I am very discouraged with the ongoing poor quality UI problems

LegacyUser

Douglas Francis Lescoe said: .I am very discouraged with the ongoing poor quality UI problems
-It is 12:30 am, and I cannot find a live person to help me on the phone. You used to have live people 24 X 7. Please reinstate this service.
- I hate using live chat on any site. To me, it is a clumsy way to receive help. It is
so tedious typing explanations and questions especially when there is a lack of
clear understanding either on my end or on your end.
- Tonight I am trying to submit a batch, but your system will not let me. This has
happened before. Usually I can determine what is the problem- but not tonight.
-Using your review of my entries is a joke, as is your help information for various
fields. For example, just what is an "authority list?" I can guess and guess, but
often I am a poor guesser. I find it very annoying trying to use sloppy
explanations and descriptions. Often, the help information for various fields tell me the
obvious, but never addresses the real question. I feel it is totally useless for me.
I find the poor quality of vocabulary and poorly constructed explanations to be
very annoying.
- I am developing a bad attitude regarding the sloppy UI, I feel that, if it is not that important to you to give me easy to use and clear explanations so I can accurately do the work, why should it be any more important to me than it is to you.
-This, by the way, is exactly why I hate "on line chat." On line chat only makes
this problem worse, as often, the person on the other end cannot exactly
understand what the problem is. Also, I suspect that the purpose of online
chat is:
- to make it possible for someone with poor English to try to assist me- not a
very comforting idea when I am having problems.
- It has been my experience with other sites, that the "On line chat" people or
robots (?) cut and paste answers that do not exactly or sometimes do not
even come close to answering the question correctly.
- "on line chat" may be appealing to the less sociable younger adults (some
of whom have a hard time conversing in any way except by typing on a
keyboard,) but it is not for me.

I suspect my writing this message is a waste of my time, as is often the case when trying to converse with IT people.
I am not trying to be rude, but I am frustrated and though I suspect that I just wasted a lot time typing this, I see no other recourse, other than calling back during business hours- Sundays is the best time for me to do Indexing, as I am too busy during the week.
-I am glad to comply with the church leaders request to do indexing, but why do you make it harder and less pleasant than it needs to be. Fixing the sloppy UI and giving us real live people on the telephone at all hours of the day, as you used to do, makes it far, far easier to do the indexing work.

LegacyUser

ZJ said: My team set ups the project instructions. Thank you for your post and feedback. The quality check shows any issues that might prevent you from submitting your batch. Usually, the problem is that an image type field has not been declared for an image in your batch.
The authority lists are helps to assist in correctly indexing names or localities. They are there to assist you in deciphering but often they are not all inclusive.
All our project instructions and field helps are approved by our editors before they are made available to the public. We do appreciate feedback on how we can improve or enhance our project instructions or field helps.
Thank you for indexing.

LegacyUser

Jason Pierson said: Thanks for the feedback Doug. Thank you for speaking up. As harsh as they may be, your comments are very valuable and help us to understand where people are frustrated. You have hit on issues managed by several groups, so I will make sure this gets to each of them for discussion and consideration. If I can summarize and have you clarify:

1. You'd like to talk to someone in support 24x7 --not chat, not email, but phone.
2. Indexing wouldn't let you submit a batch
3. Quality Check needs to be more robust and offer more value
4. Project instructions and field help are not always helpful
5. You want someone on the phone that speaks clearly in english
6. The indexing UI was frustrating and not intuitive (Doug: need help with the definition of sloppy)
7. Make it easier to find a phone number to contact support

I hope I succinctly captured those. I am in charge of the features and the GUI for web indexing. We are doing much more real-user testing with each feature and hope to show those improvements over the coming year. We know it's not perfect and we have many things to streamline.

I will make sure the other issues you raise are brought up and hopefully get some responses back here for you.

Thanks again for taking time to send this in. It does make a difference. We can't always address every issue immediately, and sometimes never. But we do care and we care about your experience interacting with familysearch.

Thanks Doug!

LegacyUser

Joseph A Baird said: Doug,

Thank you for the feedback. My team covers support, and are always happy to assist where possible. I am sorry that you were unable to reach one of our support missionaries last night. Our contact center is staffed by missionary volunteers and we try our best to cover all hours of the day.

One concern you mentioned was not being able to reach anyone last night. The reason for that was May 1 is a very large holiday in Europe and when calling in the middle of the night, they are the ones responding to your issue. That also might explain why you have reached people in the past that may speak with an accent you are not familiar with. We are very grateful for the work they do in covering during the off-business hours.

As a reminder, the support line is closed on Sunday mornings until 2:00 PM mountain time. This is to allow our staff to attend their Sunday meetings and attend to their responsibilities in their local congregations. This time off in the morning is one way that we too are trying to follow our leaders in making the sabbath a delight. We also understand that for some people Sunday is the best time for them to index or do their family history. That is why we try to provide that support in the afternoon. Another great resource to look for would be a local Temple and Family History consultant in your ward or stake. I know this is hard at 12:30 AM, but they can be a great resource for walking you through some of these odd situations.

I also wanted to mention that I appreciate the feedback regarding the interface of our chat tool. We are consistently trying to work on improvements, and I will mention your concern and feedback to that team. I will also review with my team the need to clarify the questions they receive in chat to ensure that their answers provide the best possible solution.

With regards to the user interface in the indexing tool, you will be happy to know that we have teams working on a web browser based indexing tool that is available at familysearch.org which you can use now. This tool might be something that you like more than the older system as there is no downloads or installations. If you have a chance, I would encourage you to try it out and provide feedback as you see issues or concerns.

I hope this helps clarify a few of the issues you experienced. I am sorry that you had a difficult time last night and our team in Europe was not available to assist. Please do not hesitate to reach out to support for additional assistance, as well as your local Temple and Family History Consultant. We appreciate the time you take to index, and for the sacrifice you are giving to help in this wonderful work.

LegacyUser

Woody Brison said: Is there no one in Utah or nearby states whose ward meets in the afternoon?

LegacyUser

S. said: Zj their is many issues, that were not happy with the church and I could go on and on, I hope they fix and try to improve things, between the church and we the people.

LegacyUser

Douglas Francis Lescoe said: First- I apologize for the harshness. It is totally my shortcoming.

Second- I tend to use logic when analyzing things including using this website. As
soon as it begins to feel more like a guessing game and not something I
can do using logic, I want to, and on other web sites, i often do quit.

Third- I am using this site, sometimes with great frustration, only because the
Church has asked us to do Indexing and Family History, and I do not know of
any place to do it that is easier to use. Therefore, I feel like I am trapped in a
frustrating situation. (Because changes are made for no apparent reason,
even some of the people who are volunteers cannot help me.) By the way,
the changes that appear to be done for no apparent reason are also done by
other coders{?} on other websites/ programs.

Fourth- I have mentioned and complained about the poor UI problems for years, yet
the problem persists, and I cannot understand why. I have submitted
information about some highly successful companies that have made their
UI simple to use. (I have added more to the list; I could send you a copy if
you wish.) Some companies have made their UI so intuitive that they have a
very small staff for helping users of their product, and they most likely do not
have classes or tutorials, as their UI is so intuitive that none is needed.

Fifth- I am fairly confident that you are the "messenger" and not the person who is
actually doing the coding(?). Therefore, you probably cannot actually make
the needed changes. But as usual, I hope you pass this on to an appropriate
person.

Respectfully yours,

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: First, this is the community-powered feedback forum for FamilySearch. FamilySearch personnel read every discussion thread and may or may not respond as their time permits. We all share an active interest in using the resources of this site and as users, we have various levels of knowledge and experience and do our best to help each other with concerns, issues, and/or questions.

Next, FamilySearch is still under development. In addition, older code that was "borrowed" from a previous system like newFamilySearch, could not adequately scale and so it is being replaced. The system is constantly being analyzed and revised to use better code and that often impacts the user interface.

In order for FamilySearch to tackle any given problem, they need to know the details concerning the issue.

For instance, recently the View My Relationship for the web browser had the English text relationship added. The text was small and used a grey scale font that was not good. This has been reported in previous threads and so I think it will be a matter of time before that font is replaced by something larger and in pure black, rather than a grey scale.

When you experience a problem or concern, report it in a new discussion thread in this forum, but limit each discussion to one problem or concern to each discussion. Be as complete as possible and include (if working with search results) the URL, and if working with an individual in the massive tree, the ID of the person.

FamilySearch is largely supported from the tithing funds of the Church members (other donations include volunteers who may or may not be members).

FamilySearch resources are limited and as such, talking about corporations have better user interfaces isn't going to impress management or any of the development teams. They have their design goals, many of which are dictated to the development teams by Church leadership and the Temple Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

There is an approved training guide called The Family History Guide -- http://thefhguide.com/ -- that covers FamilySearch as well as several other genealogical sites like Ancestry.

Finally, for indexing, there is a Community that deals with a number of issues, which can be found as the fourth item in the help drop down menu.

LegacyUser

Douglas Francis Lescoe said: Thank you

LegacyUser

Douglas Francis Lescoe said: Thank you

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: