Having been in the software business myself, I know what it takes to cut over to a new system with lots of users. Blip clearly worked very hard to make a smooth transition, and brought up new software that seems to be performing well, so big congratulations! I wish I could say the same about the interface itself. But (see below) I can't.
• On my page, I want to see thumbnails with dates and titles (possibly by hovering), not my name over and over. On browse pages (multiple blippers) I want to see their names on the thumbnails. (Listing by name, not journal, is a big improvement.)
• Even though I use an iPhone (maybe because I use an iPhone) for my pictures, I want my EXIF data to show all the time.
• Especially with a new interface, hovering over any element should bring up a title.
* Blippers used to post challenges—a month of daily entries, a day of the week (Mono Monday), an ongoing challenge (phoneworld)—and whoever liked them could join. It was our creativity, and you voted by showing up. I don't like these suggested weekly challenges from Blip Central. I don't want my photography/journal life run by Blip Central. The challenge suggestions you're posting are vague, and not community-building the way the old ones were.
• Lots of elements in the interface are too big and are given too much space. E.g., lists of comments. (This is something I liked having on the old iPhone app, and I'm glad you brought it forward.)
• Having the what used to be 'About' page as the first page to come up when you go to a blipper is imho a very bad choice. First of all, it's the same all the time. Second, it's not the most important thing I want to know, which is, What did you post today?
• Bring back the grey background! I normally keep my backlight as low as possible because I'm working with text. But when I look at photos I crank up the light to see all of the detail and color at its best. The new Blip forces me to endure this glaring white screen in order to see the images. I hate it, and I don't think it's good for my vision.
• When I look at comments in a list, I want to see a thumbnail of the post the commenter is referring to, not his/her picture. When I look at comments on a specific blip, the pictures of the commenters are unnecessary space-wasters. All I need is their name.
• When someone gives me a star or a heart and you notify me, I want to see the thumbnail they're praising, not just an 'entry' link.
• You buried the 'One year ago' photo in a drop-down menu. Ditto the calendar. Please make them clearly available.
• I'd like to be able to search by date. If I want to look at my pictures for July 2013, I shouldn't have to click endless times on a calendar.
• The new Blip is supposed to be fast, but sometimes it's agonizingly slow. I click on Add Reply and nothing happens, so I click again, ad infinitum. You need to add a spinning wheel or progress bar to show that something is being worked on, and you ought to have a way to avoid posting duplicate comments if someone clicks more than once.
• In the old Blip, it took me forever to figure out what I got if I clicked 'Blipfoto' and what I got if I clicked 'blippername' at the top of the screen. In the new Blip, there's an equal amount of confusion. It's really not intuitively obvious.
•I very much miss having the blipper's name on every journal page.
• PLEASE POST YOUR UPDATE INTENTIONS IN THE BLOG. We'd like to know what additional features you're planning to implement, and we'd also like to know your thinking behind those you've removed or hidden.
I'm getting snowblind from screen glare, so I'll stop here. Thank you for considering these thoughts.
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this a well considered and well written critique of the new interface. And completely reasonable.
I too would welcome update intentions, especially as someone who has invested time and money in blipfoto.
I'll let our support team pick this up (as they are methodically logging every feedback as they go through them) but I wanted to add a quick comment with my personal view on the 'roadmap' request.
This week has been all about bug fixes and collecting your feedback; both of which need to happen before anyone rushes off to look at what will happen next and when. We just need a little patience while we sort through the 'noise' to find all the constructive feedback (like the above).
We accelerated the changes to fix the "oh no's" before the wave of new users that comes at New Years. This wasn't an easy decision as not everything is ready, but please rest assured that the planned improvements are on their way as soon as possible.
I agree with almost all of these points.
By the way, some of the user challenges are still there, but they are hidden away in the "helpdesk" area. Go in there, click on Topics, and look for challenges, and you'll find the December challenge, Mono Monday, Derelict Thursday and a few others. Along with some completely unrelated threads posted in the wrong place. I would like to see these challenges given the same prominence as the BlipCentral ones. Those not already involved in them are never going to find them.