by Will Evans
Member since:
August 31, 2005

The Paris Hilton of Interface Design. The New Gather

July 14, 2006 05:27 AM EDT (Updated: July 14, 2006 08:47 PM EDT)
views: 148 | rating: 9.4/10 (5 votes) | comments: 57

I logged into Gather this morning to publish my article and was immidiately surprised to see the new Gather User Interface architecture. After the initially pleasing visual - which I wasn't surprised at because Tommy has always done amazing worked.

I then set about publishing an article.

And got lost. And Frustrated. And Confused. And finally pissed off.

First, though, to Kevin who wrote the review of the new User interface -- if I could go back and review your article, I would adjust the ranking I gave you down to a 2 - well, okay the article itself gets a 4 for omotting all the problems, but you truly believed that at least the most glaring issues were going to be dealt with before management moved forward with this nasty turd. Someone should have warned us that there would be significant re-learning of the user interaction for common task flows - I wasn't prepared for the significant decrease in my productivity which someone should have warned me about. And I would give myself a 2 for not finding a way to contribute to the new interaction design. I should have been more engaged - I should not have stood back and trusted the experts.

So where does this fall down? I will focus on the two most important things to me - efficient navigation to my articles, and efficient publishing. By removing the DHTML navigation dropdowns, and now have to click twice, compared to once, to get to My Content, which should take me to My Conent -- but doesn't. Now a new top level navigation item is presented in the navigational structure that didn't exist before - right next to the other nav. item called Namespace. This creates cognitive dissonance. You cannot click on a Nav labeled My Content, and then change the label name to Namespace. Second is that I can't view my last five articles, and last five comments. It's been reduced to three. Is there a dropdown preference to change this default to 5? No. But on the upside I can now subscribe to myself... is this useful? No. And - when I subscribe to myself, it goes to a separate page. With no breadcrumbs. The pop-up window was better. Period.  Also the subscribe and cancel button don't match - but as I said - we'll ignore visual design and stick with what I know, which is interaction design.

But I can click one more time to list my last ten articles. A smaller note: It use to take one click to publish an article. It now takes two. 100% decrease in efficiency. Once inside the publishing workflow, everything is the same. Given how jarring the simple act of just getting here though - I just type in an article title, body, tags. And move on. I go back to Gather home, and then go to preview my last articles in the list. From Gather > My Gather > My Content (whose title changes from My content to Namespace for some very some completely unknown reason). Furthermore -- technically my mouse goes far left- click (My Gather), far right click (My Content), this zigzagging across the screen introduces the likelyhood of user error. Bad call.

From my Namespace, I see a list of my last three articles.Can't edit them from here. I used to be able to edit them. I believe this was one of the comments that Kevin brought up with Gather's user experience team?

Okay. Let's move to editing an article (and adding a picture to the article) -- click article title > Click Edit. Back into publishing workflow. Upload image > Add Caption, Add tags, click and go. Article image now placed to the right of my first paragraph. Hmmmm. That whole left side is now annoying me. It gives me a list of suggested tags pointing to the right. Does this imply tags suggested for this article? No. These are tertiary navigation items not related the the article. The must be for that huuuuuuuuuge, big, vast empty swatch of unused real estate at the top of the screen. Jesus - it must be, 200 pixels tall, and spans the entire page from the gather logo all the way to infinite. I think it must be a testimony to the emptiness of my soul. I suppose it won't look so vapid, ooops, I mean empty, once a great big flashing, animated Advertisement is dropped there in all its stinking glory, but right now its just wasted empty space and I resent it - because the Tag navigation could have gone there, given me more real estate on the left column, removed the useless tags which are not at all related to my article, and not stuck my damn image right in the middle of my article. If I wanted the thing in the middle of my article, I would have stuck it there.

Gather Home Page. No more Editor's pick. No more top ten community picks. No more top tags, sorted. Are there any features? I am writing this as I would for a heuristic evaluation with a mental check list of all the common things I do every morning, and then writing this as immediate reaction. The way a real usability study is supposed to work. I don't think Gather used a persona of an expert user who has a list of 5 common task flows they do every morning. If such a list were used, it would immediately become apparent how bad this interaction really is. So the home page is significantly cleaner. But offers no value. 1 featured conversation, 3 groups, 3 people, 3 images. Sparce, thin, beautiful, and no value.

The Paris Hilton of Interface Design.


Finally - a business strategy note. When Yahoo! makes this significant change in their user interface design, they allow users the option to switch between old and new. That option is not given. So I guess I am stuck with this. Please, please fix this. I wasted this morning writing this aweful rant instead of publishing the article I wanted to publish.

Oh, yeah - Kevin - you no longer get a 2. You should have warned me, but according to our earlier conversation - you did make note of many of these issues and brought them up in a face to face meeting with Gather, including Jim Bostich - who should be the absolute guru of interaction design - and should have taken these comments seriously, and should have fallen on his sword when he was overruled and management decided to go forward with this.

Build 5341, "André"
I will now refer to from here on out as "Paris."
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Comments: 57

Will Evans Jul 14, 2006, 5:40am EDT
If I can, I will write a review this weekend. I wonder how many people will be able to find this article.
For tomorrow's review, we'll focus on the Search engine functionality, lack of taxonomy, and decreased Tagging navigation.
Sandy (Site Psychic™) Knauer Jul 14, 2006, 5:45am EDT
Think Kevin might have been trying to tell us something with his 'good-bye' article??
Kathryn E. Jul 14, 2006, 5:49am EDT
Will, you have probably showered now and are on your way to work. You might not be aware that of the 27 articles published since midnight, yours is the 6th out of 7th to be published about the new Gather.

Also, the only article published last night that is NOT about the new Gather that has garnered any signiicant number of comments is one by Jake on WWIII.

I think the points you make are excellent because they are very technical in nature.

Let me point you to my article,

http://www.gather.com/
viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976766869

where you may find interesting comment, too, but not as useful in its technical merits department.

I fear a lot of duplication in the new Gather because it is more difficult to find new articles than before.

I agree with your summation that no expert user was used, nor a real useability studey.

It would be good if Gather offered a choice, but it looks like this is the new installation.

I agree the new Gather is much less useful.

Gather threw out the baby with the bathwater - steered away from 'brand' management thinking, created a completely new product, 'fixed' things that weren't broken, and elimineated features and functions that worked and were well liked.

I, too, have not published the article I logged on to write.

I also don't see the new Gather as being more helpful to new viewers - less, actually, because less information is presented.

I'll provide the link to Marina G.'s aritlcle, too.
Kathryn E. Jul 14, 2006, 5:57am EDT
Will, here are the other discussions on the new Gather.


Jake S.'s article is here:

http://www.gather.com/
viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976766868


Mandi G.'s article is here:

http://www.gather.com/
viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976766875



I think it is more difficult for people to find articles that have been published. Once an article is a few hours old, it will switch to the previous page and nobody will see it, if it has not been commented upon.
Kathryn E. Jul 14, 2006, 5:58am EDT
Here is Marina G.'s article:

http://www.gather.com/
viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976766891
Mary C Legg Jul 14, 2006, 6:18am EDT
what really sucks is all the extra unnecessary clicking -- like first you have to hit the "My Gather" and you get a totally wsted page of two oversized buttons reminding you to donate money in addition to your time to Gather and then another one reminding yu that regardles of the hours you might invest in the Gather, you might get a postcard in return for 3000points or something liike that... or maybe 6pages of travel articles in return for a 10USD book on Amazon. great.

and then you have to click "my Content" to finally get what you're looking for, but then you are isolated from teh world and can't see any activity ongoing elsewhere

so no more pretty thumbnail hopping or quick access to other pages, just a very juvenile layout that's made with the look of a bennig ESL reader in disgusting colors.

and yes KEO, we see your importance in the wold despite all -- but now your little icon shows up headless. and you'll still keep up all the chatter even better than the proverbial headless chicken--

and actually, Paris Hilton would have done a better job, because at least she always looks sleek-- she does understand mass appeal and marketing, and when it comes down to it, is no bimbo because she gets paid for party appearances and retains high rankings over the internet.
Arielle K. Jul 14, 2006, 8:04am EDT
I think all "Paris" is getting terrible reviews. Tom and his colleagues should read the review articles and make some more changes to better accomadate Gather users. Paris is more difficult to understand and navigate, and doesn't make it easy for me to view recently published articles. I miss the Editor's Pick and where can I find the Today's Topic? That was one of my favorites! Like someone mentioned in another review, it might have been KEO, I used the left margin to begin my search through Gather articles I wanted to comment on. Along with many other things, I am very unhappy with the new Gather aka Paris.
Will Evans Jul 14, 2006, 8:18am EDT
I agree Arielle -- before Paris, I was a frequent user of the left side - especially the images, and top commented articles in my network to keep track of what all my connections were up to. Editor's Pick and Today's Topic were great. I didn't write to those things, but I know more people like you that loved the Today
s Topic feature.
Also - right now this article has a 10 rating - but I have no idea how many people have rated it. Not that that matters so much - but was it 1 person? 10? Weighted average?
Kevin (''The SiteWizard'') V. Jul 14, 2006, 8:38am EDT
Will, At least I can be thankful that member's still can't change their ratings!

First of all, PLEASE NOTE that my review article was not intended to be a full review, and was solely based on a few times where I was able to see the basics of the design. The primary goal for my article was to communicate that certain negative aspects of the old Gather would still be inherent with the new.

Perhaps it was a mistake to try and strike a balance within my article, and not get into too many details. I also did not think it would be fair, to Gather Inc. or the community, to pan the new Gather too harshly before it gets out of the gate, especially considering that it could be significantly changed when it does, rendering all of my concerns moot. However, in this case, they weren't.

I personally think that the new Gather has significant weaknesses.... far more than you identify in this article, and that extend far beyond the technical.

I'm not one to say "I told you so". But I did inform Gather of my concerns several times, and my issues went unheeded (for the most part). I found this to be very aggravating, as most of my observations should have been obvious to others as well. However, as Tom stated, there were many (hundreds? thousands?) of members contributing to the design of the 'new' Gather. I am but one voice in a chorus.

Perhaps I should have sung louder.
Kathryn E. Jul 14, 2006, 8:53am EDT
Oh, Arielle and Mary, Will calls the new design "Paris" but Gather has named it "Carl Andre" or "Andre" at the bottom of this page, Build number 5341, discinguished from the "Magritte" we're all used to seeing.

This is much more of a major change than I was used to.

I don't think the Editor's page (new Gather home page) will accomplish much. I don't think it accomplished much before and I don't think that changes.

DId you guys notice Tom commented on his article this morning? He will be hosting a live chat at 1 pl.m. EDT today.

I'll provide a link here to Tom' s article, since I've done that with the others discussing this.
Kathryn E. Jul 14, 2006, 8:56am EDT
Oh, Jake S.'s "Tommy" icon and my "Juliet Capulet " icon now have something in common.

Our heads our chopped. Does my decapitation turn me into Marie Antoinette (since we're discussing celebrities here)?

If so, do I get to say "Let them eat cake?"
Will Evans Jul 14, 2006, 8:59am EDT
Kevin - I would now adjust your article up to a 7 for the comment you just left. I agree that there are many other weaknesses - I only had 20 minutes this morning to write before heading to work - and now I have an all day meeting, so won't be able to add any significant review until tomorrow - or tonight, depending on whether I tone down my criticism and mellow out.
KEO: Sorry you lost your head.
Kathryn E. Jul 14, 2006, 8:59am EDT
here is the link to Tom's article. He has answered some of the comments made overnight in his article.

He also discusses going live today at 1 p.ml EDT to discuss.

http://www.gather.com/
viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976765154

I split the article ID because under old comments, the ID
was too big to fit in one line and would leave off the last numbers, rendering the ID useless.

Yes, I'm aware I can link this ID in a message. I miss having the LINK icon in a comment box that we had in the publishing tool. It's not possible to do that in the comment box, and I'd have to spell it out, which I don't have memorized at this point...I used to have the code memorized a few years ago, but not now. Something for me to do...not difficult, just I have to do it.
Kathryn E. Jul 14, 2006, 9:00am EDT
Will, so full of connotation and denotation, that - your last comment to me.
Rich Sadowsky Jul 14, 2006, 9:29am EDT
Wow. This "upgrade" is garbage. I spent 2 hours trying it out before commenting. There are bugs galore. I tried things on three different browsers: IE 6 Windows, Safari Mac, Firefox both. The site could not have been usability tested by anyone with experience in web design, as it breaks all the rules of good web page design. For example, on an average system, which is what all software and web pages must assume, everything is WAY too large and you must scroll even when maximized. The old site had wonderful usability even on small screens.

Other usability crimes: I went to comment on an article but wasn't signed in. it took me to sign in. then dropped me into my gather. it ignored where i was and what i was doing. that is another break of a golden rule of web page design. If you must navigate a user away from their intended goal for login, BRING THEM BACK where they wanted to go. Duh!

I am actually quite mad. But I also feel bad because i couldn't come to the webex preview last week i was invited to. but it sounds like these points were raised anyway.

Sorry but this violates all the things taught in Web 101 class. They need to revert to old build, then relaunch this with bug fixes and with a choice to toggle between interfaces. I know that will be more costly, but less costly then lost ad views due to frustrated users leaving. Again, web 101. Wow.
Rich Sadowsky Jul 14, 2006, 9:37am EDT
More:
How could a site pass QA that chopped off the heads of the most frequent users of the site?

Keyboard navigation keys don't work to scroll articles. That's PRE Web 101 folks.

Having spent 10 years in charge of web site development and design I can't even begin to tell you how I'd react if one of my teams handed me this build. Of course, if done right these issues would have been addressed in the functional spec long before the build was handed to me. So many of the issues I have are not page generation problems, but core design flaws that could never pass muster in a competent web usability department. With that said, I have seen some page generation problems too. Good ole "Page DONE with errors" message from IE.

Enough. I hope we get notified when the old build is reinstated and a plan for launching new functionality with toggling between UIs is hatched.
Kathryn E. Jul 14, 2006, 9:41am EDT
Rich, do you remember how when you had to sign in to the old Gather (this was a few months ago) it took you to the Gather home page? I would be reading in my email notification and want to get to somebody's article, then would get to the Home Page. Gather did fix that, with the probable result that far fewer people ever went to the Gather Home Page, then or now.

When I delete a comment I make, the choice is to be 'return to your comments.' Since I don't want that, I click the BACK arrow on Firefox to get me back to my article.

Toggling between interfaces would be a very good idea.

I do encourage people to try out the other articles discussing this today. I'm not plugging shamelessly here, the points are not identical in the articles.

I agree with you Rich about revert to old build...

Tom did say this new version if more extensible...

I wasn't invited to the preview people are talking about.

Was it in my email notifications that I missed? Or, did people think I simply have too many comments and too many views?

Now, why would anyone think that?

Notice that Juliet Capulet is now headless.
Kathryn E. Jul 14, 2006, 9:43am EDT
Rich, you beat me to it. I guess I do get to say: "Let Them Eat Cake."
Mary F. Jul 14, 2006, 9:51am EDT
Arielle-

You can get to "Today's Topic" by going to the homepage and clicking on the "topic of the day" tag. The Editor's Picks are still there, but they show up one at a time. You can click on "more articles" to see the rest.
Alyssa Barbour Jul 14, 2006, 10:03am EDT
mmmm.... I love the new Gather.

viva Andre!
it's pretty on a 21" monitor what about a 17"???
Will Evans Jul 14, 2006, 10:29am EDT
I just got an email from Gather saying that I got a new private message. I used to be able to page up to the top of the screen and see Messages: 1
I can no longer see that.
Madame Donna C. Jul 14, 2006, 11:05am EDT
Hmm, how do we delete comments? And now that I'm at the bottom of your thread, how do I get back to the top? I can't find anything. I can't follow the threads, I miss the left hand list where I could read articles as they showed up. Lastly, I wish there were at least Icons on the list of articles page: I have to read each one to see if it is an author I want to read because there is no icon for me to quickly scan. I want my old Gather back. Thanks Will, I feel better now.
Will Evans Jul 14, 2006, 11:15am EDT
Adam: I know the previous Gather UI had alot of issues - and I am completely to blame for that - but I would have suggested that the next iteration focus just on improving the problems with Magritte, as opposed to creating for more issues with this complete redesign. Seems Paris is aesthetically nicer, cleaner far better looking than Magritte - but she has alot more emotional and intellectual "issues."
Kathryn E. Jul 14, 2006, 11:18am EDT
Will, "Paris has emotional and intellectual issues." Marie Antoinette would comment but she cannot speak.
Kathryn E. Jul 14, 2006, 11:21am EDT
Will, I know you were active in the design of the original Gather. Are you saying you were the main architect behind Magritte? If so, or whatever role you played, it woulld be good if Gather could have seriously taken your input. I, too, thought it would be an iteration not a new product.

Will, you can see new emails and new invites in top right hand corner. Bill's Spirit informed me of that. It is not intuitive because you are at least the third person who has mentioned it.
Will Evans Jul 14, 2006, 11:31am EDT
KEO:
I worked on the very first designs -- Alpha and Beta (Cheryl), which was the release before magritte. Magritte was in some ways an improvement over Cheryl, but removed the top level taxonomy (which was very useful, but also had a lot of baggage - specifically in the publishing workflow).

I have been very happy as "a end-user" just like everyone else here. I have no input on the direction of the UI, other than as a user with articles like this.
Kathryn E. Jul 14, 2006, 11:35am EDT
Crazy Celebrity's article on the new gather:
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976766952
Will Evans Jul 14, 2006, 11:38am EDT
Also KEO:
The issues that I have raised here especially the most glaring navigational issue- that input was actually already provided to Gather 'before' they made this release. I can only surmise that that advice and input was not heeded.
Kathryn E. Jul 14, 2006, 11:42am EDT
Will, Marie Antoinette would reply to your cogent comment directly, but she cannot speak. very interesting.
Kathryn E. Jul 14, 2006, 11:44am EDT
Glenda Ross' s article:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976766953
Will Evans Jul 14, 2006, 11:56am EDT
Ouch - Glenda's article is exactly how I felt at 430 this morning.
Will Evans Jul 14, 2006, 12:18pm EDT
The other thing is that the tag item on the left side is completely unintuitive... Is it a search button? If so - I just typed in a tag I knew this article was tagged with - so results. No error message, no explanation. This is unacceptable. 1. User must no what feature does. 2. User must be able to accomplish my goal. 3. the functionality must provide some kind of feedback - any feedback is better than the blank screen I just got.
Will Evans Jul 14, 2006, 12:20pm EDT
And from this article - how do I go back to my list of all articles... it use to be on click away. now I have to go back to click My Gather > My Content > List Articles > Edit Article.
Will Evans Jul 14, 2006, 12:29pm EDT
The other thing is that the tag item on the left side is completely unintuitive... Is it a search button? If so - I just typed in a tag I knew this article was tagged with - so results. No error message, no explanation. This is unacceptable. 1. User must no what feature does. 2. User must be able to accomplish my goal. 3. the functionality must provide some kind of feedback - any feedback is better than the blank screen I just got.
Will Evans Jul 14, 2006, 2:08pm EDT
The only way I was able to find Jakes article is because KEO was nice enough to enter the address in the comments above.
Kathryn E. Jul 14, 2006, 2:19pm EDT
Will, I have not been able to get to My Gather, at all. I'm using Firefox which works well in every instance, as far I am concerned here. I notice that My Gather uses javascript - jsp? . Could that cause a slowdown?
Stephalicious B. Jul 14, 2006, 2:31pm EDT
This new version of Gather shows you *precisely* the problem with trying to design a website with input from average users.

The average user, knowing nothing about back-end and the true capabilities of the medium, will focus on surface, shallow issues such as:

The font's too small!

I don't like these colors!

I'm confused!!

So the team, in essence, appears to have responded to these types of complaints.

I'm not saying they don't have some merit, but there's not a lot of *improvement* here in terms of the technical functions that might actually make Gather a better place.

I have said for a while I'd like to customize my public Gather home page, so that it's like having a blog.

THAT would be a cool thing for Gather to do. But did they do that? Nope. They spend oodles of time paying some dumb-ass graphic design to create bright orange comment balloons.

Waste of resources, if you ask me.
Stephalicious B. Jul 14, 2006, 2:35pm EDT
PS Will's hot.
Patty C. Jul 14, 2006, 2:50pm EDT
Will, I have yet to encounter many of the technical issues you've butted your head against, so I will limit my comments to initial impressions. These initial impressions aren't very good. What is this? The Reader's Digest Big Print version? Yet the font isn't any easier to read. Everything just looks very big and not much content is on screen at any time. Navigation is awful and more time consuming, etc. Thanks for the heads up - to warn me of all the things I have yet to discover that will drive me batshit.
Jeff L. Jul 14, 2006, 3:57pm EDT
well they really screwed this one up... here is my list of what's good and what's bad...

good...

1. larger pictures
2.

bad

1. gather banner at the top is way too large
2. the font size looks like it was designed for idiot proofness
3. cannot find articles i want to comment on
4. cannot find people who were one click away
5. as a matter of fact, cannot find anything
6. still no ability to sort pics
7. ad space is way too large and intrusive!
8. productivity has dropped exponentially
9. kelly clarkson
10. makes me want to log off and go back to squinting at the last make (why do web designers always feel the need to use verdana for everything!)
Edward Nudelman Jul 14, 2006, 8:34pm EDT
Hey Will, nice move using Paris Hilton in the title! How's my favorite philosopher king doin? You recovering from the pumpkin splash yet? Well, quit your bloody bellyachin', get off your dufus and give us some of that good olf fashioned Will Evan superlative writing!
Will Evans Jul 14, 2006, 8:51pm EDT
Wow Ed. Light dawns on marble. I will stop bellyaching. I will trust that many people have aired their disapproval and that the Gather team has learned what is wrong. They will fix it. If nothing else - all the bellyaching is a sign of just how passionate the gather community has become. Fuck it. Time to get back to my writing.
Will, for the life of me I don't know how I stumbled on to this article. The usability/ functionality of the Paris Hilton has left me groping around in the dark - this new version is not intuitive.

Magi
Will Evans Jul 14, 2006, 9:05pm EDT
Well Nicola - since our productivity is down - we can't find our friends -- and your already groping around in the dark.... we might as well just get naked.
0000-glendaross-0000 Jul 14, 2006, 9:10pm EDT
Will, With the new format of Gather I think I am at a carnival throwing up after going on the rides. "If it isn't broke, don't fix it." When I joined here two weeks ago I jumped right in without any problems to navigate. But, now-I can't find anything I want. Only this new comment section,(which is making me paranoid) keeps flaring it's orange nostrils at me. I changed my icon twice today as I became schitzo. Tomorrow is another day, and I am going golfing, cool down and put my thinking cap back on.
Not without wrestler's masks, Will!

Glenda, I think all this orange is an Irish citrus plot.

Magi
Will Evans Jul 14, 2006, 9:38pm EDT
I don't comment on aesthetics, per se. I figure its too subjective. As a unified gestalt, I like were it was going - I am all about minimalism, I own scandenavian furniture... but I think form follows function. A navigation structure should ease two important concepts: findability and intuitiveness. Navigation systems are to classify, organize and aid in the movement through a virtual space. It should increase "Flow"
Time to publish my article Zen and the art of application flow. Perhaps people at gather will read it.
Will Evans Jul 14, 2006, 9:55pm EDT
A positive user experience is an end-user's successful and streamlined completion of a desired task.

The user experience should be:
• Comfortable
• Intuitive
• Consistent
• Trustworthy
The term user experience has been defined and described in many ways, but at Gather we, THE USERS, should define user experience as "the overall perception and comprehensive interaction Gather member's have with the Gather Website. A positive user experience is an our successful and streamlined completion of a desired task." When designing a good user experience it's important for Gather management to remember these four principles, which should be a part of any usability or user experience specialist's toolkit. While these are not the only components of a complete experience, these principles form a solid structure upon which to build a foundation of usability, information design and meaningful Gather Experience.
0000-glendaross-0000 Jul 14, 2006, 10:06pm EDT
Better said....
Aileen F. Jul 14, 2006, 10:26pm EDT
The least they could have done is given us those bread crumbs...
Jake S. Jul 15, 2006, 4:23am EDT
It was interesting to me to see Rich's comments. I've been saying for months that the techies at Gather (if there even are any) do not appear to have the slightest clue what they are doing. Rich pretty much confirmed that.

This site is really bad. It's super slow, always has been. It freezes -- alot.

This build, in my opinion, bodes very badly for the future of Gather. Not JUST because they changed the front page to a bland, sterile, boring piece of crap that must be aimed at somebody's vision of the ideal demographic for this site, but mostly because the other things they did (and didn't do) proved that Gather, Inc. doesn't have the slightest freaking clue what it's doing.

Also, a lot of you seem to think that since everybody's spent the last 24 hours complaining, Gather will immediately do something about it. What the hell do you base that on?

People have been bitching about the editing functions (pretty core, isn't it?) and the rating system ever since I got here and, to date, they have done NOTHING about either of those very basic elements of the site.

They really, really messed this up.
Will Evans Jul 15, 2006, 6:09am EDT
Put in lay persons terms - if your car's engine is broken and your breaks don't pass inspection, you don't spend your money on a new paint job.

Rich is right about Quality Assurance/Quality Engineering. This version - Paris - and even Magritte - would not pass an acceptance testing and unit testing process. There are two very important aspects here -- does this system allow users to perform tasks in the best possible way, and does the system perform "as expected" within some defined space of how an application should do so.

But these priorities are not set by the application developers. They are set by managers and the person charged with overseeing User Experience. User Experience should care just as much about quality assurance as it does about navigation structures and task flows - and the user experience person should work in lockstep with the manager in charge of QA. These are process and management issues.
Will Evans Jul 15, 2006, 6:22am EDT
John A 2.0: I have no idea. It is statistically improbable/impossible that such a confined problem space could be completely random. The question then becomes - is the problem with the manual deletion, or with a change in the business or data access layer code. We don't know. We can't know without looking at the code - or, if an intentional act by someone within Gather - them coming forward and fessing up.
Rich Sadowsky Jul 16, 2006, 1:25am EDT
Jake, The people I met at Gather seemed very competent. The dysfunciton that I sensed was in the management of the requirements. This is what separates the men from the boys (or to be PC the woman from the girls).

All development projects have 5 parameters that can each be stretched or contracted to meet a need. They are often drawn as a baseball diamond. I use such a diagram when talking to my fellow exec staffers, boards of directors, and even explaining decisions to end users. Here are the elements:

Features - the number of features and how deep each one is

Cost - the cost to develop this software project

Quality - how well it works to achieve desired result

Time to market - how fast you can ship it

Partixipant Satisfaction - how badly you will burn out your workers, testers, and users.

You can rush a release to market by cutting features, compromising quality, spending more money, or killing the staff. Each variable can be changed. The magic is getting a company aligned around what choices you are making. For example, all software has bugs, you can't fully empower QA with the decison to release or not. Most software would never ship. Nor can marketing decide the feature set without adequate analysis of cost and hit to time-to-market. If you burn out your staff, quality can suffer, sabotage can occur, and the intellectual capital walks out the door with a middle finger raised. Balancing these elements is the key. Experience is the magic bean to balancing these elements. Each flavor of development has different relationships between the elements. In other words, a web site/service has different interactions between these 5 elements then a shrinkwrap software product. 10 years ago I helped change that for shrinkwrap software when I invented LiveUpdate, which allowed the software to update itself and shifted shrinkwrapped software to a model not unlike a web project. Likewise, I see web projects shifting to be more like shrinkwrap software in ways I cannot discuss due to common courtesy to companies like Gather and Non-disclosure aggrements.

I didn't really get to know any of the Gather execs well enough to really judge their competence. If I was an investor there would be tens of hours more due diligence. Shit, I got a mere 15 minutes with Tom and the CEO is certainly the most influencial person with respect to defining the company's core competences.

What I can do is observe the site's performance and release planning as I have seen it since I first met them when I went to the office's to interview for a position there. During the months since, the site got slower, harder to use, less consistent, and seemed to lose focus on what it wanted to be when it grew up. What I would have expected was improvements in most, if not all, those areas.

With that said, it is a pretty cool site and an amazing accomplishment for such a small team. Although someone out there put up some millions to make it happen and if I was them, and I have been in their position with companies before, I would be asking if the company is moving closer to the stated objectives. Sometimes the stated objectives are exactly the problem. What if the objective was "ship new site design by July 15" rather then "Improve usability for ne users allowing 25% reduction in abandonment rate while increasing productivity for power users by 25% as measure by time to do common tasks." Sadly, the first objective is SO MUCH MORE COMMON then the second, well reasoned objective. I don't know, but given the points rollout and this site push out, I'd almost say some questionable objectives may be the root of the problem.
Will Evans Jul 16, 2006, 7:42am EDT
Magic Beans..... I love that line.

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