Need ~20 volunteers to test new page on site

I’ll do it. I’m not tech savy so I’m a good example of if it’s user friendly

I see you have more than enough help Len. I am interested and would live to see if you could plan more than one trip at a time. If any one drops out I would love to check it out. Could you also make sure you test different browsers?

I’m planning a trip for Dec so I’m happy to help.

If you want more than 20, I’m in too!

Thanks everyone! Responses through MissingDisney will be the first round of testing. Those who volunteered after will be in subsequent tests, either for this release or the next.

Testing should start tomorrow, and I’ll update here when the new code has been released.

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Okay folks, the new dashboard area will look something like this on desktops. A mobile version will follow soon.

Keep in mind that the primary audience is inexperienced families headed to a theme park. I realize that all of you are veterans who can plan a trip in 10 minutes. Some of you probably have a “go bag” in the car in case Orbitz has a sale today. We’re targeting someone who just joined the site and is trying to figure out what they need to do for their family to have fun, with a budget.

I’ve put orange highlights and numbers in the screen capture below, to organize the following explanation.

(1) In the upper right corner is a link to your dashboard. If you visit any other page on the site and need to get back to the dashboard, click this link. This is useful if you need to research something that isn’t implemented in the dashboard.

(2) is the “My Trips” section. This shows which trips you’re planning, and how many days you have until you leave.

If you have multiple trips planned, we’ll highlight in yellow the “active” trip you’re currently working on. Clicking on any other trip will make it active. Trips are organized by upcoming visit date, so your next trip will be at the top of the list.

(3) on the left side navigation area (“left nav”) is your Trip Checklist. It’s a list of reminders of things to do to plan your trip, with links to the various parts of the site where you can get more information on each step. For example, the “Buy Tickets” section will take you to our Least Expensive Ticket calculator page.

(4) on the right side (“right nav”) is information about you and your trips, with links to your username and password, subscriptions, crowd tracking info for this trip, touring plans, discussions and chats, and more. This will also be the place where we put alerts, reminders and messages.

(5) in the middle, is a quick view of what’s happening every day of your trip. You’ll be able to plan and update your daily activities here.

The planner should work for any destination you’ve subscribed to. So if you’re got subs to DLR and WDW, you should be able to plan trips to both. Let me know if you need another subscription for testing.

What I want to know from this test is whether the right/middle/left layout is a reasonable approach, if everything on the screen works, and any suggestions for making it easier to use. Specifically, here are two questions to answer:

  1. What’s Broken? If there’s a link that doesn’t work, a button that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to, or some other piece of functionality that doesn’t do what it should, note it here, preferably with steps to reproduce the problem.

  2. What Could Be Done Better? We want to make sure the screen is useful and arranged logically. Suggestions that would help this are things like “The Trip Details should include how many people are going, so I remember to buy the right number of tickets” and “If the weather is predicted to be bad, put a red box around it so I know to plan for it.”

Here’s how I’d like to see those “Could be better” suggestions made
Bear with me while I explain this, because I think it’s a useful technique from anyone who needs to get input and consensus from a large group of people. Feel free to use this in your day job;I got it from mine.

The basic principle is that all feedback must be actionable, constructive, and take into account all of the other feedback that has already been given. Or, as my former boss used to say, “You can’t just say no.”

Here’s an example, and it’s based on what I did wrong the first time I did this with my boss.

“I hate the color red.”

That’s definitely feedback, but we can’t do anything with it. Specifically, it’s not actionable, because it doesn’t tell us what else to try.

“I hate the color red. I know some people have already said they like it, but Daisy suggested blue. I like blue.”

That’s better, but it’s not a solution that takes in to account the feedback from the people who like red. Specifically, there’s no clear path to compromise with what’s already been said.

A more useful suggestion might be “Some people like red. Others like blue. Can we try something in the purple spectrum?”

That’s something we can work with, because we can try red and blue ends of the spectrum, and the middle, to see if any of those are a good compromise.

In the event that consensus can’t be reached, I’ll make a decision, taking in to account things like how doable each alternative is, and how many people are on either side of the alternatives.

I’m happy to keep this conversation in this thread. Let me know if I’ve missed anything, and I’ll update this post with the answers.

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That looks great @Lentesta I love that you have included the countdown timers and links for more info about each section. I really look forward to seeing it in action!

wow. @Lentesta. Gonna take a few minutes to look this over. Speaking of subscriptions and such, I have the DLR and Universal subscription, but under my other TP account. I’ll be emailing soon to see if I can “merge” the accounts so to speak to just my Darth Dopey account.

Let me know if you still need volunteers!!

I’d love to test it if you need more users.

This will be fun! I have two WDW trips planned right now, so I can use real data. I was planning on subscribing to the other areas, so I will go ahead with that. Plan a dream trip to one of those to get multiple destinations.

Will check it out later today. Finished work and need a nap

FYI, the dashboard is up now. If you’re on the testing list, you should be able to see it. Thanks ya’ll!

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@sarah If i’m supposed to be in the testing I cannot see it. I posted pretty early on. Not too worried about it just wanted to let you know in case I should be.

Guess I should have also asked if it was at the normal address lol.

Shows up at the very top on the right for me @ThatDisneyGuy_outer1

Odd… I’ll have to clear out my cache later and try again. Might be storing an older version of the page.

@Lentesta This is great! I really like it a lot. I don’t see anything ‘broken.’ All of the links seems to work and took me to appropriate places.

Feedback/Suggestions:

  1. What is this: “Loyalty Program Statuses: None selected”

  2. The font seems like it would be a bit small for some users. Maybe the font inside the center box could go up a step?

  3. I successfully added 2 trips. For the one with dates overlapping my existing personalized TPs, it auto-added them to the plan… NICE! AWESOME! When I added the second trip though, it wasn’t immediately clear to me where the first one went. I ultimately found it with the yellow on the left, but if possible, it might be nice for the second trip to be in a box below the first one. Like, when I clicked the red ‘add new trip’ I thought it would add it in that space.

  4. Like that it has a countdown!

  5. There seems to be some redundancy… like, the crowd tracker section on the right brings you to the same place that the date section does above the weather, which is the same link as the one for ‘view park crowds.’ I’d ditch the crowd tracker box on the right for this reason. Is it auto-adding your dates to the crowd tracker for email purposes?

  6. The ‘destinations’ box similarly seems unnecessary to have in the dashboard from a user standpoint. Though I can see that it might be there to (a) make people aware of the other parts of TP, and (b) sell upgrades. Not a criticism, just didn’t seem totally necessary if you were trying to streamline the look. If anything, I’d move this to the bottom. I liked that chat and the forums were linked though!

  7. I expected weather info when I clicked on the date in the weather box, which brought me to in park crowds. TP isn’t a weather program, but since the link was in there thats where I expected it to take me.

  8. Might be nice to add a photo of your resort (maybe give us the option to select it) at the top or bottom, something to bring some more excitement about your specific trip to the page.

All in all, this seems like a great addition to TP! Bravo!

-999

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Loyalty programs is for DCL Castaway Club. Perhaps we shouldn’t list it if it’s NA.

Ahh, I see. Maybe if you just changed it to “Cruise Line Loyalty Status” that would at least clear things up for people (like me, and new-to-disney users) who know nothing about DCL. Or if you omitted it only from trip dashboards that aren’t DCL, though that sounds like its probably more complicated. Thanks! :smile: