Subject:
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my biggest problem with www.lego.com
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Sun, 17 Oct 1999 03:51:13 GMT
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Viewed:
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576 times
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I've got fast net to the house, am completely java enabled when I
choose to be, and have no technical problems with the site. I gotta
say, it looks pretty cool.
And I still think it's awful.
Larry mentioned the need for cognitive direction for a good web
site. IMHO, that's what these pages are missing the most. For most
of what you would want to do on lego's site, the web pages get in
the way, or keep you from doing it at all.
Let me give a longish example that I'm doing in part to think
through what I might mail to Lego.
Suppose I want to find out what technic sets Lego is selling this year.
In my ideal world, this would be a single web page listing all the
technic sets, or perhaps a few different pages each with different
categories of sets. You could see them as a little thumbnail (since
the names are basically useless unless you know what they are already).
Surely Lego has a page like this on their site, I think to myself.
If I built the site, it would take two clicks to get there:
Main page
1 -> catalogs
2 -> technic
On the current www.lego.com, it's a confusing maze:
Main page.
X. Follow weird bubbles, resulting in dead ends #1 & #2. [1]
1. Toys -> Toy High Level Page
2. Technical Action -> Technic High Level Page
3. Choose "Technic Starter" image -> Page with some models
4. Guess! Pick motorcyle -> Detail of motorcycle page.
5. Aha. Go to "pull down" window of various models.
Agh! Some models are listed, but is this all of them? (no)
I wonder which ones I'm interested in?
6. Pick the first one... 8226 Mud Masher. -> Mud Masher page
Agh! I have to pick _each_ catalog item to see what it is?
This is awful... there must be some other way.
Dig my way back to "Technic High Level Page", choose "catalog".
To be fair to the click count, let's pretend I did this the first
time around.
3. Catalog -> "Where do you live" page.
(Weird. The other pages didn't ask this.)
4. North America -> America Online Catalog
5. Technic -> Page with Starter / Advanced / Slizer / Cyberslam
(Weird. The other pages had different groupings.)
6. Starter -> The Mud Masher page. AUGH!
Ok, it is not possible to get a simple list of technic products
that Lego sells from their web site.
Perhaps I'm not being fair... maybe this question was rigged.
What other things do I want to do when I go to Lego's web site?
1. Find out what Star Wars sets there are. My count:
3 Dead ends.
4 clicks. Same awful interface to the catalog.
2. Buy some primo for my son on-line, or find out how to buy it
from Lego Shop At Home.
1 Huge Dead End (the world shop)
1 Dead end (parents) in which I actually find a primo catalog
in the form that I wanted for Technic, leading to my suspicion
that the page must be out there somewhere... it's just hiding.
1 Dead end (about us)
Eventually giving up - no way to buy primo on line from Lego,
and if all you had were the web pages, you wouldn't know that
Lego Shop @ Home exists.
3. Play a web-based video game
2 clicks
1 login. I bail, having no desire to get my email address
on yet another mailing list.
Unknown number of clicks after that.
(Note - I have no desire to play web-based games. That's
what I buy real video games for. But presumably Lego thinks
people want to, and probably many kids do.)
4. Find out what to do about the fact that this box of lego
I just bought is missing a crucial piece. After all, most
companies have "customer support" on the web.
Hmm.. poke at various places, finding nothing helpful.
Well, maybe there's this:
About Us -> Addresses -> USA -> Lego
Not quite what I was looking for.
5. Find out how to get to Legoland.
4 clicks. Not bad.
While trying to back out, I find that I can't use 'back'
to get off the legoland page... I keep getting forced back
onto that page. Argh. Fortunately I know how to tell my
browser to get past bad stuff like this, but many people
don't.
6. Sign up for a Lego catalog.
Not possible.
7. Send feedback to the Lego web folks.
Poke around a bit, eventually finding a poll. But there's
no way to register unhappiness about the poll. Argh!
8. Find pointers to other Lego-related resources on the web.
Heh.
When I'm all done, here is what I think:
- The lego web pages are intended to impress and to convey
a certain attitude and look.
- The lego web pages are there for young kids to go and play
like a video game, and while they're there, they'll see
lots of images of stuff to buy.
- There is no useful consumer information on the pages.
- Actually, I still believe it might be there somewhere, but
it's very hidden.
- I won't bother going back.
Sigh. I'm sure there are people at Lego who could do something
about this. But, on the other hand, if I could only get one
message through to Lego, it wouldn't be about this. It would
be "bulk ordering". So it's time to stop this rant and go
build something. (Like this 512 cpu Linux cluster I should
be working on rather than procastinating and reading news.)
Cheers,
-r'm
Footnote:
[1] On the main page, you have to surf across little bubbles in
case those go to what you're looking for:
- hey, one says technic mission, maybe that's it.
(oh, this is just a single model with lots of weirdly
arranged information... 10 click arounds later and I
give up and back out to the main page)
Dead end #1.
-> hmm, the droid page might be technic.. click into this,
discover it's really a different site, but my web
browser's address still tells me i'm at www.lego.com,
arghhhh.... back out to the main page, don't count
these clicks, but - Dead end #2.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: my biggest problem with www.lego.com
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| I too am fully java enabled, have had no technical problems with the site, and I usually connect at 49999K. I like the site, but you make a very good point. It is not at all easy for a child visiting the site to find what he wants when it comes to a (...) (25 years ago, 17-Oct-99, to lugnet.general)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Lego.com - new look
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| (...) I am very dissapointed with this site. Your problem is just one of them; you don't have java/javascript enabled in your browser. Of course, if you have WebTV, it doesn't *have* java. It makes *no* allowance for people with disabilities, it (...) (25 years ago, 16-Oct-99, to lugnet.general)
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