Link to a user's profile while in a different channel's chat
"Guys, you should follow Emma , seriously! She is an amazing music streamer."
When streamer Dan said this, I wanted to be able to do these things in this order:
1) figure out who this "Emma" was that he was talking about (a mod's !so shoutout helped here)
2) easily get to Emma's channel to follow her
3) come right back and continue watching Dan
4) be able to check out Emma in more depth later (this is already easy, once I'm following Emma)
Now, the feature request(s).
SCENARIO A: (less work to implement, but also less intuitive and less beneficial to the viewer than SCENARIO B below.)
On the Twitch for Fire TV app, I can navigate to a list of current viewers (while still watching the channel). This is good. When I scrolled to find Emma's name, I was able to click on it, which was great - I was so close to my goal!
But when the menu options appeared, there were only two:
- Report
- Block
What I wanted:
- Report
- Block
- View Profile
The "View Profile" option would take me to Emma's profile, temporarily leaving Dan's channel.
I would then look at Emma's content, select whether to click the "Follow" button, click it (or not click it), then hit "Back" to return to Dan's channel, where I was immediately previous to coming to Emma's profile.
Expected Steps:
- Navigate to Dan's channel.
- Make sure the chat is visible.
- Press left four times to navigate to the Viewers list button (it says the # of current viewers and has a two-person icon on it).
- Click that viewers list button. The list of current viewers appears.
- Scroll to or search for Emma's username and click on it. A menu appears that contains a "View Profile" option (in the same list with the "Report" and "Block" options).
- Click "View Profile". Emma's profile should appear.
- Click Follow. A visual cue tells me I'm now following her (I believe the button changes to "Unfollow" - this is not new functionality.)
- Click Back. I should be taken back to Dan's stream.
Step 8's navigation flow is similar to when a streamer raids another - a message appears asking if I, the viewer, want to visit the raided streamer's channel, which I click, and can then immediately click "Back" to return to the original streamer's channel. This "Back" navigation journey should be preserved in a similar way with this idea.
There are improvements you could make to this process, but I feel like it would take the least development to do it this way (SCENARIO A).
SCENARIO B: (maybe more work to develop, but more intuitive and more beneficial to the user/viewer)
A more streamlined way to get to Emma's profile when viewing Dan's chat feed: press "up-arrow" one or more times (or press & hold it to scroll faster) on the fire tv remote to start navigating back/up through the chat feed (navigating backwards in time). Each time I click up, the next most recent @username is highlighted. When it gets to Emma's username (e.g. @EmmaJonesTheSinger is highlighted), I click on it, and the "View Profile" option appears. Similar to step 6 above, I click on "View Profile", and steps 7-8 play out similarly to SCENARIO A ("Follow", then "Back" to return to Dan's channel).
One clarification: as I ascend the chat list (going back in time), the usernames of the authors of the messages are the ones that are highlighted (and scroll into view), AS WELL AS the names that are @mentioned in the message text bodies. So if @Bob says "@Sally is cool", then @John says "Cool, I'll check her profile out" in that order in chat, then as I am navigating back through the chat, John's name would be highlighted, then Sally's name within Bob's message would be highlighted, then Bob's name would be highlighted - essentially, in the reverse order that they appeared in chat when originally submitted.
Hitting the "Back" button while a name is highlighted will return you to the present (i.e. most recent chat message) in real time, and re-highlight the "Chat about this channel..." button.
I like SCENARIO B's scrolling-back-through-chat method better, in fact, because I get to reread the chat messages even if I don't click on any names. Chat messages often pass by so incredibly quickly that no human mind can process them all in real time. :D
So, SCENARIO B has more benefit and solves more problems.
The only reason I would choose SCENARIO A over B is if it is significantly less work to implement, making it easier on your developers. Most of the structure already exists for SCENARIO A.
