FIRST website is an embarasment

[ahartnet]

The new website certainly brings up the question of "who is this made for". It does not seem to be for the participants (students, teachers, and mentors) in FIRST, but rather for the sponsors.

I'd argue that while pretty and it would draw in a new person that for some reason stumbles to FIRST without knowing what it is, I don't find it to be helpful for them either. The design is there to be helpful - but clicking on "parents" "kids" or "educators" takes you to the same area. It does just enough to maybe convince someone they want to do it, but then provides no useful information beyond that. It's also pretty blatantly biased towards "starting a new team" rather than finding an existing team. I know I would never recommend someone to start a new team without first finding an existing team.

Seems to me that those 4 things of parents, kids, educators, volunteers should be something more like "new participants", "existing participants" and "volunteers"

[GBK]

I think the website is just another example of how FIRST is more worried about growth than it is about growing a sustainable, respectable program. They seen to forget (or not care) that this program is run by volunteers and many of them have full time jobs. We don't have time to try to figure out how something works this year differently than last year. They should be making every effort to make it as easy on the volunteers that are making the program work as they can.
If FIRST keeps going on its current Marketing heavy path and ignoring the volunteers that make the program work, it is going to suffer a huge drop in workforce.

[MooreteP]

Originally Posted by philso

You might be right but once FIRST has drawn in these new people (students, mentors, volunteers), the rest of the interface has to actually work or they will go away.

Yep, once they have set the hook, you are food.

I agree with Ron. I brace myself every time I have to click on FirstInspires.
I know I am entering the rabbit hole of poor customer service.
A significant time vampire.

I am about to begin the STIMS process. Trepidation looms large.

I am choosing to soldier through this misunderstanding..... for now.

[snoman]

STIMS is terrible. Very hard to find information. Not intuitive at all. The old one was much better. I have used High school sites that are much better (not ours but..)

[IndySam]

It's just more evidence that FIRST doesn't understand who their customers are.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by IndySam

It's just more evidence that FIRST doesn't understand who their customers are.

Possibly.

Or they just don't understand that users shouldn't have to go through a maze just to get to what they're looking for! To get TO any given "end site", it takes several different clicks. That would turn off anybody.

[gblake]

Folks,

In my personal interactions with the folks at HQ, they do really care about each student, each volunteer, each teacher, each parent, and each team; but ...

Not everything they do is a home run.

And, in some periods, it's all they can do to deal with the subjects that keep catching their hair on fire .

It's not that the other subjects aren't important; it's that they get crowded out by subjects that are also important, and are even more urgent .

Somewhere, there is a person, who knows a person, who knows the person at First HQ who is the live human that needs to both hear these complaints from a helpful squeaky wheel, and publish some work-arounds.

Maybe someone who is suffering through the processes can volunteer to pick up a phone, start playing the anyone-shoud-be-able-to-reach-the-President-in-N-or-fewer-phone-calls game, and make that person-to-person connection with HQ?

Whoever does it can then report to this thread what they find out.

Blake

[bdaroz]

We had an after school team meeting today. One of the parents drive in to pick up their child (who was going to carpool with another student) because they tried to sign up in STIMS and couldn't figure out what to do.

I'd almost be slightly more sympathetic if the interfaces that us more technical-minded used were a bit more 'difficult', but if you want to inspire the kids, you need the parents to buy-in and STIMS is anything but inspiring. In fact it's downright off-putting.

I think we may be going to an all-paper roster this year.

[snoman]

Fight to get 1 or 2 students into STIMS for awards, Per team. EVERYONE bring paper rosters this year. Make a statement.

[codedr]

I am an veteran volunteer and mentor. I could not find the following information:
(A) Volunteer for an Event.
Goto FRC, click on 'volunteer' and you get a helpful message about volunteering, but no where is there a button that takes you to VIMS. Try typing 'VIMS' in the search box, and you get a bunch of links, but none are the VIMS website. I wound up typing FIRST VIMS into google.

(B) Confirm that I am registered with my team for this season. Am I ? Who can tell.

(C) Find the FIRST calendar. (google: USFIRST calendar)

UI and UX designers test interfaces by taking novice users and giving them a task or two on an App. I defy FIRST to do the same (1) Find a team in my area for my student. (2) Volunteer with a team. (3) Volunteer for an event.

If experienced users in FIRST cannot do it, how can we attract any new people ?

[bdaroz]

Ok, I know I'm just as guilty of "venting" about STIMS/TIMS/VIMS/website/registration and everything but the kitchen sink... but maybe we should set an example and change the direction of discussion:

How can we help fix this?

[cpapplefamily]

My gripe lately is the Kick Off registration. How can the list of locations not be in some order? It seems random or in order of location creation. We are still waiting for our location to get listed. Or regional coordinator said they are working on the details still.

Yes we too gripe about getting the kids registered and the whole event registration process.


Angel from Team 3161 put together a tutorial to sign up in STIMS. Its worth a look.
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/s...38&postcount=9

[Roger]

I read upstream that searching for an event in Texas is a range bigger than a ZIP code or a 100 mile circle (which to this small state of Massachusetts is ).

But come on -- I'm in a District. If I want to compare events to volunteer I have to click-click-click re-enter all the info to go to different states within the New England District, then click-click-click back again. Can't we have a District list choice?

Originally Posted by cpapplefamily

How can the list of locations not be in some order?

The way I think the order is in is by Name. So you have to know the name of the event to learn what the event name is. Or scroll thru the entire list.

[maxnz]

Originally Posted by bdaroz

How can we help fix this?

What if FIRST uploads the website code to GitHub and makes it open-source so whenever someone has some free time they can help out. And GitHub already has the owners vet each commit before making it a part of the website.

Also, some of the old game documents need to be easier to find. If you're trying to look through old KOP lists to figure out what something is, it gets difficult. And only some of the links on the archived site still work - so if you get to the right page, you still might not be able to get the files. IIRC, there was a Google Drive folder that had all of the game documentation going back to 1992. I don't remember where it was, but I saw it here on CD about 9 months ago. Really, we need to make the resource library more user-friendly. And make finding useful pages a lot easier. Maybe like the wpilib site.

TL;DR - FIRST should make the website open-source and make historical and current non-game manual and non-KOP list game documentation easier to find.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by maxnz

IIRC, there was a Google Drive folder that had all of the game documentation going back to 1992. I don't remember where it was, but I saw it here on CD about 9 months ago.

Technokats History Project. Speaking of which, if any of team 45 happens to read this, last time I tried to use it I couldn't get more than one layer into any given folder, so more publicly-available depth would be vastly appreciated.