Improve usability of product filters on Browse page

Feature requests
1

I like the filters available on the left side of the Browse page, but at times I find them hard to use.

  • When I have an idea in mind of what I want to filter for already (e.g. a specific game system), I find it hard to scroll through the list quickly to find what I am looking for. I often scroll straight past it and have to go back and forth before I find it in the small scroll box. In this case, it might be nice to be able to type into a search box to filter the list, maybe?
  • When I don’t specifically know what I’m looking for and want to genuinely “browse”, a fun place for me to start is to pick one of the filters (Genre, Tone, Playstyle, etc.) and view products under that filter. However, these filters also have so many options that it’s difficult to browse through them to even see what my options are, also due to the small scroll box that the UI gives me to see the list of options.

I admit that I’m not entirely sure how to solve this problem. Making those scroll boxes larger would make the page longer and possibly more overwhelming. Maybe some sort of drop-down-like UI component could be used instead, where it pops up with a longer scrollable list of options that you can filter and select? Not sure. Just wanted to report my feedback at least.

2

This is great feedback - thank you!

As more products (and therefore more filter options) are being added, we can see how this is becoming tricky. We’ll do some UI research and work out a way to make the filters searchable and/or easier to scroll through, without making the page too long.

3

We pushed some updates to the filters today, including:

  • Increasing the default size to 6 lines instead of 5.
  • Making each section collapsible, with only some expanded by default.
  • Adding a text search to each taxonomy for quick filtering.
  • Hiding the scrollbars.
  • Adding total term count to the filter title.

We’ll continue to evaluate things and improve them as we go. I think this is a big step forward in terms of usability already, so we’re on a good track here.