New Lenovo Support Site

[GomJabbar]

http://support.lenovo.com/

There goes my bookmarks! Arghhh!
EDIT: Well maybe not. Now they are working. They weren't earlier this morning.

Here is the announcement at Lenovo Forums: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/New-e-suppo ... d-p/446619

[RealBlackStuff]

What I've seen so far is a lot worse in looks, and slower than the 'good old IBM' site.

[Sandstorm83]

It looks and feels terrible! Way too many "clicks" just to get to the driver download page. I'll stick to using their driver matrix page for as long as it is still up;

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... ATRIX.html

[automobus]

There are four exclamation marks in the intro area. Bad: exclamation marks on support pages should mark importance, like product recalls or instruction warnings.

"Quick Path" is no longer quick. On the old site, it was a form field, static; now the form is drawn with browser scripting. Further bad: it requires browser scripting, rather than a highly-accessible implementation that draws the field by default, and in a scripting-enabled browser, it would be hidden until activated.

[goofyGAguy]

This thing is a disaster.

[ThinkRob]

Welcome to the wild world of "enterprise" web design, where it's not considered ready unless it was designed in hour-long chunks in weekly meetings by a committee with one designer and twenty PMs.

[ajkula66]

goofyGAguy wrote:

This thing is a disaster.

+ 1 and then some...

[automobus]

It seems that accessories are not accessible by drill-down category selection. And, some pages are not indexed, and so cannot be found with a search. And, some documents that used to be English are no longer! See what I mean:
Old page, English. http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 41020.html
New page, Asian. http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloa ... MIGR-41020

[goofyGAguy]

Weird. Firefox just shows the contents of that new page as a bunch of little boxes with numbers in them.

[dorronto]

I agree. Not user friendly at all. Too many clicks, though the end result (once you can make it through all the obstacles) with all downloads going in one basket and downloaded can work out. Maybe...

Ron

[rleo25]

One of the worst web design pages I have ever seen, bad taste and functonality. C´mon Lenovo it is time to make a superfast change, this is deteriorating the brand image you have built until now!

(I wonder if some Lenovo´s officials read this page Bill?)

[bill bolton]

One of the worst web design pages I have ever seen

Your exposure to the web site designs must be quite limited then! There are huge numbers of web sites where the designs are far, far worse

Cheers,

Bill B.

[ThinkRob]

Your exposure to the web site designs must be quite limited then! There are huge numbers of web sites where the designs are far, far worse

I agree. It's pretty bad, true, but it's about par for the course compared to countless other corporate re-designs. It's basically exactly what I'd expect from a large company with a design-by-committee process trying to make a "hip" new site.

[Mark@Lenovo]

ThinkRob, et all,

The point of the site wasn't to be "hip", but rather to take a strategic step onto a new infrastructure.
I blogged about it on the 31st here, hoping people would understand the change in context. http://www.lenovoblogs.com/connections/ ... te-debuts/

We had 5 sites on 4 infrastructures and needed to get to one so we could do a better job in the long run. This first release was intended to migrate all our data over and deliver parallel or better functionality.

Its been a month and we are still working out the kinks, many of which developed in the course of migrating data. The design wasn't a committee effort, rather, it was driven based on user centered design principles and some focus groups. I see a lot of post broadly criticizing the "design", but I think people may mean that it isn't letting them accomplish their goal. Design & navigation are a part of that, but so is missing content, duplicate content, naming of files, categories on the drivers page, browser compatibility issues , etc, etc. We've solved some of these completely and are working hard to address the others.

Not making excuses - this all has to work for you and we know it. But as we are listening, it would be helpful if people would be clear when they offer constructive criticism about design rather than just criticism. Be specific.

Design / Appearance

You don't like the colors? (greys too light, not enough contrast? Hate red?)
The fonts? (too small, don't show up? Inconsistent? )
The layout? (it's the same general, multi-panel layout as the center section of the old one)
The left nav options vs similar options in a bar across the screen (redundant? confusing?)
What exactly about the design is a problem? To me, the old site was eclectic in terms of graphics and colors and at least we are now more consistent. To me, the new site looks more professional.

Functionality

Do the links on the home page make sense? Do they reflect the most frequent tasks for users? Check warranty, upgrade warranty, links to training video, links to other resources, driver matricies (restored based on everyone's feedback), parts, tips, etc?

Browse - We wanted to provide a navigation to specific system for users who didn't know what a MTM was. Yes, it is too many clicks for the andvanced user, which is why we also offer quick path. For me, browse is still a lot of clicks with less than desired benefit of showing only the relevant information - more clean up there yet to do to make this deliver on the expectation all the time.

Quick Path - this should work better than the old site. You can now say 2007 or T60 or Thinkpad T60 and it can deal with all 3. The old site dealt with the model type. We've had some issues with quick path - some models missing, ones that started with zero (now fixed), and less than helpful message that just said "not found" if you entered a 7 digit type that it didn't get a hit on. We are working to improve that with messages that offer suggestions and coaching (try just the first 4 digits, etc).


Let me close with a last question. Probably the two things we've heard the most - 1) Bring back driver matrix and 2) Provide a way to have a bookmark URL that can be shared, posted, emailed, etc once you navigate to a specific driver.

While we've brought back a first pass at the driver matrix already, let me ask you to prioritiize these two items. Which is more important to you, as a user of the site. The driver matrix function or the ability to bookmark drivers (not just have dynamic URL) and why?

Thanks for the discussion so far! Looking forward to your replies.

Mark

[ajkula66]

Mark,

Given the Sophie's choice of bookmarking individual drivers or having the entire matrix function, I'd go with the drivers, but that's me.

Reason being that several different machines likely use the same wireless/BT/graphics driver and what not, while a model-specific matrix can only be utilized for the given palette of units.

[automobus]

Make the site fully workable without browser scripting, please. That includes a quickly-available quick-path field, like the old site had on the right. I hate how the new site needs a click first, just to make the quick-path field appear.
I see that the page I linked to earlier, with the wrong language, has been fixed. Thanks. Please continue making an acessible, useable, "no B.S." support site.

[thinkpadt510]

Warranty upgrade not working on UK version.

[ThinkRob]

Well... perhaps I was a bit harsh.

My comments were based on the combination of the introduction of a more contemporary look and the (apparent) loss of functionality. I did leap to conclusions regarding the development process and rationale though, and for that I was wrong. I do appreciate the business requirements that you described in your posts, and considering the complexity of something like this I think you've done better than many.

One thing that does irk me is the fact that the site is mostly non-functional with Javascript disabled. I can understand things like model autodetection and fancy animations not working without scripting, but things as simple as navigation links absolutely shouldn't require Javascript to work. I'm also not a fan of the lightbox effect for product selection, but perhaps some are...

All that aside, it is commendable that Lenovo not only listens to customer feedback, but also sends Mark out to navigate the sometimes-hostile waters of enthusiast forums...

[ZaZ]

Make the site fully workable without browser scripting, please. That includes a quickly-available quick-path field, like the old site had on the right. I hate how the new site needs a click first, just to make the quick-path field appear.

I'd agree. I did notice they seem to at least now have an easy link to the drive matrix. One thing I dislike is every time I go there I get asked to do a survey. Lenovo is certainly not the only one doing this, but I wish there was an easy opt out for all of them.

[rkawakami]

Since I have a bunch of links that are pointing to the ibm.com domain that are now dead (well, redirecting to support.lenovo.com), I just found a little trick that might help:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=98364

[RealBlackStuff]

And for all (US) users who want the Driver Matrix, here it is:
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. ... PAD-MATRIX
Bookmark it!

[rleo25]

Thanks realblackstuff your link will be my support home page !

[laboye]

I actually have a request regarding the handling of Quick Path entries. I noticed that the site no longer accepts the original URL-based entry. It also looks like this is all now handled with Javascript.

If possible could you integrate this functionality? Here is an example of how the original site worked:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... ry=945035U

Using this, one can use it like a standard search engine with most browsers. There doesn't seem to be a way to do this with the current design.

Also, will there be permanent redirection from old URLs? If not, will the search engine results be updated? I recently discovered that the search result for the terms "Z61m HMM" yielded this link:

www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-64204.html

Currently, it just redirects to the Lenovo Support page, requiring an additional 4 clicks to access the document.

Let us know how all this stuff works out!

[rkawakami]

I've been trying for the past week or so to figure out a URL-based method of entering the model type number (a la, Quick Path) but still don't have anything. I too used to change the end of the "quickPathEntry=" field to easily get to the model I wanted. There's not much I can do to change how Lenovo is running their web site but I'll still try to hack out a solution to this issue.

[GomJabbar]

...this is all now handled with Javascript.

The tool of the Devil I say!

[ThinkRob]

The tool of the Devil I say!

Remember the days when the only thing you'd need to, say, link to another page would be an <a> tag? Or when you could write a form that could be POSTed without JS?

Sigh. I kinda miss those days. On the other hand, I also like the new, square, Wheel 2.0.

[automobus]

After just longer than a year in exile, Quick Path is back. Everyone rejoice!

• Quick Path is on the support home page on load.
• It is "below the fold" (not ideal) and uses browser scripting instead of a static HTML form (bad).
• But the really good news is, we can GET results once again.

The new Quick Path Query URL is:

Code: Select all

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/landing.page?qpq=MODEL-TYPE

Lenovo: are you done playing around? I use support Web site every month or so, and something (style or functionality) seems to change between each visit. Your current site style reminds me of Wired Magazine. What next, will you decorate for Halloween? I prefer the plain old style, but whatever, the style is not very important. You still have work to do: make the quick path form field submit without browser scripting.

[ThinkRob]

You still have work to do: make the quick path form field submit without browser scripting.

The amazing part about this is that doing all this nonsense via JS is actually *more* work than just using a proper HTML form.

I've never understood why people do this; they spend all of this effort to-reinvent things that have worked for literally over a decade, only to fight bug after bug and to still completely fall over on anything that doesn't run scripts. One step forward, 2.0 steps back...

[automobus]

They've broken it again, and the site is a bigger eyesore than ever. About a year ago, Dell trashed their age-old good support site, took-down countless documents, just like Lenovo. HP's Web world was always messy. I am sick of this.
(Needless to say: in my opinion.)

[Cigarguy]

They've broken it again, and the site is a bigger eyesore than ever. About a year ago, Dell trashed their age-old good support site, took-down countless documents, just like Lenovo. HP's Web world was always messy. I am sick of this.
(Needless to say: in my opinion.)

I hear yay. Lenovo and IBM before that used to be the best. The ability to look up machine specs base on the 7 digit machine type was extremely helpful.