Poll: Inspire Blog
 

The thing I appreciate most with the new FIRST website is their Inspire Blog, so I was wondering how many people actually knew about it and how many actually follow it. I think it has a lot of potential if they use it well; I still consider it fairly new even after a few months of being up.

Edit: Here is the blog for all those wondering. If you go to the first post in it, they explain what it is and it's goals. We mentioned this in the first episode of KnightVlogger this past year as well and summarized it as talking about "inspiration, motivation, and practicality."

Re: Poll: Inspire Blog
 

So I read most of the posts.
Some were good, but nothing earth-shattering. Affirmations of why I teach and why I do FIRST.

This one bothered me:
http://www.firstinspires.org/communi...ing-vulnerable
"The new website was the first large, mission-critical, and complex project I had led since joining FIRST 18 months ago. A large group of staff members had put many, many hours into building this new site, and now it was out there for public critique. I knew that many would love it … but, inevitably, some wouldn’t."

"mission-critical" I would like to hear what the mission was. My reason being is that, IMHO, for new visitors curious about FIRST, or veteran participants, the new website is a misstep.

"complex"? You had a reasonably easy to navigate website that you could have evolved, instead, you went for a wholesale change.

"many" would love it, but "some" wouldn't. This comment demeans those that may criticize the new design by placing them in the minority.

I would like to see some metrics about how long visitors stay on the website and how deeply they go.

Have the creators ever tried to find an event in their area, only to have their choices constantly reset? Forget trying to find a team, where they will be playing, their history, or what awards they have won. (I don't know what I would do without The Blue Alliance)

My impressions and opinions are dismissed with a quote by Teddy Roosevelt, including:
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
Those of us mentoring teams and volunteering at events?

I agree that this is a nice feature of the new website. I would like to hear how you feel about the rest of the website?

Re: Poll: Inspire Blog
 

while, i won't comment on the Inspire Blog, my daughter wrote one of the posts, so i'm biased, i will take any opportunity to comment on the new website. maybe someone at FIRST will read this.

i completely concur with all comments above. the new site is unusable, but it utilizes color nicely. agreed on blue alliance. please redesign the FIRST site, again.

Re: Poll: Inspire Blog
 

Great response.

First off, I find it interesting that that particular blog bothered you. We featured it in our fourth installment of KnightVlogger, but for different reasons than why you disliked it. We focused on the vulnerability and how that relates to creativity – which I think more FIRST teams should be open to. Failure isn’t bad, if anything, it teaches better than succeeding the first time every could. We spun that and made a list of how to be more creative on your team and I rather enjoyed it. Regardless, the way they related it back to launching the new website was a bit self-defensive and I can respect how you feel about it.

In general, I think I've had a difference experience with the new website than the majority of the FIRST population. The new FIRST website looks better than the old won from a design standpoint, and it also has the “Leave a Message” chat in the lower right which I have used and found very helpful. I’m a designer at heart, so I appreciate the new aesthetic – it beats the old style which was not very pleasing in terms of organizational websites. All of this is great – but it is not a commentary on the new website’s function.

I cannot speak directly of the new website function, only that I have had to go to the archived website to find pages that should exist on the new one but don’t. This particular page was for the FIRST Parody Contest guidelines, which ended up not being guidelines as much as suggestions (which I am salty about the ambiguity, but that’s not really on topic). I don’t need to find teams often and, when I do, I simply google search them. I understand this does not work for everyone, so I tried looking up our team, Team 2052 KnightKrawler, on their website. It showed up three pages, all for awards or various things, but nothing team specific. I concur with your points. New website needs added function.

On a side note, I do like the url better, just because it’s not country specific.

Quick Edit: I am a little iffy about if this flaw and others still render the whole site "unusable."

Re: Poll: Inspire Blog
 

The URL for the new FIRST website isn't country specific. This is good.

The website is pretty. Also good, but not really a priority for me.

I have a hard time finding the things I'm looking for (event schedules, team information), and when/if I do find it, the new formatting makes it harder to use. This is bad.

I run into a lot of broken links or content that only exists on the old site archive. This is also bad.

It takes a lot of clicks to get to things that I have already found (manual, FRC Blog) if I haven't bookmarked them. This is annoying and makes me look for content elsewhere first.

In spite of spending a lot of time wrestling with the site, I haven't discovered new content like this Inspire Blog unless someone who has already found it posts a link somewhere I'm looking (like here). This, I suspect, defeats the point of the redesign.

Based on your poll results, I suspect that my experience and judgement of the new site design is not atypical in the experienced community, particularly with regard to my last point.

Re: Poll: Inspire Blog
 

I agree. I found the blog when it first started, just by perusing the tabs at the top of the page. It's under "Community."

Re: Poll: Inspire Blog
 

I think all website design, like any engineering design, needs to start with functional requirements. What are your users going to do?

I'm all for looking pretty but it needs to be functional first.

Off the top of my head, people on existing teams will do these things:
- where's the current-year game manual, field drawings, team updates?
- where's the KOP manifest?
- ... and so on

People who are new to FIRST want to know:
- what the heck is this thing?
- what teams are in my area?
- what events are in my area?
- ... and so on

Re: Poll: Inspire Blog
 

I know this is getting a bit off topic, but I feel this is a great place to plug my favorite community built FIRST resource, frclinks.com by Pat Fairbank.

frclinks.com/b goes to Frank's blog
frclinks.com/u goes to the manual and team updates
frclinks.com/t/#### goes to that team's page
frclinks.com/e/CODE goes to the teams registered for the event code (codes are listed at frclinks.com)
frclinks.com/e/a/CODE goes to the award for the event
frclinks.com/e/r/CODE goes to the team rankings for the event
frclinks.com/e/m/CODE goes to the match results for the event

Re: Poll: Inspire Blog
 

This is awesome. Thank you so much for sharing.

Re: Poll: Inspire Blog
 

Agree, I would also add that for both veterans and new to FIRST, following posts with broken links is not useful.