Dooyoo.co.uk, take 2! (Testing in general)

Member Name: Technical Tobes

Product:	Testing in general
Date:	05/05/01 (56 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Modern look, More stats, Seems faster

Disadvantages: Dodgy layout, Referrals missing

Well, I’ve held off writing an opinion of the redesign for the past week or two as I know that change is not always easy to take and often you end up slating something just because it’s different and you have to push different buttons in different places.

So, is the change for the better?

Well, as always I like to list the good and the bad to gauge this answer a little better, in fact the question has no real answer since personal taste & choice takes a large part in it. In fact some of my good points may be bad to you, anyway, here goes...


◦◊◊◊ THE GOOD ◊◊◊◦
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● 1: The site now has a more modern style with better use of colours to differentiate from different sections of the site. The move to drop down boxes helps reduce screen clutter in some areas.
● 2: The good, the bad opinions and the top 5 on the front page. These change periodically and offer a more varied start to the dooyoo experience and the chance for your old opinions to get more reads.
● 3: The New on Dooyoo section is great and helps the community aspect of dooyoo grow. It’s now possible to view the new users to dooyoo plus the newest 75 (25 per screen) opinions both site wide and by specific categories. This helps boost the number of reads you’ll get and thus how noticed you are in the whole dooyoo community.
● 4: Profile statistics. This is a very welcome addition to dooyoo, giving an overall picture of your ratings.
● 5: Comments and rating are now listing in date order! Although a very small alteration, it is of huge significance to dooyoo members who like to follow up on comments and see replies to them. Previously, using my profile as an example, I had to scroll past several pages of really old comments, either forwards or backwards as the new ones were plonked in the middle – a real pain if yo
u have hundreds of comments, but a pain no more!!
● 6: Reads are now shown on the top right hand corner pretty much wherever you go. This is good, as many dooyooers, me included, like to see when you get new reads to go check out any possible comments etc. Saves darting back and forth into your profile.
● 7: The site seems to load a lot quicker, at least for me anyway!
● 8: Nominate an opinion for a crown! This, providing dooyoo has the final say is a great idea. Often you read an opinion, think it’s the top dogs but it never gets a crown. Take my last opinion (Road Rager, The Confession), I was hoping for and many dooyooers though it was worthy of a crown, but alas no crown! Now you can say so to dooyoo as well as the author!!
● 9: Printer friendly option for viewing opinions is much welcomed, in fact it’s user friendly as well as printer friendly!
● 10: The hall of fame, although listed back to front (a bad point), now contains the last 15 famous dooyooers. Alas I’m not one of them :(.


◦◊◊◊ THE BAD ◊◊◊◦
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● 1: The site layout is really very dodgy in a lot of areas. The site has been designed for 800x600 resolution, but obviously not tested very much at that screen size. The result is a persistent horizontal scroll bar (for no reason), right hand side margins that don’t align up properly and frequently content is pushed off the right hand side resulting in a really messy looking site. Go into your profile and this problem is worse still, particularly if you have a big picture to your name!
Why oh why are the user statistics not placed to the right hand side margin, it looks stupid where it is. And why are the circle of friends now hidden in amongst the jungle of stuff half way down the page, they looked much better to the left hand side margin.
Oh, and the thumbs up
/ thumbs down, it’s of little use, rarely used, yet fills up a massive area in your profile (if you have used it of course). It should be limited and preferably relegated to the bottom of the profile page.
Overall, and particularly on the profile page, everything is crammed into the middle while leaving massive margins of white space. I hate having to scroll down a page to find things, and with the new design the profile page is now incredibly tall. I want users to see my opinions in my profile, not have to scroll down for ages first!
● 2: Short opinions. On the face of it, it seems a good idea, however that was until I looked into it more closely. The benefit I thought, would be that the pathetic tiny opinions frequently churned out would have a home away from the bigger, more in depth opinions. However, the short opinions have less space than even the most keyboard shy churner is worthy of, and to make for a real big incentive, offers no dooyoo miles at all!
You are also forced into answering every question, regardless of relevance to you or the short opinion will not be accepted.
Thus, why would anyone want to write a short opinion for absolutely zilch when they can still churn out a 75 worder to the same effect. Ideally, if you got, even just say 5 miles for writing a short opinion and, as I say below, the 75 word minimum was increased to something more reasonable then the short opinions would come into their own.
● 3: Rolling on from the above point, they 75 word minimum really does need to be increased to stop/ease the continual churning of useless opinions. 75 words is nothing, certainly not enough to make any kind of attempt at a decent opinion. Indeed, this paragraph alone is 80 words! It would value dooyoo as much as it’s users to do so, and the idea of short opinions could have been an ideal step to reduce the effect of churners.
● 4: I no longer know how many members I have referred via my w
ebsite and how many have joined. This is particularly annoying for me at the moment as my miles keeps going up by 100, yet I have no obvious reads to co-inside, no new comments so at a guess, I must have referred someone? It would be nice to know still!
● 5: You can no longer see how many reads an opinion has had without having to go into the users profile. Okay, of arguable use, but did often give a general impression of how good / popular the opinion / writer is.


◦◊◊◊ THE MISSED OPPORTUNITY! ◊◊◊◦
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What I and probably just about every other frequent dooyoo member really really, REALLY wants is for that darn dooyoo update email to be functional as well as informative. Surly it is not hard to embed links to all the new comments, users opinions etc?!? Better still, and by far, forget that email altogether and bung it all on the website in our profile pages. There could be a section for the most recent ratings, comments and opinions written by trusted dooyoo members. This really would be a Godsend for all dooyoo members and increase the dooyoo community factor exponentially. Currently, I can spend hours just trying to read comments, comment follow ups, friends opinions etc, most of this time is being wasted just trying to find them!
Please, please, please dooyoo.co.uk – sort it out!


◦◊◊◊ CONCLUSION ◊◊◊◦
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Okay, so overall there is much improvement, some great features added, other improved and the overall look modernised
That said, dooyoo certainly needs to sort out the layout problems and, ideally, a few other of my gripes.
They have also missed out some major things that needed amending and I hope they take note of them when reading this and ideally forward this on to the website designers.
Overall opinion then, a great st
art to a redesign, will be even better when it’s finished!!! ;-). Cheeky that, I know... sorry dooyoo!



That’s me done then, as always, I’d be particularly interested in your comments to this opinion, good and bad!
Cheers, Tobes

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