As we reported back in February, the LEGO® Pick a Brick development team have been planning a new way to display pieces on the service so that it is much simpler to see all available colours of a part. This new user interface is now being tested in a limited number of countries, and the team are looking for your feedback to help decide whether or not to return to the previous format.
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Elements are now grouped by part number – called design IDs by The LEGO Group – making it possible to view all available colours for a specific part, before clicking for further details.
The new interface is being tested in the UK, Ireland, France, Australia, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Norway, but even if you're not in one of those countries, you can still explore it (but not purchase). Simply click any of the country links above.
(To change back to your own country afterwards, use the country selector in the footer on LEGO.com.)
Once you've given the updated layout a good tryout, the Pick a Brick team is very interested in your feedback via a ~3 minute survey. They may keep it, tweak it, or even return to the previous format.
The opinions of all you New Elementary fans is highly influential! We won't make any comment ourselves here, lest we influence you.
Take the Pick a Brick Grouped Colours User Experience survey
An update on July additions to Pick a Brick
READ MORE: Newest parts added to Pick a Brick
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They must have had some teething issues as I got to see this new interface here in the USA last week when ordering parts but I'm not seeing it at all now - it was very useful when re-stocking some basic bricks (small plates and tiles) for colors I was running low on. If it leads to less clutter that would be great.
ReplyDeleteIf TLG could improve their naming conventions, that would be better...Eg why aren't tiles their own category (rather than just being plates) on B&P, and what is the difference between a 'Tile' and a 'Flat Tile'? ...and does that imply some of my flat-looking tiles are not flat!?!?!
yes i agree. More categories for parts and better naming would really help!
DeleteThis is pretty common in web development and is called A/B testing. They'll randomly show a new feature to a certain percentage of visitors and compare their engagement metrics with people using the old version. If it sells more stuff or makes the UX better, they'll roll it out to everybody
DeleteNice. I saw this a few weeks back one day on the US site. Really liked it but then it was gone.
ReplyDeleteI'm a web developer/UX nerd by day, and I've run into this new experience a couple of times over the last few weeks. It's a good idea in theory, but there are some real issues with it:
ReplyDelete- You can't tell from the thumbnails whether a given color is a bestseller or not
- It seems slower to load, for whatever reason (possibly because 100 items is way more SKU's in the new view and it might be loading an image for each one)
- You have to click and wait to see the full list of colors that a part is available in
- The long-form part number was useful for quick copy/paste lookups, and that doesn't show up in the thumbnails anymore.
The fact that they have Pick-a-Brick at all is awesome (even if it does seem like certain pieces have just like arbitrarily tripled in price recently), but it could be so much better with some proper attention. Although as another commenter mentioned, the source of many of these issues is that their parts database is sloppy.
Thanks Michael, I hope you have used the survey to let them know.
DeleteI did! Somehow they forgot to reach out and offer me a job, but they seem to have a pretty good idea of what they're doing and I'm sure they'll get it sorted
DeleteI just played around with it a bit, really didn't like it! When I go to PAB, I have a brick link wishlist of specific parts I need, in specific colours. i search by part number, and add the colours I need. This format is more complicated, takes more clicks, and makes it harder to get what I'm looking for. I really hope this doesn't become the new standard.
ReplyDeleteI hope you used the survey then? As that’s the best way to stop it happening.
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