After cleaning out my Yahoo Personals mailbox, I understand why they are looking for a user interface guru.
If you click “more” in email window you are presented with the email in it’s entirety and the person’s profile is wedged into a narrow left column. This is a great feature, saves a few clicks. I like being able to see more details about a person w/o having to leave the email page.
However. there is a major problem with the consistency of how emails are managed.
When reviewing email, there are flag, delete, block user buttons. There is also a “write a reply” or Select a message options below. “Write a reply” button loads a new page with textarea to reply to person. This is a perfect example of where new dynamic web page technology like Ajax would be perfect for loading the reply textbox without reloading the entire page. I could code this up myself faster than it took to write this post.
I can also choose to select a reply from the drop-down of canned reponses. The responses are mostly geared to get people to take personality test, add photos and write more in their profile.
Some of the reponses are totally out of place. Say for example someone writes you, and one of the quick reponses is “Thanks, are we a good fit?” This makes no sense. Click the thumbnail to see the whole list.
I would love to see the clicktrail on how people use these responses. I would hope that someone at Yahoo pays attention to these and removes the least used options and adds new ones from time to time.
When I select a reply from the drop-down list I’m asked to do one of those annoying anti-spam challenges. Why do this when I’m already signed in?
Next, I hit the delete button to remove the email. The Yahoo! knows in this case I’m not interested in the person, why don’t they throw up an alert thats offers to delete the email? Why would you keep around an email for a person you’re not interested in? This stuff is so easy to do, talk about lazy!
After I hit the delete button, I’m presented with yet another courtesy reply pull-down. Check out the responses. I already let the person know I’m not interested, and yet the option is offered up again. Tak about broken. I can only hope that the new User Experience person at Yahoo takes a long hard look at what’s so broken about the #1 dating service in the world. Half of their job is done, just read this blog. Like so many top shelf dating sites, Yahoo! continues to succeed in spite of themselves.
