Disappointed customer

[+PeaBea]

I have been a member of Geocaching.com since 2005 and quickly loved caching because it was different, quirky and a "sport" where I could use my map reading skills. I understand that things change but why has geocaching.com decided that everything that I have enjoyed with caching to date is not fit for purpose in this modern app world and so is being thrown out with baby and the bath wate? (Even the text on screen is so small and greyed out that it is increasingly difficult to read).

I used to enjoy at the end of a caching day to turn on my desktop, and now Tablet, and log my finds and DNF's. But now I wonder what new, fashioable, trendy Web design garbage that I will have to endure in the process. Why is it so difficult for geocaching.com to cater for traditionalists as well as for app bashers? Why have I lost "Fav Points" for a 💗? I don't "love" any cache but I do want to award a CO for providing me with a fantastic bit of scenery or a well made container or something similar. So please, stop being a herd animal and instead be a leader. Go back to your roots and provide your customers with a fun quirky activity (like it used to be) rather than just another app aimed at the quick fix brigade. (Even the formatting on this page cannot cope with a 💗).

[+wmpastor]

Some arbitrary new formatting does bring a learning curve with it each time.

 

And let's not forget the novel and exciting world of traveling caches, which instead of receiving TLC from above received a call from the Grim Reaper.

[+cerberus1]

I kinda agree with your view on favorites.

As one who isn't on their phone 24/7, (to me) it says "love" and not simply that I "really liked" the cache I just completed.

- I'd bet there's quite a few in a relationship that'd understand that difference too.

 

It seems (to me) that for now, some of your logging issues could be "fixed" by just opting-out at the top right link, under "Logging has a new look".

[+Mudfrog]

Some arbitrary new formatting does bring a learning curve with it each time.

 

And let's not forget the novel and exciting world of traveling caches, which instead of receiving TLC from above received a call from the Grim Reaper.

With all the changes made by GS in the past few years, i can honestly say that none have made geocaching better for me or my family. Logical things that have been asked for, such as we being able to query for caches with favorite points, probably won't ever see the light of day. Seems so strange that GS's focus seems to to be mostly cosmetic and even those changes rarely come out looking good.

 

Just got the weekly email yesterday and this was in it.

 

"What’s next?

 

Updates to the Header on Geocaching.com.

Updates to the Profile and Dashboard on Geocaching.com.

Additional functionality improvements to the Geocaching® app for the 5.4 release."

 

Probably more changes that aren't helpful and in all probability, take away even more functionality.

[+x_xenolith_x]

Geocaching sucks now.. Had 90 months of FTF's that ended in January.

Groundspeak has aimed to a mobile app and has lost support for handheld garmin support.

 

Geocaching killed benchmarks, waymarks and WIGO with the last update. Why even play the game?

 

Should I create a new ghost account to find everything again.

[+Tassie_Boy]

Wait a minute... so you're saying that you're enjoyment of geocaching depends entirely on the presentation of the website at the end of the day? It sounds your priorities are askew with the game.

[+Viajero Perdido]

Wait a minute... so you're saying that you're enjoyment of geocaching depends entirely on the presentation of the website at the end of the day?

Usability, not presentation. Remember, people are complaining about a better-looking website.

 

A well-designed "logging experience" makes it easy to write a story and annotate it with pictures.

Which means people will do more of just that.

Which makes it fun to read cache pages (who needs Facebook for entertainment?)

Which encourages people to write stories and post pictures of their own, to add to the fun.

 

Or the opposite.

[+The A-Team]

Geocaching sucks now.. Had 90 months of FTF's that ended in January.

That's too bad, but I don't see how that's relevant here.

 

Groundspeak has aimed to a mobile app and has lost support for handheld garmin support.

See here for info about the replacement tool for Garmins

 

Geocaching killed benchmarks, waymarks and WIGO with the last update.

No, they didn't. These all still exist and haven't been modified for many years. You can find them still active here:

Benchmarks

Waymarking

Wherigo

[+TeamRabbitRun]

Geocaching sucks now.. Had 90 months of FTF's that ended in January.

That's too bad, but I don't see how that's relevant here.

 

Groundspeak has aimed to a mobile app and has lost support for handheld garmin support.

See here for info about the replacement tool for Garmins

 

Geocaching killed benchmarks, waymarks and WIGO with the last update.

No, they didn't. These all still exist and haven't been modified for many years. You can find them still active here:

Benchmarks

Waymarking

Wherigo

 

Is there still an active link that leads to that Benchmark page on the GC site? I just poked around and didn't see it. Used to be in the bottom menu.

[+Zop]

I have been a member of Geocaching.com since 2005 and quickly loved caching because it was different, quirky and a "sport" where I could use my map reading skills. I understand that things change but why has geocaching.com decided that everything that I have enjoyed with caching to date is not fit for purpose in this modern app world and so is being thrown out with baby and the bath wate? (Even the text on screen is so small and greyed out that it is increasingly difficult to read).

I used to enjoy at the end of a caching day to turn on my desktop, and now Tablet, and log my finds and DNF's. But now I wonder what new, fashioable, trendy Web design garbage that I will have to endure in the process. Why is it so difficult for geocaching.com to cater for traditionalists as well as for app bashers? Why have I lost "Fav Points" for a 💗? I don't "love" any cache but I do want to award a CO for providing me with a fantastic bit of scenery or a well made container or something similar. So please, stop being a herd animal and instead be a leader. Go back to your roots and provide your customers with a fun quirky activity (like it used to be) rather than just another app aimed at the quick fix brigade. (Even the formatting on this page cannot cope with a 💗).

 

I have to agree completely. I've been caching for 10 years now and like you, no longer find the logging experience enjoyable at all. It used to be so simple and although the site has always been aesthetically displeasing, at least it wasn't so full of Fischer Price fluff.

 

I think the biggest problem is that most of the 'App' users spend so much time with their faces buried in their app devices that if something doesn't look like twitter or facebook, they complain much louder than us who started before these 'App' users.

 

We're old-school where appearance wasn't important, functionality was. We're just so used to function over form that the changes to appease the millennials just don't make any sense to us.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

We're old-school where appearance wasn't important, functionality was. We're just so used to function over form that the changes to appease the millennials just don't make any sense to us.

 

You can't blame this entirely on GS. It's pretty much every where in software development. It's all about user experience and UX design these days. In the last several years we have had several new hires in the IT department I work in. Almost all of them are for UX designers. There has been only one other person hired to do middlware/backend work.

[+Cardinal Red]

We're old-school where appearance wasn't important, functionality was. We're just so used to function over form that the changes to appease the millennials just don't make any sense to us.

 

You can't blame this entirely on GS.

 

Yes I can. And I do.

[+TeamRabbitRun]

We're old-school where appearance wasn't important, functionality was. We're just so used to function over form that the changes to appease the millennials just don't make any sense to us.

 

You can't blame this entirely on GS.

 

Yes I can. And I do.

 

Yes, why not? It's not like GS hires these guys who come in and tell GS "This is what you get now."

GS pays them and tells them what to do. If GS said to program a UX that pays more attention to function and less to whitespace and emojis, then that's what would get programmed. And if the new kids don't know how to do that, then GS would tell them what it should look like and what it should do.

 

If the creative-direction people at GS don't get this or know how to specify function-over-fad, then THEIR bosses should step in.

 

If they want to change the look and feel, that's fine, but the functionality of the site has developed over the years for reasons, not randomly. Those reasons haven't gone away; it just seems like the people who remember those reasons, have.

 

Or they've been promoted.

[+baer2006]

You can't blame this entirely on GS. It's pretty much every where in software development. It's all about user experience and UX design these days. In the last several years we have had several new hires in the IT department I work in. Almost all of them are for UX designers. There has been only one other person hired to do middlware/backend work.

I have no problem at all with GS going towards better UX for their website. There is no doubt that the old site has lots of room for improvement in this regard. The problem is that they often change it completely the wrong way. A case in point is the lack of a format toolbar and a preview in the new logging page. It is surely bad UX if I as a user (a) don't know what format options are available, and (b ) can't verify the results on the fly for those options which I have in my head. Good UX design would provide both elements (toolbar and preview) and make them collapsible for those who don't need it or don't want it.

 

Good UX design must care for beginners and "pros", as well as for smaller and larger displays. GS has way to go in both respects.

[+DragonsWest]

Some arbitrary new formatting does bring a learning curve with it each time.

 

And let's not forget the novel and exciting world of traveling caches, which instead of receiving TLC from above received a call from the Grim Reaper.

With all the changes made by GS in the past few years, i can honestly say that none have made geocaching better for me or my family. Logical things that have been asked for, such as we being able to query for caches with favorite points, probably won't ever see the light of day. Seems so strange that GS's focus seems to to be mostly cosmetic and even those changes rarely come out looking good.

 

Just got the weekly email yesterday and this was in it.

 

"What’s next?

 

Updates to the Header on Geocaching.com.

Updates to the Profile and Dashboard on Geocaching.com.

Additional functionality improvements to the Geocaching® app for the 5.4 release."

 

Probably more changes that aren't helpful and in all probability, take away even more functionality.

 

Hey, you can run pocket queries (if a premium member) and sort on favorite points, just don't expect them to be all (if any) from your pocket query. It's an ancient bug, which isn't sexy enough to work on.

[+dprovan]

I have no problem at all with GS going towards better UX for their website. There is no doubt that the old site has lots of room for improvement in this regard. The problem is that they often change it completely the wrong way. A case in point is the lack of a format toolbar and a preview in the new logging page. It is surely bad UX if I as a user (a) don't know what format options are available, and (b ) can't verify the results on the fly for those options which I have in my head. Good UX design would provide both elements (toolbar and preview) and make them collapsible for those who don't need it or don't want it.

The weirdest thing about the preview is how they'd just introduced it as the second coming, and everyone loved it, but then a few months later they quietly eliminated it without a peep.

 

A similar change I just stumbled on -- although maybe I've just run into a bug or something -- was the feature that prefixed messages to the CO with the ID of the cache. I hate messages, but they do have that advantage, so I grudgingly use them when I want to talk to a CO about their cache. But I just tried to do that, and the cache ID didn't show up in the message. It's as if they have so many great ideas, they can't remember which ones they've implemented already, so they accidentally wipe them out with even newer ideas. Change is good, right?

[+Mudfrog]

Some arbitrary new formatting does bring a learning curve with it each time.

 

And let's not forget the novel and exciting world of traveling caches, which instead of receiving TLC from above received a call from the Grim Reaper.

With all the changes made by GS in the past few years, i can honestly say that none have made geocaching better for me or my family. Logical things that have been asked for, such as we being able to query for caches with favorite points, probably won't ever see the light of day. Seems so strange that GS's focus seems to to be mostly cosmetic and even those changes rarely come out looking good.

 

Just got the weekly email yesterday and this was in it.

 

"What’s next?

 

Updates to the Header on Geocaching.com.

Updates to the Profile and Dashboard on Geocaching.com.

Additional functionality improvements to the Geocaching® app for the 5.4 release."

 

Probably more changes that aren't helpful and in all probability, take away even more functionality.

 

Hey, you can run pocket queries (if a premium member) and sort on favorite points, just don't expect them to be all (if any) from your pocket query. It's an ancient bug, which isn't sexy enough to work on.

 

Yeah, i've run into this in the past. The list comes up and if you use the sort function, it brings up caches that aren't in the query some 250 miles away.

 

I do use GSAK, so i can get favorite point caches using an API refresh. This is better than nothing but it doesn't make any sense that i can't just run a query with this filter in the first place.