Seeking Insights
What Am I Missing, Really?
I attempted to design my profile but couldn’t find any greatness.
Background
My stats have been bothering me. It is not exclusive to me, as many writers raised concerns similar to mine. I shared my sentiment by saying, “You are not the only one”.
This situation coincided with the changes in profiles.
Several writers have raised concerns since then. Like many writers, I also asked myself: did the quality of my writing decrease? This was the first question coming to the minds of many top writers like Helen Cassidy Page, Julia E Hubbel, and Tree Langdon.
Many of us thought our fans did not want to read our content anymore. I requested feedback from my loyal readers, and they kindly confirmed that nothing was wrong with my writing. The critical issue appeared to be missing notifications.
I also believe that new readers cannot see my eclectic articles because there is no scrolling feature to see more than eight articles. Several of us thought perhaps new readers were seeing a few stories on the first page and forgetting to click on the “read more” button to see other stories.
Or they may be satisfied with a few paragraphs and do not want to open the rest of the story. Some new writers, especially new Medium members, mentioned that they thought it was the whole article on the screen. Some even commented that my pieces were concise. I had to explain to them that it was the new page design and they needed to click on the more button.
I shared my concerns in a story, so I will not repeat all those concerns. You can check the details of this story.
One important update, since I wrote the attached article on 18 October 2020, my top writer status still does not show. I received several new “top writer” notices, but none of them shows on my profile. My publication ownership does not show either.
What is good about the new profile design?
Let me get back to the reason for this story.
I received an email from Medium reminding me to redesign my profile.
Since my profile is a concern, and as it was a weekend, I gave it a go by allocating an hour.
I tried all the available options to design my profile.
As mentioned in my previous stories, I have been a Design Thinking practitioner for a long. So I know how to design digital constructs.
Since there is no manual on what we can do with new profiles, I applied my usual trial and error approach. Starting with checking all options, I touched on all available design constructs.
But I couldn’t find anything important to design in the profile.
I kept asking what I was missing.
After almost an hour of checking the options, I was convinced that there was nothing essential to design. So I gave up not wasting more of my precious time.
To be fair, I achieved a few minor results. For example, I managed to change the header by adding a logo and a new color to the header. I also learned to move my name from the left to the top of the page. That was pretty much all.
My expectation was to be able to show at least the last 20 articles on the first page selected from different topics. I couldn’t make any changes to the number of stories on my profile. I thought maybe I could feature my top 10 articles to appeal to my usual readers.
Perhaps, I could sort them with topics of my stories to show my readers some samples. There was no option to achieve it. I was too ambitious and hence got disappointed.
Too many design constraints appear to limit flexibility to show our profiles as we desire. What is the point of designing with all these constraints?
I lowered my expectation and thought maybe I could change the look by adding columns and giving it to publication type of views with squares or thumbnails. I couldn’t find any such options.
Wearing my ethical hacker hat, I tried several configuration changes to the three design constructs. All I saw were colors, fonts, and header configuration items. What else am I missing?
I wasted my precious 60 minutes for nothing tangible. There was nothing hackable. Being an optimistic person, of course, I reframed the situation and registered it as a lesson learned in my memory.
Benefit of doubt
I still give the benefit of the doubt with an open mind.
Perhaps I am too old to understand funky technologies. For example, even though I am a strong social media evangelist, I couldn’t produce successful use cases for Instagram, Snapchat, and Tik Tok.
These new-age tools did not resonate with me. I don’t use them anymore. But some people thrive with them; even declaring millions of dollars earned from these tools. Those claims beat me.
Seeking insights
Maybe, saying this with an open mind, Medium could have features that I cannot comprehend due to a lack of knowledge and experience.
If it is the case, I need help from my readers. As far as learning new things is concerned, I hide my ego. If I don’t know and cannot manage something with my current knowledge and capability, I am happy to accept the gaps in my experience and keen to learn the necessary steps.
So, if you got a chance and managed to design your profile and are happy with the results you produced, please share your account details as a response to this post in the comments section. I want to check your profile and learn from what you achieved.
I am interested in what we can achieve with the new profile design feature. Please show me the possibilities so that I can model and reproduce similar results.
Please provide some screen captures, if possible. Your input can add value to many more writers who are uncertain about profile design like me.
I am wondering whether there is a tutorial on designing an effective profile.
If you write an article about how to effectively design new Medium profiles, please tag me.
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Sample Health Improvement Articles for New Readers
Why 442 Million People Live Diabetic and What We Can Do About it
Defeat Metabolic Syndrome and Slim Down Waistline with Three Tips
Reduce the Risks of Major Diseases with Healthy Lifestyle Habits
Six Tips to Prevent Brain Atrophy and Lower the Risks of Mental Disorders
What Can We Do About NCDs Killing 41 Million People Yearly?.
Reduce the Risks of Neonatal Disorders to Prevent Infant Mortality.
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