New User Experience Upgrade - share your feedback and bugs

­
Hey bb

Initially, when I noticed this change, I thought this might be because the site takes me to the mobile version. Now I am enjoying the new UI but could you pls tell me more about it?­

Thanks,
Pooja­

­Hi bb,
Congratulations on the new UI, it is much cleaner and better!
but I really miss the old forum feature where it allowed you to select your own set of questions through checkbox and make a quiz out of those questions. Do we plan to bring it back?

Thanks for the new look!­

Great Changes GMATClub Team

A quick question, did we remove the section that had error log, Unaswered post etc. from the home page? I don't see that on the Forum homepage, but I can access it on subpages (the ones that have questions). I am a super fan of this shortcut bar, and I am sad to see it go from the home page.  

Its a great change overall. 

Screenshots :




­

 

­Yes, we removed this link row from the homepage. However, you can still access the Error Log from the toolkit, along with other useful items.





You'll also be able to access Unanswered, Active Topics, New Posts, and Newcomers' Posts from the homepage once we update the Hot Topics page in the toolkit.

As mentioned above, this is only the first stage of the forum design update, focusing on the main forum page and subforums. More updates will come in the next stages.­

Here are the main changes we implemented in Stage 1:


1. The overall look

We updated the forum's overall look, colors, layout, links, and buttons. We removed many unnecessary elements to create a fresher, more user-friendly, and less confusing experience.

2. The Sidebar

We introduced the Sidebar with the most used and useful menu items.
­

You can view the items in each element by hovering over them with the mouse:



Or simply open the Sidebar by clicking the hamburger menu at the top.



We will monitor the popularity of the elements and may rotate them based on user feedback.­


3. The Prep Toolkit

We also introduced The Prep Toolkit, which contains the main features, products, and tools needed for GMAT preparation and the MBA journey.

­

You can also access the toolkit from the bottom of every page by clicking on "Toolkit." From there, it contains more items:



4. Footer

We updated the forum footer. It now contains links to our app in the App Store and Google Play, as well as links to all our social media platforms:




5. Business School Discussions

We completely revamped the Business School Discussions page HERE:
 ­



You can now subscribe to a school from that page and pin your favorite schools at the top with the pin icon. We also introduced several sortable columns, such as GMAT and GRE scores by school, Financial Times and US News rankings, and more.

Moreover, you can access and pin the school forums from the Schools element of the sidebar:



 ­
6. Layout and Look of the Sub-Forum Pages

We completely changed the appearance of subforums, making them less cramped and less confusing. For example:

Kellog forum:




Data Sufficiency forum:




7. The Decision Tracker

We also updated the look of the Decision Tracker. It now has its own icon, distinct color, and a convenient navigation menu.




In addition, we revamped the appearance and filters of the other tabs for a more cohesive and user-friendly experience:


________________________________________________________________________

There are many more other changes throughout the forum that you can explore on your own. We’ve made numerous minor adjustments to enhance usability and aesthetics.

Lastly, please note that this is only the first phase of our design overhaul. We will update all pages of the forum step by step. As a result, the current appearance might seem unfinished, and some changes might not look as intended at this time. We appreciate your patience as we continue to improve the forum experience.­­

­The upgrade is quite beneficial. It looks really on point.

Maybe the colors look a bit "washout." A minuscule contrast would improve the readability, but that's just a tiny and personal consideration.

Great job  

­Man,honestly, i don't like  much because of color ,maybe, old version was blue and it was more comfortable . Maybe, i am in the proccess of adaptation)

Let me apply something that MBA's learn at some point in time. BB, please consider my questions below lightly:
1. Did you change something because it was broken? If not, then why change?
2. How would you address the need for change management here? Some of us could have a huge resistance to change, be it just the layout, color, etc.
3. Did you prepare the users for this tsunami of change in advance? Or was this thrown as a surprise purposefully?

Regardless, if this move is progressive in any way for you and or the users, then well done, and thanks for being there.
Cheers

Damn too much bright. Rest of changes are great.

­
Thank you so much for sharing heartfelt feedback. I take it that there’s some things that you feel uncertain or inconvenienced or unhappy about. I would love to hear more specifics. 

I have to admit is that the new user experience is also an adjustment to me. I was the spark but not the product manager putting in hundreds of hours of work into it. Not all decisions here are mine and I had to compromise my preferences too. if it were for me, nothing would ever change  

A little bit of background, we have started with the update of the least impactful pages. We only updated the home and sub-forum pages. We have added a left hand side bar that I hope will help new folks orient a bit better. 

The goals of this ambitious. I would say very ambitious refresh has been to improve the usability on the website, get rid of the features that are no longer used by users, emphasize the feautres that are used, and make the site less overwhelming for new members. Our last update happened in 2013 so we are on a nice and comfortable 10 year refresh schedule 🫣

In terms of user experience, we have conducted multiple focus groups with primarily new members. Because while every old member used to be a new member, not every new member becomes an old member. To learn the points of new members and we wanted to find solutions to solve those pain points. I’m not going to say that we did the perfect and fantastic job. But with the site using 10-year-old design, every year it was becoming more and more dated and less than less coherent for a new member. Meanwhile, fancy sexy websites are elevating user experience, and gmatclub may not be getting worse, it is getting worse when compared to the average web experience. 

In terms of preparing users to the new experience, I’m not sure about the best way of doing that. However, we made the choice to not announce the new experience because of unpredictability of our meager development resources. For example, our plan was to release the new user experience sometime in June 2023. However, the announcement of GMAT Focus has thrown a major curveball requiring significant changes to the site, GMAT Club tests and setting us back almost a year. For example, the focus groups we have done were conducted in April and May 2023. We already had multiple designs and versions but because of limited development resources, we had to prioritize other items. 

As with every change, they are positives and negatives. We are obviously wanting to reduce the negatives and emphasize the positives. Save any negatives, please let me know. We want to know what are the points and we want to improve the experience.  we have the time and opportunity right now and resources. I can say as an old timer, it is always hard. It was hard in 2013. It took time to transition and fix some of the bumpy points.

Again, I highly encourage any specific and actionable or even vague and confusing feedback so we can take it into account and make the best decision going forward. I’m hoping we will be able to finish the conversion in the few upcoming months unless of course there are more curveballs. ­

­I would like to ask if it would make sense to have an option (maybe in the user profile ) to hide or to have the menu sidebar fixed to show up.

Also would be interesting to have a panel  - always in the user setting - to have a menu bar with the elements I want. For example, we have now

1) Home
2) MBA Fair
3) GMAT
4) Messages
5) and so on

I have a simple panel to mark with a tick on what I want or not to show up.

Maybe I am not interested to have the icon "social".............

OR a mixed sidebar: Some elements are fixed, such as the GMAT shortcut to jump directly to the subforum I want to visit and others I can have or not based on my preference.

The user experience would be more flexible. I, for instance, am a minimalist of menus in general, and I am usually not interested in MBA fairs or schools—usually only in the GMAT. This way, I could have just the icons I am interested in:

1) GMAT icon
2) Messages
3) Chats
4) My profile

Of course, I am saying this with the idea in mind of satisfying all the forum users, old and new.

Nonetheless, the menu bar, as it is positioned right now, is perfect on the left side.

regards­

Great work on this refreshing UI! To be honest, I actually did not like the old dated forum look, but this is much modern and cool and easy to use.

Good luck, team!

I love the new UI. However, I did not find the button that takes me to the Forum Quiz.
For example, when I open a forum link and I would like to do the question in the GMAT-like interface, I would normally click the button at the top right corner

Kindly bring this Feature back, 
this was very useful while doing RCs 

­

I can't find how I can filter questions based on 2 or more topics (i.e Algebra and Level 600 Questions). Is it still possible or did you remove this feature?

Hi. I sent you a PM.

Posted from my mobile device

I've finally found it in the question bank section. I think I saved the wrong link before
https://gmatclub.com/forum/search.php?view=search_tags