A Deep Dive into the Internet's most controversial knitting site: Ravelry (part 2)

This month I received...
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Ravelry is a website well loved by the knitting community but not without its fair share of controversial moments. This video will mostly cover the redesign that triggered migraines and seizures in some users and will touch on Cassidy's Manifesto and Ravelry's Pride Home Page.

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Acknowledgments:
Certified Professional in Web Accessibility and Masters Student in Disability Studies, Jen DeMesquita
Kathleen Sperling of Wipinsanity (for documenting so much of this on their blog + twitter)

End the Binary shirt from @nonbincrafts :)
Patterns I'm wearing in this video:

subscribe to my main channel for crochet and knitting specific content: @madeinthemoment
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Old Ravelry vs New Ravelry
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00:00 Intro
03:18 The Redesign (2020): what happened
15:40 Mass Hysteria?
22:35 Accessibility Problems
27:16 Rav's Continued Response
34:12 Jessica's Letter
39:17 Open Letter to Ravelry
42:21 Why This Matters/What Now?
45: 13 The Manifesto (May 2021)
47:46 Pride Home Page (June 2021)
51:43 Quiz
55:51 Newest controversy + final thoughts

Shot on: Sony Zv-1
Edited by Chad Barnard

#ravelry #knittingdrama

[kodaukumae]

I cant express the depths of my disappointment that they used "off-rav" instead of "un-ravel"

[VultureSkins]

Absolutely wild that they didn’t beta test their website with NINE MILLION Girl

[princess_intell]

Ravelry just doesnt seem to understand that the site has outgrown their mom-and-pop approach and needs multiple teams of people-- including UX and PR specialists.

[mothercat]

I’ve never knitted a stitch in my life, but I am so deeply invested in this knitting drama. I’ve been at the edge of my seat thank you!!!

[nikitatavernitilitvynova]

I recently found out by accident that one of my favourite shops/website is super accessible even to me who doesn't normally need accessibility. I clicked on the little man on the corner and it opened a myriad of opportunities. So I decided to click on the adhd tab which made the website simpler so I could be less distracted when shopping or looking at the products. And the website remembers. I went back in to look at some product reviews and it still appeared with the same simple UI I requested. I don't know how they did it but it would be really nice if more websites did it.

[bucca]

As a sociology major, I'm also very grateful that you took the time to read Bartholomew's work and detail what he was actually saying. I understand some of his language must have been distasteful, but he wasn't saying "all these disabled women are just being fussy about change", he was saying "this could be a case of MPI, which itself is an actual illness with real symptoms that should be treated". With the Dancing Plague, a very well known historical case of MPI, the solution was not to just ignore the problem, but to put in time and effort to help the dancers recover. It was a huge mistake to just go "it's all in your heads!" instead of recognizing that hey, this design isn't working. Regardless of the reason people are getting a bunch of symptoms from looking at it, it should be changed.

[ladybirdg]

I think one unspoken factor that effected the redesign was that... the fibre arts community has a HIGH proportion of disabled people compared to some other hobbies/websites. Knitting and crocheting are super popular among people with a wide range of disabilities for many reasons. It's very possible that the backlash against the redesign wasn't just a bunch of healthy/abled people playing advocate for a small number of disabled people. I do not doubt that there were tons of disabled people ACTUALLY affected by the inaccessibility of the redesign, and no amount of sociological speculation about "MPI" was going to fix that.

[mayav]

Their response is very “we spent a lot of money on this and therefor we are not willing to take criticism bc we don’t wanna admit we spent money on garbage”

[WynterDragon]

The world before Ravelry required you to subscribe to magazines and blogs to get new patterns, and being an indie designer was a hobby at best. They really created an invaluable niche across the world that connected fiber enthusiasts, and suddenly knitting podcasts were everywhere, you could DM a pattern designer (as an autistic person being able to ask direct questions is incredible), indie dyers were making a surge and so on.

While I appreciate that they haven't sold out to Meta or anyone else, you are right. At some point, it became too big and they needed to take advantage of their community and ask for a couple $'s Wikipedia style to hire more staff and update their resources. I also wonder if Cassidy is holding on too tight and she and Jessica should set up a retirement plan for themselves?

[thurayya]

I think the hiring of Livia is simple: she came cheap. Her background sounds a lot like mine, substituting dance for German studies. It sounds like she wanted to break into the graphics design field and Ravelry would have been a great way.

[jademarie]

ok but having illustrations of a b plug and people wearing bdsm outfits on the homepage of a KNITTING site is kinda wild, coming from a gay gal myself

[jjonze]

people can hate on cassidy all they want for being rude and un-empathetic to them. but GOD i hated to see that when i looked her up on google there are so many knitting blogs with such blatant transphobia. its heartbreaking

[xavieowolf]

I'm only 12mins in but oh gosh, as someone who works as a UX designer, I'm already fuming about this "re-design". A UX designer shouldn't just be focusing on the looks of a website, but also functionality and accessibility. I feel like it's only gonna get worse as I keep watching...

[maltzy]

I’ve never knitted in my entire life, my major has nothing to do with knitting (cybersecurity) but i go into a absolute scrabble whenever i see you have dropped a new video. I love this channel thank you

[JuliaElizabethGraves]

I think the main problem people unknowingly had with the MPI article was that it was clearly just a sociological paper. And as someone who’s currently studying sociology, I can say that the way sociologists look at things can sound condescending and is infuriating at times, but we need to remember why it is like this. The intention there is not to justify or discredit the complaints, it’s a case study. Sociology has never been too big on finding solutions to problems, it’s about TRYING to figure out what could have caused them. There is also the part of it not being a study, but a contemplative piece. What the Rav team did was a quantitive study (a flawed bullshit one that would never fly, but there was an attempt). In cases like these, the preferred method would be an in-depth qualitative study, taking into account detailed testimonies of the ones affected. Neither Bartholemew nor Rav did that, so we shouldn’t expect either to come up with a definitive answer to whatever happened there.

[skullandcrossstitch]

The phrase "NFTs for knitting patterns" made me break out into hives

[dayzedandconfuzed]

i can’t believe the ravelry staff in their emails just said “this isn’t a thing because i said so”. like??? you can’t just say “this doesn’t cause any problems” and make the problems disappear

[Astrid-ccmg]

I’m a UI & UX Designer and Researcher with a visual design background. 12 years in industry.

Besides the Rav team’s bad PR responses, I have so many thoughts…

1. I understand why the designer is looking for a new job. Being the only in-house designer is tough, especially if you’re newer to the industry. However, I also wonder how many limitations were placed on her; how long did she have to test, was she able to iterate and test early, were they moderated or unmoderated tests, was she given a budget for compensating users, how did she recruit testers, etc. How much of the final design decisions were made by the owners and not her. The amount of times a product owner overrides the designer’s recommendation can be high, depending on the team culture and personalities. I promise this isn’t all on her and her competency. Some of the best designers I’ve worked with are newer and self-taught.

2. This is why more design programs should be teaching accessibility. I have a design & research undergrad, masters, and was a TA. None of the courses I took or were exposed to focused on accessibility beyond a single week’s module. And that was back in 2012. MOST of accessibility knowledge (as shared from the designers in my network at least) is usually acquired on the job and from design or developer coworkers. Or when their mistakes are called out. I’ve searched for a course with a deep level understanding of accessibility and haven’t found a good one beyond IDF’s. If anyone has a course or book to recommend, please point me in that direction!

3. The Rav team is either not looking at the right website analytics or not publicly reporting what really matters; pre vs post daily/weekly/monthly active users - just to name the easiest metric to check. Create a user segment called “Classic Rav Power Users” then compare their avg time on site and days active, before and after the redesign. If they have their analytics set up properly it’ll take 5 mins. Then they can dig deeper from there with other user segments and metrics.

4. I’m curious what other websites trigger the symptoms reported by some Rav users. If NuRav is unique for some reason, this needs to be turned into a case study and broadly shared with designers to learn from and avoid for the future. I’m about to send this vid to my network. This is, by a designer’s perspective, a basic, safe, ho-hum design. the intensity of the physical reactions is extremely concerning and equivalent to rough VR experiences. Any designer I know would be surprised by the effects NuRav has had on some folks. It makes me wonder if there is a small and unique population of people that Rav has brought together who all are drawn to fiber arts but also share a common visual processing challenge and they are finally able to have their voices heard because they are united on this site..?

[borganista]

I don't understand why it is so hard to believe that a website could be making people sick. I suffer from occasional migraines, and I know if I stare at a bright white website too long, I get a migraine. I feel bad for those who suffer from even worse symptoms.

[AnnikaVictoria]

I have photosensitive migraines and was affected by the redesign, and i just happened to be using the website around then without realising they'd redesigned it. It gave me such a bad headache and i had to stop using it after 5-10 minutes. A few weeks later, i heard about the redesign and uh yeah... The gaslighting/downplaying about it from ravelry was wild; certainly not something abnormal to hear as a disabled person, but with the yarn community having such a large disabled and chronically ill base, it was a really bizarre way for Ravelry to handle the whole thing. It really felt like they put... ideology? sunk costs? above a huge portion of their userbase and just felt like a weird hill for them to die on when it was already not a good redesign