Last.fm is not handling the feedback well, IMHO

Sorry, weird technical glitch duplicated post.

WorldFusionRadio_com said:
The Bring back to old Last.fm group now has over 4,300 members.

/waves goodbye

I'm just going to repost this here since there is nothing worthwhile on this page yet.

See the problem with telling people they are just rejecting "change" and they will "get used to it" implies that you think good (even useable) design is something that is nothing more than an aesthetic preference, when actually nothing could be further from the truth.

If the site was designed professionally and this was just an issue of rendering styles, then this point would be valid.

Otherwise, people who represent this site who are saying "you will get used to it" either can't tell the difference between a usable site and a non-usable one, or they are being disingenuous.

Either way is bad news.

Ginfress why are you trying to argue with people? This isn't your fight man.
Glad to see you finally undeleted your account, welcome back.

Cheers!

At least when myspace changed their layout/design you had the option to stick to the classic view (which I do)

Well being on the second account for this site and using it since late 2004, I am rather stunned at the bulkiness and excess junk in the new userpage layout. I don't like that audio player in the upper right nor do I like seeing connection pics in groups and among other things. I was rather content with the simplicity of the site until a couple days ago.

I am guessing some sort of corporate influence from their CBS masters has something to do with this vast redesign...

Argh! Another decent website corrupted by corporate wealth and influence...greed can surely do things over time.

Exactly, argonianslave, corporate greed and its influence ruin a lot over time.

Which is a good opportunity to remind people to support independent Internet radio stations. There are thousands of them out there where you can listen for free and discover great music programmed by real people, not corporations. :)

I participated in the beta, and IMO it was NOT clear that this was the final design. It was pretty clear we had a LONG way to go before the site would be ready for launch....and then for some reason they just up and launched it anyway....

Porieux - one wonders if there was some sort of corporate-imposed deadline coinciding with the publicity for the new advertising scheme.

Hi guys,

I've been working at last.fm for 5 years now. I do not have much hand in the design of the site; I work on the backend architecture, so I'm not really trying to defend it, but I'd like to try and answer some of your questions.

This doesn't have anything to do with CBS

Yes, there is some business justification for some of the changes in the new site, but this site is a business, and we have to make money. This would be the same, CBS or no CBS (and it's all your fault for coming here ;). I'm not going to stand by and let this accusation slide - CBS are great people to work with. We are the people to blame for the new site design: the same people who did the previous design (and the one before that).

You've ruined our beautiful old design

Do you remember how many people complained when we switched designs last time - back in 2006? Most people in this thread probably weren't here. Proportionally, we had about the same amount of people whining about the design change then as are now defending the apparently amazing old design now. It's quite amazing - you certainly can't tell from the forum comments at release what the eventual acceptance of the design will be.

...so switch back to the old site!

We've been working on this release for months - far too long, really. Attached to this new design is a whole ton of new architecture which powers stuff like the new realtime charts and the activity feeds. It's impossible for us to switch back, we'd have to spend months to port the old interface to the new architecture (again, probably not the best way to do things, but that's the way it turned out; we can't change it now).

That's not a bad thing

That means that for months, we've been dealing with two versions of the site, but now we only have one. We can move a lot quicker now, we've got a lot of weight off our shoulders. Expect a lot of changes. Some of them might even be in response to your comments.

You're not listening to us

We made a hell of a lot of changes during the beta in response to user feedback. We're not ignoring you. We're not done yet. We had to get this new site out the door for a lot of reasons. You actually still have a chance to shape this site. (And I swear I wouldn't be saying this if I thought it was fake. It's not).

So here comes the controversial bit: We think we know our users better than you do. It's really easy for site designers to spin the whole "we know what's best for you" thing, but we think we do. We had a toolbar above the beta site which let our users tell us their thoughts, good or bad. Here are the results:


(click to enlarge)

Bear in mind that this is all the feedback over the course of the beta. A lot of beta testers changed their minds and decided they liked it towards the end of the beta. It's not perfect, but you've got to admit that it's a bit different to those claims that the "majority" of our users hate the new design.

Thanks for reading. You've got to understand that it's utterly crushing to see your last 8 months' worth of work panned with such venom, so that's why most of our staff has stayed away from these forums in the last day or two.

Russ

One thing that's not immediately apparent from Russ' image above is that the green highlight means that more people said "I like it" than "I hate it" or "I'm not sure". That's right - there was more positive than negative feedback for almost all of the new pages.