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Consultation: Improving the browsing of RoadTests (and maybe RoadTest Reviews)

cstanton

Hello everyone,

I'm interested in improving how you can look through and browse RoadTests (and probably RoadTest Reviews).

You should all be familiar with the RoadTest group landing page:

image

image

And then if you want to browse RoadTests past and present:

image

And RoadTest Reviews past and present:

image

You may already be thinking "But  , this is fine!" and that's good feedback.

However you may be thinking "I put a lot of work into my RoadTest Review, I want it to be visible, for people to find it, for it to look nice!" and that's something I'm interested in as well.

Currently there're some challenges if you're looking for a RoadTest and its associated Reviews that I can see, as it's hard to:

- Find all the reviews by a particular manufacturer or supplier

- Find all of the reviews about a particular product, especially if the reviews aren't all posted at once

- See an 'aggregated' overall 5 star review that takes into account all reviews of the product/roadtest

What's useful to keep in mind when thinking about this is:

- If we're presenting new information, where will that come from?

- Can we reuse information that's already shown?

o Examples of this can be:

x Images of products from a RoadTest page

x Names of products/suppliers from a RoadTest page

x The description of the product from the RoadTest page

x Review stars from RoadTest Reviews

x Possibly images from RoadTest Reviews (if they're included)

x Links to RoadTests and RoadTest Reviews

It's also a bit easier for us if we can re-use 'widgets' or 'tools' that already exist on the site. An example might be if we consider the 'project videos' from element14 presents being a good way to show content:  Project Videos Might be adaptable as a way to search through RoadTests and Reviews?

But it's also important for us to know, how you use and browse this content, and how that experience is on a mobile device vs on a desktop device.

Note, what's out of scope for this request, are any changes to the current RoadTest or RoadTest Review layout of those content types themselves.

So, thoughts?

 

  • in reply to BigG
    BigG said:
    It does seem a little strange to me that following the main header "Now Enrolling RoadTests" is "Recent Blog Posts". Why blog posts and not road test reviews.

    I've noticed that the recent road test reviews are currently positioned in the right-hand rail, which can be a bit confusing to navigate for some users. I'm not entirely sure why this was done, but I believe it might have been inherited from the previous platform. Nevertheless, I think it's worth considering a more user-friendly layout that makes it easier for everyone to find what they're looking for. I've gone ahead and moved the reviews to a more prominent location, although I understand that this may affect the layout on mobile devices.

  • Roadtest is one of the very important and famous programs that Element 14 offers. That's why it is required that updates are available on the main page or visible often to the members so that they do not have to navigate to different windows just to see which reviews are posted and how many of them are posted. Let's say there were 5 kits offered then would like to see reviews of each one of them.Relaxed

    Also if the review is edited by adding useful stuffs, I would love to see those and hence have the update.


  • I have to admit, since the road test reviews stopped showing up in the main window, I have not been reading any for some time.

    Probably just laziness on my part, but I would like to see at least a note about them when they are posted so I can know when to go read them.

  • It does seem a little strange to me that following the main header "Now Enrolling RoadTests" is "Recent Blog Posts". Why blog posts and not road test reviews. It seems that the reviews have been pushed to the (right hand) side, as a list, and then bolted onto the bottom of the page and so they are not as prominent, in my opinion. Maybe blog posts and reviews need to be swapped.

    Then it would be handy if there were categories that could be clicked on to provide relevant reviews. For example, an "Oscilloscopes" category, a "Bluetooth wireless" category, or a "Hand tools" category etc.

  • in reply to shabaz

    I do have multiple browsers on my (non-Samsung) phone, but it seems Mi Browser, Chrome Mobile and Firefox Mobile behave the same with regards to the image aspect ratio distortion and zooming. Perhaps Samsung browser is the anomaly here ...

    - Gough

  • Your suggestions and those of the members seem fine to me, especially adding images.

    I read pretty much everything that is published on the site so the main thing for me is to easily find new material that I have not read yet. Unfortunately it is not in one chronological list so I have to remember to look in different pages for new material. I am still finding it tough to find all new material without a lot of scanning of stuff I have already read - like finding new comments on road tests that appear after I have read the road test.

    I don't have any magic suggestions. I find a way to get what I can out of the site with the time I have available. If it is too cumbersome, (repetitious reading) I miss some stuff.

    My CAD system tells me exactly which nets I haven't routed yet, and where to find them...Relaxed Maybe someday AI browsers will be configurable to crawl web sites and present info all prioritized nicely the way you want it.

  • in reply to Gough Lui

    I find the mobile experience on my phone (Android) significantly different between mobile Samsung Internet Browser and mobile Chrome.

    With the former, the display is pretty good, and I can pinch-and-zoom any page to see the detail in images, and they (usually) don't seem stretched any more, although as you say it does occur from time to time.

    With mobile Chrome on the other hand, the pinch-to-zoom doesn't work and I cannot really use the website as a result. 

    I've set up a link on my mobile home page that opens it up on Samsung Internet Browser (because I use Chrome for regular use on other websites), and I've been generally happy with it. If you've got more than one browser on your phone it could be worth experimenting, in case it helps.

    Examples from the Samsung Internet Browser:

    Pinch-to-zoom to see detail, the image comes out clear like this:

    image

    RoadTest review, clear to read and pinch-to-zoomable:

    image

    I wish the experience was the same on mobile Chrome, because I suspect a lot of people will be using that on Android instead of the Samsung Internet Browser, and they won't have realized it's better if they switch.

    How I have it set up on my phone home page:

    image

  • in reply to cstanton

    iPhone 9, 750 x 1334 pixels, 294 ppi.  The phone thing is way more of a "Why stare at a tiny screen when I can just fire up the computer or laptop?"

  • in reply to Gough Lui

    Another interesting discovery - not related to RoadTests specifically, but just browsing on mobile and it seems the image shabaz pasted shows with the wrong dimensions making it horizontally compressed. Tapping on it shows it correctly sized ...

    image

    I do see mobile quirks like this from time to time ... but I haven't systematically noted them down.

    - Gough

  • in reply to kmikemoo
    kmikemoo said:
    The phone is just too small for an enjoyable experience.

    Not to ignore the rest of your (very good) points - what's the screen resolution of your phone?