[Ed: This was originally published on the afternoon of June 14. During the evening of the same day, an e-mail from Aniolek caused me to write the supplemental information located at the bottom of this article. A special thanks goes out to Aniolek who took the time to make comments.]
Resisting change is a part of the universe. All sorts of fancy schmancy scientific laws and theorems and postulates talk about how virtually everything resists change. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest. You've got to put energy into water to change it into steam. The whole gravity thing. Things just don't like to change (which is something I've always thought peculiar since the entire universe is progressing toward chaos anyway). Human beings are no exception to the rule, and in general, they also resist change in their environments and lives. And so, in keeping with these scientific principles, it is of no surprise that I personally am resisting the changes made to Decipher's Web site, and it is also little wonder that the site has, without a doubt, progressed toward chaos.
Oh do I hate the new decipher.com, let me count the ways...
Everyday that I've been on the Decipher BBS for the last few weeks, I post a simple reminder that the site redesign "stinks like old cheese." About a week into the campaign, I began to ask myself if I hated the fact that they changed something that was very familiar to me or if I really hated the redesign. My conclusion: while I do miss the comfort of the old design, there are serious flaws and design errors that make the site look amateur and shoddy.
Let me start with the decipher.com homepage. The day it opened there was a message stating that the new decipher.com v. 2.0 was fast, swank, and fat-free. That's one for three there folks, and I'm not so sure the fat-free thing counts. The new page is the farthest thing from swank...it is the anti-swank. The page is gaudy, crowded, and cluttered. Whoever picked the colors, orange and purple, shouldn't be allowed to dress himself in the morning , much less design pages for all the world to see. The tiny icons saying "Get ready for Endor," "Released Young Jedi CCG," and "The Art of war - Blaze of Glory" are NOT your typical, professional graphics from Decipher. In fact, they look more like something some like a kid would do if he wandered into the PaintShop Pro software on his PC. All of the fonts are entirely too small ( I wasn't lying when I said that I recently had to go get glasses - I was getting daily headaches from being on the computer so much for work. Tiny fonts on the pages I view for leisure were the straw that broke the errataed Eopie's back), and whoever decided to create that miniature nav bar on the upper left should be taken outside and whipped with a Battle Droid: Infantry, AAT Division that costs too much to deploy. I have no idea who thought that everything needed to be squished onto the home page, but it's probably the dumbest thing I've see in terms of Web design in a long time.
If you are somehow undeterred by the unfortunate homepage and manage to click on the icon for the game you play, the next screen that greets you is equally horrible. The clutter and tiny fonts will follow you, but now you've got another problem...the wretched index tab-style layout. To be perfectly honest, I just think that this is ugly. The colors, the layout, all of it...it's ugly. I understand that the point was to increase the accessibility of the other parts of the site, but certainly there is another way that doesn't look as if it's part of my fifth grade homework notebook. And while I'm complaining, what made the designers think that the new design was faster? At first I just thought that the load time seemed longer because the graphics and stuff weren't in my PC's cache. Nope--it just takes longer to load.
As for the thing I hate the most - they got rid of "What's New." Sure you can look in the three different places that they post stuff: "Latest News," "Today on Site," and "More of What's New," but why should we have to? What on earth was wrong with a one-stop place for all new information that could be accessed from any page on the site? It just doesn't make sense.
I understand that it was time for Decipher to redesign their site. Young Jedi certainly needed it's own section, and it only makes sense that decipher.com reflect the arrival of the newest CCG, as well as the existence of some of Decipher's other products (BTW, I've played Pente, Girl Power, and a few of the Murder Mysteries - very good stuff). In addition, there really was a need to make information easier to find on the site. But the new design is simply not up to par with what we all know Decipher is capable of. For a company that prides itself on creating great art, its Web site is a poor testament to its abilities. Simplicity and elegance are trademarks of Decipher's art; I challenge the Web designers to rethink the technological terror they've created.
Supplement: When this was originally authored, I neglected to recognize the fact that Decipher took the time to design and administer an online survey to see what the users of decipher.com liked and didn't like. I distinctly remember the survey itself, as well as the results that were published a few weeks later. It is to Decipher's credit that they invested their resources in this kind of information gathering. It is even more impressive that they actually used those survey results to implement change and to attempt to better serve their users.
It is unfortunate that the end result of the redesign was less than appealing to many, but I wanted to make sure that Decipher's good intentions and solid customer relations principles were recogized. As an adiitional comment, I was sent the link to the equivalent of the "What's New" page. Special thanks to Moff Phrim and Aniolek for that. However, I still wish that the "Whats New" link was available from any part of the site. It was something I used frequenty.
Queen Jawa