Feedback Wanted On The Redesigned Website

Tamsin

Hello Beta Testers,

We appreciate all the feedback you have given us on the rebranded mobile app, and we're excited to announce that you can now try the rebranded desktop version.

We would love to hear your thoughts on the rebranded website. Click here to take a look!

For now, the desktop version is ready for Basic and Gold users, but we are still working on getting the Pro version ready for our professional users.

We encourage you to post any feedback to this discussion, or start a new discussion in the 'Beta Testing' section of the forum. If reporting a bug, please clearly outline what actions you were taking so we can best try to reproduce it!

If you're looking for more details on our new look, check out this blog where we dive into what's changed and why.

We look forward to your feedback!
Tamsin

BJai

Initial impressions - I like it!

I mainly use the web version anyway so am pleased to see you are updating it.

It is on my Samsung fridge running Tizen. This works much better on that. Previously there was a lot of wasted space in the middle of the screen which meant that the font had to be much smaller than was desirable to fit the whole diary rows.

On Tizen everything fits much better and is easy to input.

I also use it on my Windows desktop. That seems fine too.

JMC444

I like it! I played around with it a bit, and everything worked so far. 99% of the time I use the mobile app, but I'll head over to the desktop for the next few days whenever I want to update, change etc. I do like when you choose to Add Food from the Dashboard, the Diary pops up on the background, and the Dashboard goes away. Nice.

I would note that the link to click to see more details on the updated look (in the email announcing this updated look) takes me to a September 2017 post. This is a bit confusing. Is there an updated blog about the newest design?

AdamL

Hello,

I use both the desktop and the mobile app pretty heavily throughout the day every day. Cronometer has been an essential part of my effort to lose nearly 40 pounds over the last two years. As of just a week ago, I am officially no longer "overweight"! Thanks to the whole Cronometer team for enabling me to accomplish this.

I will say, I was a dreading the inevitable re-skin of Cronometer application. The existing interface is super useful, offering a lot of information at a glance, but modern UX regimes have been eliminating these kinds of interfaces from my life, one-by-one. I knew it was only a matter of time before this happened to Cronometer.

After playing with it for a few minutes, my initial impressions of the new skin are, of course, that it looks very clean and modern, with more negative space and less "clutter" on the screen. I am sure this will help greatly with on-boarding and retaining new users. So for that reason, I am positive toward the changes.

However, the downside is that finding the same amount of information now requires a lot more scrolling, clicking and scanning with my eyes than it used to. I will definitely miss having the one-touch calendar alongside the diary for easily comparing days, and
I will also kind of miss the progress graphs alongside the diary. Please at least consider a "compact" mode in the display settings that brings everything closer together, just to make it more comfortable with those of us who are familiar with the interface.

There are a couple of things I like better with the new version. Seeing my macros in the diary's section headers is super useful. And I like the new navigation menu as it makes it easier to get to the Nutrition Report!

Overall, the changes did a better job of preserving the usability than I expected, as I've seen much greater reductions of utility out of redesigns from other teams. So for that, I am pretty relieved and it does look really nice. I will be continuing to use the current version until I am forced to make the switch, but I am not dreading it as much as was before.

Finally, the new logo is atrocious. I hate to see the current version awkwardly forced into the flat, soulless style of modern design. Again, I guess I understand why it had to be done, but it definitely has lost a lot of personality. The current one is much better in every sense, except for the fact that it doesn't fit in with the existing trends. The new one looks kind of like a confusing pumpkin. Maybe it would be better to just start from scratch?

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Thanks for reading!

OUTmuscle

The beta looks nice. Pretty easy to find what I'm looking for and I'm sure that will improve with experience.

The one area you need to fix is when you add a food, it pops up your choices but you can only see 2-3 food items. This is extremely annoying to the point I really don't like the beta version. That window needs to be bigger. See picture.

OUTmuscle

FYI, I really like the new logo! Everything from the other user who didn't like it I disagree with. I always tell my clients to look for this weird logo. I think of everything you're doing, the logo is a minor issue and maybe it can be tweaked but I do like it way better than that old looking thing.

Mert22

First glance at the beta had me wondering if I had inadvertently magnified my browser. AdamL is on point with his "compact mode" observation. All the added scrolling and scanning is not how I wish to burn minutes or calories! The overall size increase affects all the views and dropdowns similarly. The existing web version is fine and I won't change until I must.

Journeyer

I spent the day using the new web version, paralleling how I used the old version. As far as getting around and making it do what I want, I did not have any issues. It's very nice, and having the Dashboard etc at the left instead of the top is fine. But everything is just too big. I have to scroll and scroll and scroll to see things -- up - down - up - down. I agree with what OUTmuscle said, but not just when adding a food to the diary, but the diary itself. I like to be able to see my meals together, compare them one to the next, etc. I can see 22 lines of input on the old version on my laptop screen -- on the new version I get 14, so I have to zoom down to 67% on my browser to get the same effect, which is a little too small. AdamL suggested a "compact mode" -- that sounds good. Thanks for even having the free Basic version available and giving us folks a chance to comment on the beta!

ItsJulieP

1. Add Foods.
   Only shows two or three lines. It's more work to have to scroll for something that I know is two or three lines away. Also, I like to see a longer list of hits that match my search.

2. Energy summary.
   I cannot see my Energy History on the Diary page. I like to scan that info when deciding if I can afford more calories for the day or week while looking at my current day diary.

3. Calendar.
   While reviewing my Energy History, I sometimes like to see what I ate on a certain day with an unusual high or low net. Since the calendar is now a popup, and the Energy History on another tab, I am unable to do that without effort and memory of which day I want to look at.

4. Spacing.
   One of the things I like about Cronometer is that the information is compact. The more I can see on one page the happier I am. It seems like there is a lot of white space in the beta version.

It does look nice though.

raccoon

My nitpicks:

The dashboard, right now, just splits off information that was already entirely on the diary before. On the existing site, I find it convenient that I can click through the calendar for diary pages without opening a modal and view my net calories and weight graph without leaving the diary view. I think it'd be acceptable to just have the dashboard and calendar above the diary on desktop.

Everything is jarringly big for a desktop site, or even for my tablet. It seems like a waste, because otherwise the responsive layout would make it way nicer to put in a small window (whereas the existing site is strictly 1024px wide). In particular:

• The diary takes up way more vertical space to show nearly the same rows as before, and the Add Food modal is huge and doesn't have nearly as many rows as before.
• The new nutrient breakdown doesn't even come close to fitting on one screen, while the existing one is pretty convenient to scan.
• The sidebar takes up a lot of horizontal space, and just feels really imposing. I don't really agree at all that it saves more space than a tab bar on top; it's all text, which takes up way more horizontal space than vertical. Sure, I can choose between wasting space and reducing the menu to monochrome icons I can't parse as easily, but I don't enjoy that tradeoff.

It might be irrational, but a more spacey, rounded, mobile-y design subtly affects my feelings about the application, too. A compact presentation feels more professional; more singularly focused on the data.

Also, a small layout issue: the Add Food / Exercise / Biometric / Note widget doesn't scale down, so it just falls off the edges of its bounding box at smaller widths.

Otherwise,

I like how the Energy Summary pie charts show the full breakdown when you hover over them instead of fiddly seperate tooltips for each category.

The charts look a little prettier, in general.

The new logo is good and more legible at 'favicon size' (even if flat lineart's a little less charming in my opinion), and the brand colours and typeface are great too. Only real complaint there is the bits of text at 14px / 400 weight (like the items in the diary) seem a little thin, but maybe that's just me.

Most importantly, despite my gripes above, everything I use still exists in the new design, and all my existing familiarity carries over; no perfectly good features were "simplified away". I'll be sticking with the current one for now, but really, as far as site redesigns go, it's pretty unobtrusive.

Aaron

Thanks everyone for all the fantastic feedback! We've just refreshed the beta site with some changes that address some of the concerns. In particular we've tightened up some of the padding and sizes to improve information density, and improved the food search dialog to show more items and make better use of the screen space available.