On Monday, Posterous, the microblogging tool celebrated for its ease of use, rolled out a major upgrade to its web user interface and mobile app. Unfortunately, they forgot to tell their legions of happy customers they were going to do this, except in a blog post touting Posterous Spaces, a social media approach resembling Google+.
Rich Pearson, VP of Marketing and Business Development, cheerfully announced Posterous Spaces. However the redesign was quickly met with frustration from many customers: photo enthusiasts, business consultants, teachers, and an NFL coach with three SuperBowl rings all weighed in.
No room for Spaces
Existing users were too disoriented to care about Spaces. Where did the old Manage Posts page go? Why couldn’t you delete a post? What happened to drafts? Posterous no longer felt like a blogging platform; it felt like a social network.
And why was this disruptive change coming from a company they plainly adored–a company that still replied individually to support emails, despite providing a free service. The verdict was swift: users hated Spaces, or at least the changes that were launched along with it.
“If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”
Posterous user George Capalbo wrote “This is an absolute disaster. I don’t even know where to find my posts–as the supposed ‘manage’ page takes me to a blank page. It’s not ‘harder’ to accomplish ‘certain’ tasks–it’s IMPOSSIBLE. Did you ever beta this? If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”
Posterous VP Rich Pearson tried to soothe angry commenters and encouraged users to report bugs to support. Posterous is designed for blogging by email, so many users haven’t even seen the redesign yet or downloaded the new mobile app.
Rich’s play-by-play responses (“p.s. we are aware of the issue with adding, editing and reordering pages or links. It’s a javascript issue that the team is looking at now.”) only underscored the seriousness of the problems. Capalbo replied, “Why on earth would you have spent months revamping this site in such a way that basic, obvious functionality is missing?”
Ask the Coach
New England Patriots coach and avid blogger Bill Belichick was even more direct:
“As a NFL coach and someone who can deal with a certain amount of complexity and change (e.g. audibles, blitz coverage AND Randy Moss)…AND someone who was convinced to use Posterous by a media intern in order to do this blogging thing RIGHT before you guys switched over…I have to say that the new features known as SPACES really are horrible in a Detroit Lions (pre-Matthew Stafford 2011 game 1) way.”
“Seriously, roll this thing back, and we will pretend like it was preseason,” counseled Coach Bill.
Usability Test Results
Just how representative were these comments? UserTesting.com invited Posterous users on our panel to try out the upgrade and see what remote testing would have revealed. We found out positive things about the upgrade, as well as some fumbles.
What Users Liked
1. Cleaner layout Testers found the new design aesthetically pleasing. When asked what they liked, one tester said, “Better layout and color scheme. I like the fact that there is less information on each page and I do not feel overwhelmed or confused with info.”
Another mentioned how much faster the new site loaded, and added, “I like the simple layout–it’s very very nice. Simple is good in my books.”
2. More social Dez Futak of Bristol Marketing Labs in the UK responded favorably to the new Find Friends page, which matched his very large network of Twitter followers (34,000 and counting) with their Posterous blogs.
He remarked: ”This is really really good because basically it enables me to connect with people who’ve got a lot of traffic on their Posterous account–which is superb.” The Activity stream, with embedded videos, reminded him of Facebook, and got another thumbs up.
What Users Didn’t Like
And then there was Spaces, an extension or reinvention of Posterous blogs. What is a public space? This user was not sure how Spaces differed from regular Posterous blogs.
1. Can’t Manage Posts Two test users and many blog commenters never succeeded in finding Manage Posts, the primary reason users go to the Posterous website rather than blogging from their smartphones.
(This page has been a moving target. At launch, it wasn’t in the menus, but users could get to it from a URL. Then it was called Space Settings. As of Friday, click Spaces and then click the title of the blog/space to see its posts.)
Portuguese designer Andreia Moniz uses Posterous for her blog Gracinhas. Despite her familiarity with the site, she struggled to get oriented and find her existing blog content. ”Before, when I clicked Manage, I could select a blog and see the posts in it.”
2. Users disoriented by new options When Moniz clicked Popular, she was surprised to see posts across Posterous users as opposed to the popular posts from her blog.
Andreia suggested providing onscreen help, to introduce the new features during the transition: “Some things are quite enigmatic. Maybe a rollover text help over some options would make it easier to understand some functions.”
Posterous Competitor, Blogger, Gets a New Look, Too
Coincidentally, Google at long last updated Blogger this month, with a cleaner new look. The rollout is still in beta: bloggers can choose to keep using the old site, while Google works out the kinks in the new design.
Changing the layout of your service is one thing; completely changing the navigation and the way core features work is quite another.
Overall, testers like Dez who spend considerable time using social networks looked upon the Posterous upgrade favorably because it provides features they immediately understood how to exploit. However most others we consulted were less interested in a new social network than finding their existing content.
To quote Coach Bill, “They really dropped the ball on this so-called upgrade.”
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Update: As of this writing, Posterous is rapidly improving their site. They’ve restored the Manage page and added help balloons, with more promised changes in the works.
Posterous VP Rich Pearson responds “We did actually do quite a bit of user testing prior to launch and expected some backlash from those who wanted Posterous to remain a vanilla blogging platform. As you know, for some, change is never good. That said, in our rush to get Spaces launched, we missed a few use cases but have since fixed up these rough spots.
“Fortunately, the lion’s share of our users have reacted positively as our engagement metrics are off the charts since launch – from both existing and new users. We’ll continue to tune our UI based on the qualitative and quantitative testing results.”
Posterous is a small, responsive company that now knows a lot about what its users think, so we’re confident they’ll get it right.
Posted in Confusing Layout & Design, Navigation Challenges, New Services, The Unexpected. | 7 Responses
