New Person Page
Please allow more time before the old Person Page is discontinued or please allow it to remain a permanent option.
Comentarios
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The New Person Page is feature complete and many users have already come to prefer the new page. There doesn't seem to be a compelling reason to leave the old pages.
A permanent option is not something we can do. The old pages are built on old technology that will continue to need fixing and updating. Besides the cost of running and maintaining a duplicate site, at some point, we won't be able to fix it.
We understand there is some pain in learning something new. I hope we have given plenty of time to get used to the idea and try the new page.
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I DETEST this "New page", and I'm not the only one. The previous version was A LOT Easier to navigate, and easier to read. Many of your users are of the older generations, and this mess adds extra steps that NO ONE should have to make! It's literally a step backwards than forwards! Keeping the same format AND Color scheme would have made a lot more sense, and less confusion for those who now hate the changes so much, they're willing to stop using the site.
I really don't think your folks pay attention to those who use the site are saying.
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@JenniferBristol we are willing and able to update the new site. Please consider providing specific detials that effect your ussage of the site. How was the old site "easier to navigate"? Why was the old page "easier to read"? We are paying attention and have made many changes based off of the feedback from this community group. We just need details.
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I think FamilySearch.org is now a place where new users can get comfortable with the idea of family history (unless they're over 50 and can't see it) , but it's not a good place for serious researchers.
There are many things I dislike about the new person page. (I have given much feedback all along the way.) To start with, there is way too much white space (which makes the user scroll up and down a lot), and the font is too small and thin. Why are the male/female pictures so large (as if we couldn't tell by the color alone) while the names and dates are so small?
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The New Person page is not intuitive and difficult to see relationships. It also contains some items that are useless and distracting. I much preferred the old person page. It was easy to use and to clearly see relationships and deduce important information.
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@pamelaalsop1 The only change is the relationship section was moving the marriage date from between the couple to under the couple. Why is it harder to see relationships?
What items are useless?
What items are distracting?
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Hi Gordon - thank you for your responsiveness as you are trying to better understand why people think the new format/design is not as user-friendly as the old one.
You wrote: "The only change is the relationship section was moving the marriage date from between the couple to under the couple. Why is it harder to see relationships?"
I too am disappointed/dissatisfied with that particular change (as well as the change in the graphic design and colors, which has occurred as well). I don't know why those changes were necessary. Let me explain why I hope you you can adjust the new format to visually look more like the old format (or even identical, if possible - that would be the best).
I happened to take a snapshot of the old format of the "Family Members" section when it was still possible to see it - and here's what it looked like:
Below is the same page in the same page in the new format:
ISSUE No. 1 - POSITION OF MARRIAGE INFORMATION
In the old format, when you saw the names of spouses or parents - and the marriage info (or the space to enter it) was between them -- it immediately sent a message to your brain that you were looking at couples. Those persons also visually appeared to be in one box, which further clarified that they are married people (or progenitors in case of those who might have not been married) .
Right now, it takes more concentration to register that you're looking at a couple (because visually they look similar to the people in the "Children" sections) -- and the most important fact about that couple is kind of "hiding" below.
It was simply better to have it where it was before -- and to allocate just two lines for that information, not three lines like it is now. In the new format, those three lines take needlessly too much space. Notice how much more room the couple's boxes take in the new format than before.
ISSUE No. 2 - SYMBOL AND POSITIONING OF "Add Spouse" and "Add Parent"
The black square symbol with the + sign was more visible in the old format - both as an icon, and in its placement. Please move "ADD SPOUSE" and "ADD PARENT" to where they were before, and use the same symbol, if possible.
When the icons "Add Spouse" or "Add Parent" were clearly visible directly above where the couples' names are entered, and the place to enter marriage info was between the couple, I think that psychologically it was enticing the user to do their best to look for and enter that information.
I speak from experience - I felt more motivated to dig for and write in marriage information when I was working in the old format - because the logical location of the "ADD SPOUSE" and "ADD PARENT" icons was prodding me to add that information at the right time - before my eyes moved past the couple's names section.
This may not be a big issue for a causal FS user who enters only a few married couples - but it's important for people who enter thousands of names, as I do.
ISSUE No. 3 - HAVING PEOPLE'S NAMES IN BLUE WAS A GOOD FEATURE
In the old format, it was very good to have the names of all relatives on that page (parents, spouses and children) written in bright blue color -- while the dates and ID numbers below their names were in black. In the new format both the names and the numerical info below are in black.
Please restore those blue colors for the names (except for the main person, whose name should remain black and bolded, as it was before and as is now).
Using that bright blue color for names in this section is important because names are key information, and when your brain is focusing on a name, it's easier to do so when the name stands out, and the line with numerical information below is in a different, neutral, non-competing color.
ISSUE No. 4 - PLEASE RESTORE GREY HEAD CIRCLES
When you look at the images of the old and the new format above, you can see how very distracting are the beet-red and bright blue head circles. Those loud colors compete with the old photographs of the deceased.
The old format, with the subtle grey-colored head silhouettes looked so much better. Please bring back the grey head circles.
ISSUE No. 5 - LARGE PEN SYMBOL
The pen symbol in the new format is big and with it's slanted shape, visually distracting - it kind of "hangs" in there. Would it be possible to restore the previous more square pen symbol? The latter looked better, made the page look more orderly.
ISSUE No. 6 - FONT SIZE
In the new format, the font size of the headings "Spouses and Children" and "Parents and Siblings" seems too big - it's bigger than the names of the people or the "Children" headings farther down. Those headings should have the same font size as the "Children" headings below the parents.
Most important though, please make the font size of people's names (and other small letters in the column on the right side of the screen) just one size (or at least half-size) bigger than they are now.
Many of us who enter lots of data are not "spring chicken" and that small font is hard on our eyes.
I have a few minor comments about the top of the page -- but will have to chime in on that another time.
Thank you very much for your attention and being open to to fine-tuning this page.
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I absolutely agree with the last person. Please consider making the important changes suggested above. (I have really enjoyed using Family Search for many years to do Family History as well as teaching others. (My greatest desire is to be able to continue to do so.)
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This is the type of detailed comments that the developers need to further fine tune the page. Thank you for your detailed, clear analysis and willingness to give the programmers useful information.
I'm just another user so you can freely ignore any and everything I comment on. But I'll make a few comments anyway.
First off, let me mention that all of your concerns have been brought up by other people who agree with you. There are many people, however, who like the changes. And the small number of us who comment on these pages will never know the percentages of likes and dislikes that FamilySearch gets in whatever evaluation processes they use. They may be getting overwhelmingly favorable comments on things we personally don't like.
To comment on your specific points:
1) Personally I like the new position of the couple event information. It treats it more like all the other data on the person's page instead of a badly smashed in afterthought. I am also hopeful that we are looking at the first stages of a transition to having all couple event information such as betrothal, marriage, divorce listed here in a chronological column rather than being hidden away in the couple relationship pop up. I would be in favor of a little heavier line around the couple and around the list of children.
2) I'm neutral and don't really care where those are.
3) I find it far, far easier to read the maximum contrast black text on white background rather than the lower contrast blue text on white background. The color highlighting is sufficient to see who the main person on this page is. I really like this change.
4) A lot of people would agree with you. You might be interested to know that when these were first put on the page, they were far brighter and in response to user feed back were toned down a fair amount, as was the blue and pink box highlighting.
5) I'm neutral here, also, the new icon is fine with me, the old one is fine with me.
6) According to the announcement at the top of this group, fonts are still a work in progress. Apparently, fonts are very complicated when you are working with 34 languages. I've mentioned a few times that the banner cuts of the top of the Norwegian letter Å but they having not been able to fix that yet.
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@Ewa_Telazek Thank you for the detailed description and reasoning.
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I've been having difficulty finding screenshots of the old Family Members section with enough context to determine whether I was comparing like with like in terms of zoom level, but I think I've gotten fairly close.
In my typed-in comparisons at the bottom, "9.2b" means Verdana at 9.2 point size and bold; "10r" means Verdana at 10 point size and regular weight, and so on. (Note that these point sizes are far smaller than what my screen actually uses on the webpages: I was working with images that had been shrunk from their original resolutions.)
So it appears that, unlike the Vitals and Other Information sections, the content (names and dates) of the Family Members section has been made slightly smaller than it used to be. Both the old and the new had basically two sizes for the content, and the smaller of the old is the larger of the new.
As in the other sections, the really noticeable change is the amount of padding, or how far apart things are. As with the Vitals section, the change is not as drastic here as it is in Other Information, but that's not saying much. (Or it's damning with faint praise.)
I agree with Gordon that the move to all black text rather than blue and black is an improvement: black has far better contrast than any color, so it's much easier to read. In fiddling with screenshots of the old version, I was reminded of another problem I had with that blue text: if a couple had no children or the children weren't showing (because FS's parsimony with showing them is not new), I had trouble figuring out whose page I was on, because comparing bold versus blue, it was not really clear which was the highlight and which was the "plain".
Another thing that my online search for old screenshots reminded me of is that the "new" placement of the marriage information isn't new at all: the layout previous to the now-old one also used it. (I remembered the outcry over the revision, but not this specific detail of it.)
Like Gordon, I have no strong feelings either way about the appearance and position of the "Edit" and "Add" buttons. My only quibble is the fact that "Add Child" now appears -- and takes up room -- even when the existing children aren't being shown. If the children are hidden, then that link should also be hidden. (Or better, the children shouldn't be hidden, but as I said, this stinginess is nothing new.)
Regarding the portrait circles, I agree that gray was better, but I notice one improvement: they're now all the same size, instead of the larger ones for the main person and spouse that the old layout used. (As Gordon pointed out, what we see now is the toned-down versions of the colors.)
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@Ewa_Telazek, your issue #
1. Agree with marriage info between the couple, even if in the future additional marriage info is added. Maybe just put marriage with a drop down to expand/collapse
2. Agree, separated Add spouse and Add child is IMO slightly better.
3. Mostly agree, but use a dark India Ink blue
4. Yes yes yes, get the gray silhouettes back and nix the pink & blue. The pink & blue vertical line is ample.
5. Either way, but most users were probably used to the old icon.
6. Font/Weight from my view was a little better, but whatever
Additionally, agree with Julia Szent-Györgyi's “Padding" comment.
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Agree with everything @Ewa_Telazek said.
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I don't ever comment on changes made in family search because I have found that I agreed that most changes have enhanced this software program. If I didn't like the changes before I just kept quiet and knew that I would eventually adapt. But this "New Person" change has really thrown me off my family research game.
I really detest the memories section. The filter bugs me as much as the filter in the "My Reservations" tab STILL bugs me! It takes me twice as long to locate items in the memories section while clicking around on the page. Tonight I was trying to show a friend how a picture that I tagged works in other peoples memories sections and I couldn't even find what I was looking for, to quickly show her how it works!
I appreciate those of you who took the time to show screen shots from the "older" version. You have put in a lot of work and thought into your comments. My list seems to just be a repeat of what others have said, i.e. the font and it's size, the memories sections is problematic to me, The vitals section seems to have such a huge amount of wasted space. I feel I am scrolling more to look at where I am in my research. I agree with the comments above regarding the couples boxes not being defined enough to immediately recognize what you are looking at, and my last comment is also about the "Large Pen Symbol", which I also feel is just hanging there on the page and doesn't feel right to me. I prefer the old symbol.
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