro at https://videong.ethz.ch/lectures/d-arch/2025/spring/052-0804-00L: Wrong "Architekturgeschichte"? Too bad you cannot see the full list of spring recordings but have to go back to see the other series.

In my head, the solution to this will be a "bookmark" system of some sorts.

Question: Will see students see a chronological list of series they have read access to under "My series"? I think that would help them immensely even beyond this issues (tabled for our next meeting).

-0 for automatic bookmarks, AI, or widgets