News on the Upgrade to HealthUnlocked

[matt]

As many of you have noticed there’s been an interruption to service today with a new-look site that replaced the existing one. It was a big moment for HealthUnlocked - the changes come as a result of nine months of channeling feedback from 150,000 of our members who have come to us suggesting even better ways of communicating, sharing information and supporting each other.

Many today have been dealing with some of the early niggles and bugs and being very helpful with your feedback. We know how much many of you depend on this community. Heartfelt apologies if it has been a bit frustrating for some.

We guarantee:

- The new features will significantly improve what you can do in HU in future

- Other improvements will appear over the next weeks and months

- We won’t stop until we’ve ironed out any bumps

We ask for your help over the next few days:

- To let us know any issues you can spot at [e-mail]

- To bear with us. We’ll get there!

We’re a small team of people dedicated to making HealthUnlocked the best network around for managing your health online. Thanks for your understanding and being here to help us achieve that - it’s a group effort.

Apologies if I’m unable to answer individual comments here as we now have over 200 communities across the platform to communicate with.

Matt Jameson Evans

?(HealthUnlocked Co-founder)

[fwes]

I am a retired computer professional. My daughter is a commercial software implementation specialist in Seattle; my son is a designer of commercial web pages in Boston. In my opinion, this redesign is way below professional standards with regard to utility.

1. It is non-intuitive.

2. Site navigation is an undocumented mystery.

3. There does not seem to have been any attempt at a trial run before it was dumped on the masses.

4. What about a community specific SEARCH?

5. It's more convenient for your IT staff? That is a weak argument when you have a human factors flop.

6. The EGO thing says we have to keep this. I desperately plead for some fixes:

a. intuitive, labeled navigation.

b. community limited Search

c. Author input for Tags on posts (Auto-Tag is terrible)

d. mouse hovers on key words to explain their meaning and intended action. I hate being flung into the ether.

e. Get some web designers to look at this and advise you how to make it intuitive for users - this used to be a People site.

f. Create an advisory board of users and let them provide input on what is most critically broken and on what fixes are acceptable. The chair of the advisory board should be the official spokesman on these issues. Your staff has lost a lot of credibility.

[matt in reply to fwes]

Hi Fwes,

We're very sorry for all the bugs and interface problems you've been experiencing. We're a relatively small team and all of us working on fixes such as you have suggested - as much on the user interface and user experience side as on the bug-fixing. All of your suggestions have gone into the product and technical team and we'll update you on them going forward.

Thanks for the specificity of the points you raise.