It's horrible!!!! (Testing in general)

Member Name: MichaelR

Product:	Testing in general
Date:	04/05/01 (36 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Separation of community good in principle.

Disadvantages: Poor Navigation, Bland Design, Slower site

Oh my God Dooyoo... what have you done????

I'm afraid the redesign gets a big thumbs down from me. From the very first page, the new site is badly organised, difficult to navigate, and requires the user to have roughly twelve eyes to be able to have the faintest hope of finding anything.

I hate it, I absolutely hate it.

Firstly, the reduction in the font size of hyperlinks is a bad idea. On the old Dooyoo, the hyperlinks presented on the homepage were nice and big and chunky. The links to various sections and to the user profiles were immediately accessible.

Now, you have to scan the page from top to bottom left to right, go through a kazillion (is that a number?) clicks, and still probably won't find what you're looking for.

Perhaps eventually I will get used to it, and it will seem more instinctive, but before, on the old Dooyoo, it was very accessible from the very first visit.

It's now not very user friendly at all and I think that you could well put non-members off with the new design... the navigation is just far too complex and fails almost all of the basic rules of web design.

There also now seems to be a need to go through many more clicks in order to write an opinion - that is if you can find what you are looking for! I had to resort to the search box to find this category. The 'powersearch' is as good as ever, but it doesn't seem to have changed much (or at all?) from the old "Dooyoo Navigator" search.

It also now seems very hard to move between the individual opinions and the opinions list, as the full path of the category used to be on-screen at all times - allowing easy retracing of steps. It's not anymore. It's either truncated or not there at all depending on what page you are viewing.

Now you either have to click, and click, and click, and then notice the small "All Opinions" link at the bottom of the page, or else
rely on your browsers' forward and back buttons.

It's far slower and more comlicated to surf around Dooyoo.

The separation of "Opinions" and "Community" is good in principle, although again the navigation is horrendous and the titles could have been better chosen. Are not the opinions in the community section still opinions? I think that by putting the non-commercial categories under "Community" you'll probably discourage people from looking at that too, if they are not a member.

The advantage/disadvantage boxes don't seem like a good idea either. Why three for each? There are often more advantages than disadvantages, or vice versa.

The addition of the "short opinions" feature is again probably good in theory, but the short opinions that were being written before were all being written by churners to try and make a quick few quid. Since there are no dooyoo miles awarded for the short opinions, I very much doubt that this feature will get much usage. Those of us writing more for the enjoyment than any financial gain will probably just continue to write long opinions - as we always have.

Perhaps it will grow on me and I will find more to like about the new dooyoo as time wears on, but my first impressions of the redesign are not good (to put it mildly).

It's just the poor navigation and the fact that nothing stands out on the page anymore. It really is that bad!

Put it back like it was before!

Pleeeeeeease?

Summary: