Zephyr design and usability issues

I appreciate all you do for the community with Spiro. Unfortunately I have some negative feedback on the new Zephyr design. It's an absolute train wreck from a design and usability standpoint. I say that not to just complain, but hopefully to let you know how important it is to improve it. Here are just a few points:

  1. The top navigation gets buried in the photo and can be virtually invisible (e.g., blue text on blue sky, white text of white walls, black text on green trees, etc.).

  2. The street address text in the hero photo breaks to two lines if too long even though there is plenty of space to the right. This really messes with company names when using this design for a portfolio.

  3. The address is duplicated below the hero image. Totally unnecessary and adds extra scrolling.

  4. There is no clear heading level hierarchy or design. Some are all caps, some are title case, some are centered while others are left aligned. It makes no sense and adds a ton of cognitive load for users. This is design 101.

  5. The file links on the video and floorplans are truncated at 9-10 characters. This is way too short since these always have longer names. The truncation without even a hover display of the entire name means it's impossible to know what these are before you click on them. This is totally unacceptable from a usability standpoint.

  6. There is no visual alignment of the elements in the Agent info section. It makes no sense at all.


I've worked with UX design and usability on SaaS products for 30 years doing heuristic evaluations and usability testing, so I'm not just giving you an opinion here. These are fundamental design and usability principles. I also know the challenges your team faces creating new features and designs. I've been there! This time I'm on the other side of the fence. Like the thousands of B2B users I interviewed over the years, I'll say the same thing -- I can tolerate poor usability on the back end (although I think that's not good for you since I'm your customer) but I have a higher standard for what I'm putting in front of my clients. The number one reason I would consider using another deliver platform is to give my clients a better user experience. I don't think Zephyr is even close to the level it should be to help me compete with the listing platforms my competitors are using.

I hope this sparks some rethinking of the design, or at least adds to the feedback.

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Upvoters
Status

In Review

Board

πŸ’‘ Feature Request

Date

8 months ago

Author

Steve Bright

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