Interface Usability Problems
Unfortunately there are many negative comments about FamilySearch usability being discussed on this platform and others.
Users are upset about the changes that have been made. It is understandable, since this interface looks and behaves like nothing that users have ever seen before. A better choice might have been to help accommodate users by utilizing the User Interface Guidelines of industry leaders such as Apple or Microsoft.
The startling post from Casey Robinson 001 providing instructions on how to find functionality is a clear admission that the new search interface is not intuitive. Additionally the post also claims that there was extensive user testing. Clearly something went wrong with the testing.
I have many years of experience in user design, interface design and testing. I can tell from the comments that many other users have similar backgrounds. It is especially frustrating for us to see these changes.
FamilySearch Leadership are you listening to your users?
Comments
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I have been praising and promoting your mobile app. I have written tutorials for UK users urging them to correct errors and add their trees and Memories via the app.
You have ruined it!
The new Search format is terrible!
The old version was ideal for a five inch screen phone.
This new version is unusable and I am getting so many negative comments about it. PLEASE! Change it back!
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Yesterday, as a test, I searched for myself. FirstName, Surname, YearOfBirth, Town and I found me listed at the top of the results.
I then decided to use the Residence filter to narrow down the 59 results - I chose United Kingdom and the relevant county - it lost me. I was gone from the list entirely.
I know my birth data is correct, in the correct town, in that year. It found me - and filtering to what should've yielded fewer/better results made me disappear.
When I existed in the list, there were 59 results. Residence had three choices, totalling 3+8+15 results = 26 results. By using Residence it was losing 33 results. My birth is a regular registration, in a standard English county registration district. There is nothing peculiar about my record - yet my birth is not present as an offering in any of those three Residence choices, I am one of the absent 33! If Residence has entries it can't categorise it shouldn't just toss them in the bin and forget they exist!
If I can't be confident I can find myself by using filters that should've continued to find me ... how can I feel any confidence it will find strangers I'm trying to locate, that could be anywhere/in a range of years?
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Does this seem just a little too much like a coincidence ?. Since the FS search is now actually rubbish to use for proper searches, to continue my work, I'm using acnersty search in a seperate browser. I then try to locate the relevant records in FS and continue building the tree in FS adding information where I need to. I'm quite adept at using the acnersty interface, but I'm now discovering that the interface has changed !. The results I'm getting are not as good as they used to be, and the records collections seem to favour results that are not related to the location I specify. Methinks there is much more going on here than just a change to the GUI. Are FS now using acnersty's search engine with a custom GUI ? It would explain a lot !
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