Do you like the new design of 23andMe ?

Maciamo

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I don't. It was much nicer before. It looks as if they tried to copy their rival deCODEme and Navigenics, which is a mistake. Why would they want to show photos strange people on the main page ? This is a big no-no for me. It makes it look like a scam website trying to attract simple-minded customers, not a professional scientific-minded website.

The new overall design is also inferior. I liked the colourful green design before. Why put grey and purple instead ? Are they aiming at a clientèle of old ladies ?

Then where is the list of the latest reports ? Why do they show only one of them. Do we have to sign in everytime to check if there is anything new of interest ?

I also don't like the way they have progressively shifted the emphasis of the ancestry section on finding cousins. This is the stupidest reason ever to take a DNA test. Where are the haplogroups and the global/regional autosomal similarities ? If the website had been like that when I first ordered my test, I may have refrained from signing up with them.
 
Basically, I agree. I prefer the other design and, of course, to find cousins it wasn't my priority when I ordered the Kit.
 
I'm trying to get used to it. Do I like it? No, but maybe I'll warm up to it. Of all the things I don't like, posting new threads bothers me the most. And if we have to join groups, why isn't our group affiliations on our profiles?

As far as Relative Finder, I mainly use it for statistics. I like to compare the percentages of mtDNA/ptDNA's of my RF cousins to your nice distributions. I find this more informative than many of the tools 23andme provides:
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/european_y-dna_haplogroups.shtml
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/european_mtdna_haplogroups_frequency.shtml

Frankly, as an outbred American of mainly UK/IE/DE lineages, having 936 RF cousins (97% of which are 1 segment matches less than .45% - nothing over 2 segments/.39%) is practically worthless. These matches are too small/old to connect myself to even if I was interested in geneology (which I'm not). I do like GEDmatch's triangulation tool for looking at relationships and have found some interesting connections. Also, the <10 cM matches that are so maligned as merely ancestry indicative are often more interesting to me than the larger matches.

I still love 23andme, my raw data, and the forum die-hards...however, Dienekes and Eurogenes has given us a taste of better admixture analysis's, and what 23andme has, is not cutting it anymore. Also, devoting more to haplogroups, their subclades, would be of interest. Changing the design of the forum will not save them if they fall behind in the basic technology and fail to provide what the customers want.
 
I'm trying to get used to it. Do I like it? No, but maybe I'll warm up to it. Of all the things I don't like, posting new threads bothers me the most. And if we have to join groups, why isn't our group affiliations on our profiles?

I was referring only to the new design before logging in, as not much has changed recently in customers' "control panel". But I completely agree that the list of new threads in the middle of everything is annoying. There should be a way to disable it or only show subscribed threads.

Another bothering thing is that 23andMe is increasingly making its site for children and the (senile) elderly. It's nice for kids to have a box on top of the My Home page to explain that you can know your ABO blood type without a needle or other such basic functionality provided on the website. But normal adults who browsed all the pages within days of getting their results (or, I would expect, familiarising themselves with the interface before getting them) don't need to be reminded of these things every time they log in. That's tiresome. Perhaps they should make two versions of the site: one for kids and other people who need step-by-step assistance and one for other people (which I hope make over 90% of customers).

As far as Relative Finder, I mainly use it for statistics.

I don't mind having the tool, as opposed to not having it. It's an innovation and it may be useful to a small minority of people, although I personally don't see what kind of people would be interested in getting to know someone just because they share 0.4% of DNA on a continuous segment. I have about 30 first cousins, which I have known well in my childhood, and that doesn't make any of them particularly similar to me in personality or interests, so that I rarely feel the need to meet them.

The message I really want to convey to 23andMe (and FTDNA with their Family Finder) is spend less time and money on phoney tools to find distant cousins and more on actual research (more health reports please !) and on refining ancestry and regional autosomal comparison tools by getting some inspiration from the Dodecad Project and Eurogenes.
 

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