Jeffrey Weir on 17 Oct 2020 08:44:31
There are so many design flaws in the Ideas Site redesign that I can't even recall them all. But here's the issues I can remember. I encourage others to leave additional issues in the comments.
1. Clicking on an ideas link posted in say Twitter takes you to the idea, but you are then prompted to log in, and once you do, it takes you to the Home page and not to the idea you originally clicked on.
2. Many users have detailed that they can see Ideas on the mobile Ideas site but can’t vote for them even when logged in as there is no visible vote button on some phones.
3. In desktop, clicking Vote doesn't change the text to Voted, so you don't even know if it worked. (It makes a very subtle change to the icon, but it is too subtle to the point that it isn’t a discoverable visual cue at all.
4. The “Top Ideas” and “Hot Ideas” options serve up the exact same list.
5. When searching, clicking on one of the 'initial' search results then hitting the back button doesn't return you to the original search terms. You lose your search term and must reenter it.
6. "View More" only lets you see the titles of one or two of the results at a time.
7. The redesign does nothing to address “Idea Forking”. Search doesn't show you the # of votes that each one of the forked ideas has. People keep adding the same idea over and over because Ideas does just a bad job of bubbling the most voted similar ideas to the top.
8. I personally cannot see the Ideas site in Chrome or Edge…it just doesn’t render for me. (It did for a time, but it was incredibly slow in Edge). Works fine in Firefox for me. Other users may be similarly impacted.
9. The policy change to only allowing those with organizational accounts to vote has led to what I term “Vote Deflation”: The most popular ideas were voted for when *anyone* can vote. But now, only a *select few* can vote. Meaning the position of the top N pages of ideas is now effectively set in stone. Earlier popular ideas now have an unassailable lead.
Administrator on 30 Sep 2021 21:22:15
Great feedback. We have some of these coming very soon, and I am adding a couple of great items mentioned on the backlog. Fixes for the mobile voting will be rolled out soon.
RE: Fix the redesigned Power BI site
Agree on all points that Jeff has mentioned and adding some more:
- I’d like to be able to filter search results and have an easy way to refine my search. For example, when searching for existing ideas, I want to be able to see the top-rated on top to avoid upvoting a duplicate idea.
- I’d like to see a button/dialogue that allows me to post or select the URL of the idea that I think is a duplicate. Including the users to help consolidating ideas should be made as easy as possible.
General though/question: What is the algorithm behind the current sorting of the search results? When I search for “subtotals”, I see my post with over 2k votes on the 6th page on position 52, while my accidentally posted draft (didn’t recognized that this even happened) with 3 votes on the same issue is on the 1st page on position 3?
Link to search: https://ideas.powerbi.com/ideas/search-ideas/?q=subtotals
Link to posts:
popular idea: https://ideas.powerbi.com/ideas/idea/?ideaid=129c111f-21c5-4109-a505-9e94913c77a2
Accidental post: https://ideas.powerbi.com/ideas/idea/?ideaid=69370351-9f34-4cb5-b413-16027b09f9a3
Usually, I would never go past the first 3 pages (max) to look for existing ideas.
RE: Fix the redesigned Power BI site
Copying my feedback from my other idea concerning this. Some of these may have been addressed. #4 is more important than you might think, because of the 'vote deflation' I discuss at #9.
1. Clicking on an ideas link posted in say Twitter takes you to the idea, but you are then prompted to log in, and once you do, it takes you to the Home page and not to the idea you originally clicked on.
2. Many users have detailed that they can see Ideas on the mobile Ideas site but can’t vote for them even when logged in as there is no visible vote button on some phones.
3. In desktop, clicking Vote doesn't change the text to Voted, so you don't even know if it worked. (It makes a very subtle change to the icon, but it is too subtle to the point that it isn’t a discoverable visual cue at all.
4. The “Top Ideas” and “Hot Ideas” options serve up the exact same list.
5. When searching, clicking on one of the 'initial' search results then hitting the back button doesn't return you to the original search terms. You lose your search term and must reenter it.
6. "View More" only lets you see the titles of one or two of the results at a time.
7. The redesign does nothing to address “Idea Forking”. Search doesn't show you the # of votes that each one of the forked ideas has. People keep adding the same idea over and over because Ideas does just a bad job of bubbling the most voted similar ideas to the top.
8. I personally cannot see the Ideas site in Chrome or Edge…it just doesn’t render for me. (It did for a time, but it was incredibly slow in Edge). Works fine in Firefox for me. Other users may be similarly impacted.
9. The policy change to only allowing those with organizational accounts to vote has led to what I term “Vote Deflation”: The most popular ideas were voted for when *anyone* can vote. But now, only a *select few* can vote. Meaning the position of the top N pages of ideas is now effectively set in stone. Earlier popular ideas now have an unassailable lead.
RE: Fix the redesigned Power BI site
Arun...good to see engagement at this level. Note that there is already a well established idea from Oct 2020 at the ideas site with 65 votes, 11 comments, and at least 9 clearly articulated issues. Can you promote that one instead? Or get @MSPowerBI to?
RE: Fix the redesigned Power BI site
This is a good point. I honestly hadn't thought of it myself.
We need to be able to keep our ideas accounts active despite employment changes.
Just because I leave my current employer in future doesn't make my ideas any less valuable or my need to transfer them to my next AD account with my next employer any less important.
Fair enough requiring an AD account at some point to ensure only those with potential access to the software are contributing here, also a good way to block out spambots, but my account and the contributions by it are now highly ephemeral and that greatly devalues them, in my opinion.