OMG, Steepster has a new look!
I second a lot of the comments here about including the tea info up top, and fixing the tsp field so it doesn’t round down.
One more thing that would help a lot is if the steeping parameters and rating could be changed from a scroll bar to an input field, since the scroll doesn’t work on my iPad.
It still does work like that, but now the “handle” on the bar is so wide it’s very difficult to do well. I did input them on my last tasting note on my iPad, but it took more fussing than normal.
I like a lot of the new look in general, but I agree with previous comments about the buy button v. the tasting note button—since Steepster is primarily a mix of personal tea blog and tea review/recommendation site, I think the tasting note button is much more important! “Buy” is helpful, but when most of them claim not to be available anyway it doesn’t make much of a difference.
It’s also annoying that the descriptions are no longer at the top of the page; while I understand the thought behind it, those descriptions usually contain ingredients. As someone with food allergies that can sometimes be the most important part of a tea for me! Eventually the ingredients will be in the “ingredients” section, theoretically, but in the meantime all that hunting around for what’s in a tea is tedious and difficult.
I do like the “flavors” feature, but I don’t like how short the list is. Sure, I can suggest a flavor, but so far I would have to do that so much that I just leave those flavors out. It’s frustrating not to be able to write in anything I want.
I’d say those are my main complaints. I love that the slider now has numbers that we can see while we’re rating a tea, and I think that the overall look is attractive and the dashboard page is easy to read and navigate. Thank you for all your work, developers!
Thanks for the feedback, I’ve responded to these points in a separate reply, which you can see here: http://steepster.com/discuss/6947-the-new-tea-page?post_id=125633#forum_post_125633
I tried to scan through all the posts and did not see anyone else complaining specifically about this, but the flavors list is quite omissive. No ginger? No peppermint? No pear? No basically anything that I have been tasting.
When I attempt to “add a flavor” to the list, it just deletes it when I go to post the tasting note.
Is anyone else having problems with this function?
Adding the flavor takes you to email, where you can send in flavor suggestions to be added to the list.
Today I sent in the following: bergamot, citrus, sugar, brown sugar, milk, barnyard, marine, peanuts, peanut butter, legumes, smoke, mint, peppermint, spearmint.
Most of these were flavors I was seeking to tag in notes and couldn’t find. I agree that a lot of them are pretty basic, so I have to believe that this part of the new interface will be updated pretty regularly with new options at least for a while.
So that was two months ago. No change. No way for me to propose notes, and no new ones have been added. So why do I bother to attempt to list flavors? Silly me.
I don’t understand Recommended and Not Recommended reviews. Who says that the review is not recommended? I do not see a button to rate one as such. And who is really to say what review is not recommended and which one is? What if it’s a secondary steeping note for a particular tea and it’s not in depth with describing as it was done before, is that automatically going to be a Not Recommended mark?
Oh, I thought it was meant for the reviewer, if the tea is recommended or not, but I’m not sure now…I don’t remember when I posted under the new format if I had that choice…something to look at.
I only see them by some reviews from people and not each review. That is including recent reviews only ie since the ‘upgrade’. It looks to me to be per review rather than for the reviewer.
I just verified, it is meant to be for the tea when the reviewer is posting a note. There’s field (not mandatory) “would you recommend this tea, yes or no”. That explains why it doesn’t show for all the reviews!
Ah that would explain it then. Thank you for clearing it up. That is certainly a surprising new feature. For a second I thought people were rating the reviews, that idea was hideous. Happy to see things are still good :D
TF, that’s my understanding as well.
I haven’t been using the button consistently because I don’t feel like recommending or not recommending everything I drink. Some things are in the middle. I’d only recommend something I like a lot and I’d only not recommend something I find barely tolerable. I wouldn’t do either with the stuff in the middle.
I’m going to have to come up with a new system now too. Maybe teas that rate 40 or less will get the Not Recommended sign and 41- say 75 will be average and not require a post and anything 76 and up will be a recommended. Only a rough scale but I will need to think about it.
KittyLovesTea, I know right? That would be quite disturbing, we don’t like to bash at one another here, it would make things awkward…if we don’t agree on something, the comments are there for that :-)
Morgana, i agree, i don’t feel i have to answer that either, i’m not crazy about not recommending a tea, the fact that I don’t personally like it doesn’t make it “not recommendable” in my opinion. Unless there’s something obviously wrong with it like something unhealthy, but that would be only exceptions i guess…I find Steepster is more than a data base, it’s about sharing freely our opinions, that’s why I prefer writing than rating…again, IMHO :-)
TF, I think it could be useful if you know your tastes jive with those of a particular person such that if they like something you’re likely to like it as well and vice versa. Or if you were really excited about something and wanted to make sure that stood out for people who were going through the feed quickly. Other than that I’m not sure at this point.
Ah! You’re right about that, and I forgot it goes only towards your own personal review, not the general rating of the tea…See, put 3 heads on something, and they slowly figure it out, lol, that’s great!!
As people pointed out above, the recommended/not recommended is what the reviewer is saying about the tea. It definitely forces people to take a postion (which can be a little uncomfortable) but is hopefully helpful. It’s another thing we thought might start helping pull recommendation data out from tasting notes, we’ll see how people use it and how it progresses.
I am really liking the new look, even if it takes a bit of getting used to! My favorite things are numbers on the sliding bar when adding tasting notes…yay! No more having to go back and fix it when I select the wrong number! I also really love the info at the top (ingredients, caffeine, how it is sold, etc) and I am tempted to log some time adding the missing info as I can :)
The only things I find that I am not a fan of is the snippets of reviews, I just find them redundant and when reviewers open up with little snippets of their day and such (as many of us do) it makes the excerpt nothing about tea. I do also find the ‘available’ and ‘not available’ thing misleading…or at the very least incomplete. Will it only be ‘available’ if you can buy through Ssteepster or if the business has some sort of arrangement, or are links to where you can buy the tea just slowly being added like the ingredients and such?
At what point does it seem that whether or not something is in stock would be updated? Do we the people rating the teas update if it’s in stock?
If we have the info where the tea can be purchased, we’ll add that info so people can find a place to buy the tea they’re looking for (that section is currently controlled by admins). We’re working with companies to get the links up (you can email us at [email protected]) we’re just super slow, so patience is apprecaited!
My inbox keeps crashing. It won’t even load just closes my browser. I’ve tried on several different phones and computers… Same thing happens…:(
How do you like someone’s tasting note?! It won’t let me anymore it just shows how many likes there are. I have to go to my phone app to like a tea
Teas page: “Tea Type” There are currently 16 choices i.e. Black Green, White, Pu-Erh, etc.
It would be very helpful if one could filter the 16 types by:
- Full-bodied
- unflavored / flavored
- orthodox
- USDA organic certified
- Meets EU Maximum Pesticide Residue Limit
Thus, one could time-efficiently search for “organic unflavored full-bodied black” teas for example.
It would also be helpful if one could filter a Pu-Erh search with:
– Raw / Sheng Cha
– Aged / cooked / ripe / Shou Cha
– Loose
I really do not like it.
I got the beat ios app, which I do not like and been using the web interface on safari instead, so this is disappointing.
Much more difficult to find a tea, not so obvious (particularly fingers on small screens and I do not like the mobile app at all) to like a review, “not recommended” on a review sounds seriously judgmental and instead of seeing all full text reviews of a tea, i got to click on see more which is really off putting (particularly if I am searching for a keyword or something).
I might not be the target for the new look or the app, understand if you guys want to keep it. Being off putting also means less time wasted here ;)
Login or sign up to leave a comment.