Unraveled

What are pattern highlights?

Pattern Highlights is a unique-to-you section of Ravelry where you can see new patterns based on criteria that you set. From Casey: “I created this because with 6000+ patterns added to Ravelry each month, it’s impossible to keep up. Highlights shows the newest patterns from selected designers and you can customize how those selections are made.”

You can see your Pattern Highlights by going to the Patterns section of the main Ravelry navigation. On that page, it’s the fourth section in the right column if you’re on a desktop computer, and the fifth section down if you’re on a mobile device. You’ll see a few thumbnails of patterns are linked to their respective pages. You can also click the “view your highlights” link to go to a page with a two week history of the patterns added to your highlights.

How do I customize what shows in my pattern highlights?

Once you’re on your Highlights page, you’ll see a link at the very top that says “Customize Your Highlights.” When you click on that, it will expand to show you all the options for 1. what crafts to include and 2. patterns to highlight, where you can toggle on and off the sources that will feed your pattern Highlights. I often favorite designers so that I know their new patterns will show up on my Highlights.

One really cool way to feed your Highlights is by favoriting Bundles. Bundles are groups of anything that you can favorite in the Ravelry database: patterns, yarns, stores, designers, dyers, etc. If you favorite a whole Bundle, any patterns added to that Bundle will also show up in your Pattern Highlights. Bundles can be created by people, designers, and groups, and if you click into a Bundle you can always favorite it by clicking the heart in the upper right. (And not to worry: if you want to add a Bundle to your favorites but don’t want the patterns to show up in your Highlights, just uncheck the box next to the Bundle name, which you can see in the above screenshot.)

At the bottom of the Customize Your Highlights settings, you’ll also see a link that says “add your own custom selections!” Clicking this will take you to an Advanced Search page where you can check any search filters you want, then click Add to Highlights in the upper right.

You’ll then see that custom search saved in your Highlights alongside your favorited Bundles. And that’s it! Now you know how to view and customize your Pattern Highlights. Have fun!

Today we’re going to revisit one of my favorite features on Ravelry: Subscribing to Saved Searches. This is a great feature if you like to check the Ravelry database periodically for new patterns that have been uploaded, and fit a set of Advanced Search criteria that you get to decide.

Let’s say that I love knitting baby hats to give as gifts whenever I’m invited to a baby shower (I do!). I also like to crank out some hats even if I don’t have a shower coming up, so that I have some backup gifts ready to go (also true). And I’ve knit basically every baby hat pattern there is on Ravelry, so I like to know in real time when a new one is added to the database (this part = definitely not true).

First, I go to Advanced Search and apply some filters on the left, like Craft: Knitting and Category: Beanie-Toque. Because I want to always see the newest baby hats at the top, I sort by “New to Ravelry”:

Once all of my filters are applied (you can see all the ones I applied in the above screenshot here), I can save the search by clicking the save search button in the upper left. This will open a little window that asks me to…

1. Name my saved search (I’ve named mine “New Baby Hats”)
2. Whether I want to subscribe to this search (I ticked Yes)

Because I subscribed, a magical thing will now happen: whenever a new baby hat pattern is added to Ravelry that fits my saved search criteria, a little blue dot will appear next to the magnifying glass in the top navigation bar.

When I click on that, I’ll see my list of saved searches in the middle. (Your saved searches will always be available here, whether or not there are new patterns. Note that from here I can also click view/edit saved searches to do just that.) Next to my New Baby Hats saved search, I’ll see a big pink dot. The number inside shows how many new patterns there are.

Clicking my New Baby Hats saved search will take me back into Advanced Search, with all of my saved search criteria applied. You’ll also see this notification up at the top, so if you didn’t save your search to sort by newest, you can always do it here.

You subscribe to a saved search for anything that you can filter by on Ravelry, so you set up one for seeing whenever…

• Your favorite designer uploads a new pattern
• A new pattern is added that can be knit/crocheted with the yarn in your stash and the needle sizes you own
• A new crochet pattern is added in Finnish that has a publish date from 1976 that recommends yak yarn and has been queued by your bff
• A bazillion other endless possibilities!

TLDR If you go to ravelry.com/preferences and check the box next to Usability Testing Volunteer, that’d be a big help!

Good morning Ravelers!

Part of my job as your new Producer/User Experience (UX) Designer is to have a deep understanding of all the different ways Ravelers use this wonderful website. We’re a diverse community and Ravelry is a big website, so we all probably do things a little differently. Maybe some of you use the Notebook but never go on the forums, or go to different pages first when you first log in, or we organize our projects differently—that’s what I want to learn. By understanding not only how I use Ravelry, but how you use Ravelry, I can make informed design decisions that benefit all of us.

One way that Product/UX Designers learn about how people use a website is by asking them, during a conversation or via a survey. I’ll definitely be doing things like that in the future (keep an eye out!), but it’s also helpful for me to simply see people use Ravelry as they do in their everyday life. In product/UX design, we call this Behavioral User Research. And while I wish I could come over to everyone’s houses and sit next to you while you’re scrollin around Rav, that would take a long time! But with a little digital magic, we can do something similar.

Here’s how: We put a new setting in your preferences that lets Ravelers opt in to let me see how you navigate around the site. To get to your preferences, hover over your Ravatar in the very top right of any page on Rav and click Preferences. On that page, you’ll see a new option under Beta Testing that says “Usability Testing Volunteer: Track my Ravelry usage for usability testing purposes.” Checking that box will help me see how you use Ravelry.

When you check that box, here’s what I will be able to see:

• What pages you go to on Ravelry
• What country you live in
• What device/browser you’re using

This will only be visible to me and the Ravelry staff (Casey, Jess, Mary Heather, Sarah, and Christina). No personal or private information will ever be visible to us. Most websites are always tracking this information about you, but we’re not most websites! That’s why we’re asking Ravelers to opt in by checking that setting in your preferences.

And that’s it! If you have any questions about this post, Behavioral User Research, or Product/UX Design in general, please don’t hesitate to message me or tag me in a forum post. As always, I’m @livia.

Hey everyone! We have a new small but mighty feature to share with you today: you can now filter projects within a pattern by the language of its notes.

As a refresher, Ravelry allows you to browse other Ravelers’ projects based on a pattern. You can see those projects by clicking Projects in one of these two places on a pattern page:

On the Projects page, there’s a dropdown in the upper left that allows you to filter the projects you see by all kinds of attributes. In that dropdown, you’ll now see our new “Language in notes” filter! (Only the languages available will display.)

If your preferred language is not English, you’ll also see a special shortcut button below the filter dropdown that shows how many projects there are with notes in your language. Clicking on it will quickly filter the results to just those projects.

Hey Ravelers! For my very first blog post, I want to reemphasize a section of the site that’s going to be super important to me: The List. As Ravelry’s new product/user experience designer, I’m going to be looking at The List all of the time so that I can understand what new features and updates you want me to design for the site.

Here’s a slightly updated version of Christina’s great post about The List from a couple of years ago.

Where can I find The List?

There are 2 ways to get to the list…

1. On the forums page, the For the Love of Ravelry forum has a special link to The List in the upper right hand corner.

2. We’ve also just added a link to The List in the footer. Scroll to very the bottom of any page on Ravelry, and you’ll see The List between Donating and Ravelry Merch.

How can I browse The List?

There are a number of browsing options available on the left side of the page. You can filter down by enhancements, bugs, tasks, or by the section of the site the idea is related to. There’s also a search at the top of the page if there’s a specific term you’d like to hone in on. Or you can look at the items sorted by most recent comment on the right side of the page.

I want to add something to The List, or voice my opinion about something that’s already there. What do I do?

There are several ways to contribute to The List:

1. Post about it in For the Love of Ravelry! Ravelry staff and volunteer bug trackers keep up with that forum and are able to add ideas to The List from there. If the idea is already on The List your post can be added, which is helpful for us to gather all the feedback about an idea into one Issue. You can see on the right of the screenshot below, which is from an Issue page within The List.

2. By clicking the “Yes! I’d like this too” button you add to the thumbs up votes. By clicking “Notify me if this is completed” you become a watcher of this item. That means you’ll receive a private message when we mark the item as completed.

3. There’s also a comment area so that you can add your request straight to the issue. They’re listed on the item in reverse chronological order, so we can quickly scan for the latest thoughts on the issue. Don’t be shy about leaving detailed comments – it’s valuable to us to learn exactly what you want and what you don’t!

Gosh, a lot of these ideas are really old. Does that mean you’re never going to get to them?

Definitely not! Lots of great ideas were suggested in the early days of Ravelry and just because we haven’t gotten to them yet doesn’t mean we never will (note from Livia: I’m already working on some!). On the other hand, an item being on The List doesn’t mean it will definitely happen.

We love having feedback from Ravelers on the changes you’d like to see (or not see!) and it is a key part of our discussions about how we spend our time. We feel lucky to have a community that cares so much about Ravelry and its future!