Twitch plans to change the design of theme sections, adding an improved interface and a broadcast preview window, said Casey ‘Lowco’ Shields, female streamer and partner of the platform. The new feature is supposed to help beginner streamers to promote themselves and attract the attention of the audience.
Now each section on Twitch is a window with a list of channels. Usually they are sorted by descending order of viewers and broadcast language, but a viewer can see the quality of one or another broadcast only by clicking on a particular channel. As a result, user rarely goes through a large number of channels before choosing one. The new interface of the section should improve this situation.
Current section interface / Source: twitter.com/LowcoTV
The new design of the sections, which is being tested by some streamers, is to include a preview window. It will work like a TV: a user chooses one of the channels on the list, and then a fragment of this broadcast will be shownimmediately in the player of the section. This helps the user to check the sound and picture quality, as well as read chat, even without actually being on the channel. One can switch between channels with a single click without watching any ads. Being able to switch channels quickly, viewers will be more likely to reach less popular streamers.
Tested section interface / Source: twitter.com/LowcoTV
Shields said the updated design is now being tested and debugged. The female streamer also noted that you can't watch the whole broadcast on the preview screen, even though there won't be any ads. The user will only have about a minute of a test broadcast, and then will be offered to switch to the channel for a full stream.
It should be noted that Twitch had almost 550K broadcasts in June, which were hosted by more than 74K channels. You can find more detailed streaming stats on Twitch and other platforms, including YouTube Live and Facebook, with the Streams Charts PRO subscription: check out its benefits here.
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