Today you get to experience the biggest update in Doodle’s history. This redesign is not only about changing how Doodle looks, but it also impacts the general user experience. Doodle is now lighter, faster, and more modern and dynamic thanks to the new Ajax-based user interface.
Here’s one of the first quotes from a beta user:
New beta layout is a great improvement. So much more user friendly.
What began as a redesign of our most used page (the poll participation page) ended up in a complete redesign of the site. All existing polls, meeting requests, and accounts, however, will remain unchanged.
You can see the new look for yourself, but here’s a detailed overview of the functional changes:
- In the participation page (view example) you can now switch smoothly between the tabular view and the calendar view. The usability has been improved, the poll header now contains all relevant information, the comment feature is more apparent, and it’s easier to edit existing entries. Participants can choose to be notified about any activity in a poll.
- The participation page has also been made fully accessible for screen readers for visually impaired individuals.
- The poll wizard has been redesigned and makes switching between setting up a poll using the calendar interface, the classic interface with dates and times, and the text poll for non-calendar options or multi-day events very smooth.
- The poll settings that enable the admin to adapt meeting requests to a specific situation are now part of the standard workflow instead of being in an extra menu.
- It is now much easier to close a poll and the admin can now select multiple final options that will be saved in the calendars of participants who connected them.
- The poll administration has been simplified.
- The option to schedule in the calendar view has become more present in the whole process making it even more attractive to connect the calendar.
- The home page looks completely different and displays the relevant information more clearly. Since Doodle is focusing more and more on scheduling and not opinion polling, the “Make a Choice” function (text poll) has been removed from the home page, however, it’s still available in the feature overview.
- The MyDoodle dashboard received an additional tab for MeetMe (one-to-one) meeting requests.
- The MyDoodle account management page now enables users to upload a personal avatar. The page has also been cleaned up to make it easier to manage your settings. The Premium Doodle account management page has been updated in a similar way.
- Last but not least, we also updated all of the static pages that contain additional information about Doodle.
Some of the chages that we made to make Doodle even easier will also impact the familiar way of using the service. You’ll find more details and tips in the dedicated section of our FAQ:
We’re looking forward to get your feedback and we also like positive reactions very much. Please contact our support if you need to get a question answered, but please be patient if we don’t reply immediately or if we don’t answer questions that are already covered in the FAQ (redesign section at the top).
March 8, 2011 at 11:09 am
Where has the embed snippet gone?
March 8, 2011 at 11:53 am
The new layout may look nice on screen, but when I try to print a paper copy of the result of a poll, the answers are not shown at all, just the list of people who answered, which makes the printout worthless. I tried both Firefox and IE and it’s the same problem in both. Please revert to the previous layout until you have fixed this crucial bug!!!
/Mats
March 8, 2011 at 3:59 pm
As with so many UI design efforts, it looks good, but is it really more practical? I have two concerns about polls with many options.
1) The horizontal space seems to be a bit wider than before, and if so, fewer options are visible.
2) The “accordion” feature to reduce the number of options shown looks cute, but it’s not really helpful. Do you think I offered 13 options for no reason, so that it is your business, not mine, to decide which options to show to the user? Your job should be to show them the 13 options equally. A poll which does not show all the options is less than useless. I have enough trouble getting my users to use Doodle at all and cannot explain to them how to use it. If there are more options than poll participants, it may help to list the options vertically instead of horizontally. Or make the labels narrower. You have stated that 5 options is enough. If you want to make a tool which only shows 5 options, then only accept 5 and I will find another tool for my large polls. If you support 13 options, then please think again on how to present them. Thanks for listening.
March 18, 2011 at 3:21 am
but it’s very easy to cllick on the “accordion” feature – much better than before when people didn’t notice they had to scroll over and missed half the options
February 21, 2012 at 1:39 pm
Yes definitely!
I agree that if Doodle enables vertical scrolling then it will be much easier. I am recruiting participants for a research study, and I have an awful lot of time slots, horizontal scrolling may lead the people to misunderstand the number of time slots I am offering if they do not scroll to the rigt. I mean who is used us scrolling from left to right ?!?!?! We are much more used to “scrolling DOWN”. Doodle needs to list all the options clearly, to present them in a way that people who have to pick a schedule can easily to do. Thanks!
February 27, 2012 at 11:58 am
Thank for the comment, we have this on our ToDo list. Tilman / Doodle
March 8, 2011 at 4:12 pm
Amusing that your redesing [sic] announcement email letting us know you are more professional went out with a misspelling in the subject line.
March 8, 2011 at 4:32 pm
Last time I went on to set up a meeting the beta was available so I tried it. I was so confused (as were those I was trying to poll) and took the option to go back to the original. I hope that option is permanent.
March 8, 2011 at 5:21 pm
I’m very excited to see what it will look like when I’m back home. Unfortunately here in the office we are still running IE7.
March 8, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Still no integration with iPhone calendar despit it being the most popular requestbto you !
March 8, 2011 at 6:26 pm
Agree with Mats. What happened to print options! Need to print the information.
March 8, 2011 at 7:04 pm
I agree with Mats Bengtsson’s comment. Not being able to print out the complete poll results (who is available when) is a problem. I tried to print to a pdf, and that didn’t show the individual replies/results either. If you cannot revert to the previous layout, please fix this soon!
March 8, 2011 at 8:09 pm
Since people are already out here nagging I thought I’d ad that the new design beta was what made me stay with Doodle…!
March 8, 2011 at 8:45 pm
I work in local government with 7 elected officials I’m trying to schedule. I love to use Doodle poll, but the upgrade now does NOT show the individual responses when it’s printed! I use this to show the mayor the results. I like the way it printed previously because even in b&W it showed ok or a blank box. Also, I found the new format had to be resized to print on one page.
March 8, 2011 at 9:01 pm
New design is great (except for printing)
BUT :
-”Embed” is no more findable
-”Make a choice” is a little hidden
Contact Doodle if you want these options back…
March 8, 2011 at 10:27 pm
I found how to print in a format that works! Go to your administrative link and then under the Print/Export options you can print the doodle poll results in a colorful chart again indicating each response. Unfortunately, I don’t think the participants have this option, but as the poll administrator, I’m glad to be able to print a results table that works for me.
March 8, 2011 at 10:32 pm
Chris: This was of course a cunning ruse to get everybody’s attention!
And it’s important to always leave some room for further improvement…
March 9, 2011 at 12:33 am
Dear Chris, I am sure you have the best intentions with this revamp, but please take good notice of all the comments here and please urgently fix the mishap regarding the printing. Many thanks in anticipation and keep up the good work!
March 9, 2011 at 10:36 am
Hi,
Here some clarifications:
- As Lesa said: Print/Export has moved to Administration only since we
discovered, that mostly the Organizer prints the poll. The Browser
print function (no PDF) never really works unless you check “Print
background” in the print options.
- The embed widget was removed. Depending on the feedback we’ll decide
whether to bring it back or not
- Accordion: Please read here:
http://www.doodle.com/about/faq.html#redesignaccordion
Thanks for the great feedback!
Reto
March 9, 2011 at 1:28 pm
First of all, congrats with the redesign. It surely does look more 2.0
My 5 cents of ranting:
- embed widget (!)
- I received already 2 spam invites via the “meetme” functionality. What are your plans to prevent this ?
- is there a way to set the time display settings to 24h notation ?
- is there a way to select a different color for the “meetme” busy blocks ?
See ya,
Stef
March 9, 2011 at 5:30 pm
When closing a poll, doodle indicates the most popular date with all the participants. I cannot find where to close a poll with no final option chosen. How doI close a poll with no final option?
March 9, 2011 at 7:12 pm
Shtop! This update is not ready yet. Can we please have the “revert to classic view” option back until the new one has been thoroughly debugged? At least try it on some different browsers!
March 10, 2011 at 10:22 am
Why is it no longer possible to participate in a poll when you have no person-specific invitation? If I mail the invite out to 20 people via a mailing-list, only one will have the chance to poll …
March 10, 2011 at 11:36 am
Hmm… Am I missing sthing? Can’t find the (previously) gr8 time-zone support… is it automatical now?
March 10, 2011 at 12:35 pm
I also found out about the print option for administrators, but the motivation provided by “Reto” to make it only available for administrators is stupid. Even if it’s the admin who prints the poll in 99% of the cases, it doesn’t mean that the 1% other cases should be neglected. Also, even for admins, it’s fairly hard to find the print option. Please make it available directly on the poll page for all users.
March 10, 2011 at 12:59 pm
@Stef: Thanks! All MeetMe requests without MyDoodle require E-Mail-Verification. 24 hrs format depends on the selected language. MeetMe color for busy cannotbe changed at the moment.
@Quenzer: Just uncheck all options and close then.
@Harry: It is ready. We patched a few things last night. It should be all good now.
@Oliver: You need to send the invitation with your own email program if you use mailing-lists. Sending via Doodle creates a personal invitation link which can only be used once.
@Jarkko: This is still supported. We fixed something last night which should have resolved all issues re timezone.
Best,
Reto
March 10, 2011 at 5:08 pm
ok, I finally found the tz-support. I needed to choose the “basic calendar” in step 2.
It’d be cool to have one’s calendar appointments visible when selecting the date&time…
March 10, 2011 at 8:28 pm
This is a mostly dysfunctional upgrade. It looks like the new layout was built with ADD 12-year-olds in mind, and is more difficult to navigate for those of us who are adults and have become accustomed to aspects that worked perfectly well before. I used to recommend that everyone use Doodle to schedule important events, but can’t recommend it any more. Can’t you build a system that can be used for serious scheduling? Enough with the frills!
March 10, 2011 at 11:18 pm
Well well where do i begin?
I need to plan weekly scheduele meetings.
¿What happened to the generic week scheduleing?
Also, i guess i could just pick any week on the calendar and pretend its a generic week. Something wondeful happens:
Both the day and the time choices are on a SINGLE row!
8 time options per day, and 5 work days to choose from. You do the math.
Cramping 40 checkboxes on a single row is ridiculous.
A general rule of thumb is that you should scroll webpages bottom up, not left to right.
I beg you to bring the old doodle back, at least fix that display issue.
March 11, 2011 at 10:30 am
@Javier You might use the freetext poll for your use case. This feature just isn’t available on the start page anymore.
@Mack I don’t get the point completely. Please be more specific with your feedback here.
March 11, 2011 at 2:15 pm
An item that should return is the embed option:
I send invitations through Doodle. The invitees will receive a mail with an individual link. In order to make the schedule easily available after they have filled in the schedule and possibly deleted the mail I embedded doodle on our website. http://www.armixtos.nl/index.php?section=doodleplanner
I think this is usefull for users, but also a good advertising for Doodle AG!
So please put it back…
By the way: I am using Doodle now to make an inventory of my volleyball team players who wil attend matches as a test. I hope to start using this for all teams of my club and possible promote this to other clubs.
March 12, 2011 at 12:50 am
Please listen to the discussion Doodle Administrators! If you tried to improve something that wasn’t broken, and now we have less functionality, we have problem.
March 12, 2011 at 6:08 pm
Sorry about my sarcasm before but i was a bit pissed off. I have been using doodle for as long as i can rembember to schedule my project meetings. The free text option is good when you have to make choices from a small universe. But when you have +40 like me, its not viable.
The very essence of doodle was fast, on-the-run scheduling of a week. Now it looks like google calendar.
Please, at least bring the old doodle as an option. Until that happens, i guess ill have to do with oldschool excel sheets.
March 14, 2011 at 10:11 am
Javier,
It’s not quite clear yet. The Doodle table has not been changed tremendously. Also the basic wizard is still the same. We now display the table in full scale instead of in page scrolling. But even before you had to tick 40 checkboxes. Or you do Ctrl+A which ticks all of them.
What am I missing?
March 14, 2011 at 6:17 pm
In reading these comments, I noticed there is an option to revert back to the “old” doodle–how do I do this? When I previously sent doodles, it wss color coded, green for avail, yellow for avail by phone and red for not avail; how do I do this in the new format? Thank you.
March 15, 2011 at 4:08 pm
You find our comment on the major topics and the status of post handling here:
http://blog.doodle.com/english/2011/03/15/redesign-recap/
March 17, 2011 at 4:00 pm
The updated doodle page looks great! However, it is not supported by Internet Explorer 7, which is what most folks in our office use, so unfortunately, we will have to figure out another option for scheduling meeting times.
March 17, 2011 at 7:20 pm
Lauren,
we do support IE 7. We don’t support IE 6 anymore.
Best,
Reto
March 17, 2011 at 6:37 pm
I’m afraid I think it’s awful, I don’t even think it looks that great. More complicated, not as useful, too messy. I am off somewhere else, sorry.
March 17, 2011 at 7:23 pm
Hilary,
Sorry to hear that. But without being a bit more specific your feedback is kind of useless.
Thanks,
Reto
March 17, 2011 at 8:05 pm
Help! What happened to the edit feature where I can edit or delete a specific participant? (I’m admin)
March 18, 2011 at 9:57 am
It’s the pen icon right next to the name.
March 18, 2011 at 2:35 am
I can’t find any of my old polls from six or so months ago. Where did they go?
March 18, 2011 at 2:36 am
PS – I hate that every coolw ebsite is redesigning to look like Twitter or something. Big blank spaces, everything round. I don’t like the new look at all.
March 18, 2011 at 10:00 am
Didn’t you use those polls any more? Polls that haven’t been used for a time are deleted periodically:
http://www.doodle.com/about/faq.html#deletepoll
March 18, 2011 at 7:11 pm
Time zone support does not seems to work and is set on CET as default. People do not check/change it.
The systeme shoudlo know in hwat time zone the user is.
March 20, 2011 at 2:11 pm
Why does doodle have problem with IE 7 on a work mobile. He can answer my poll but when he clicks the link later he just see a white page and cannot se how many people who have answered
Regards
Pontus
March 21, 2011 at 2:26 pm
Pontus,
A white page mostly is caused by some Antivirus Programs like McAfee Web Gateway (Webwasher). Please try to turn it off and see whether this helps.
Reto
March 21, 2011 at 3:25 am
Too Confusing!! You want people who are 40+ to be able to understand how to use this. I wouldn’t dream of sending this to my boss who will likely click all the buttons on the screen?
March 21, 2011 at 2:27 pm
Ron,
I don’t understand. We actually reduced the number of links and buttons compared to the old version by a good amount.
Best,
Reto
March 28, 2011 at 10:55 am
Please bring back the embed snippet. I use it regularly.
March 30, 2011 at 10:17 pm
My only request is the ability to separate open polls from closed polls.
March 30, 2011 at 10:20 pm
What do you mean exactly?
April 4, 2011 at 6:55 pm
Under windows 7 home, When I follow the doodle link I receved from a friend, I have a blank page with just 2 links: one to the home page of doodle, the other to connect. unactivating my Kaspersky AV don’t change anything. Trying on a XP machine, the same link works and give acces to the pool…
Has someone an idea?
Thanks for help.
April 6, 2011 at 1:23 am
Looks great! Well done, guys. IMO the Table View of the poll could use a Check All button.
April 6, 2011 at 7:20 am
Hi Dennis, thanks! We have a “hidden feature” for that: Use Ctrl + A.