New Homepage - Formatting options in widgets
I wanted to share some thoughts on the latest Xero homepage redesign after seeing a comment that really resonated with me about how much space the widgets are now taking up and how much more cluttered it is now. From a web design point of view, it’s just not intuitive, it’s cluttered and feels way too full, especially compared to the previous version where the widgets sat nicely in the centre and only took up maybe 50% of the page.
I genuinely believe the homepage experience could be dramatically improved with just a few changes:
Simplify the default data shown in each widget and maybe give us choices on how we want to view the data (whether it's a chart, graph, table, etc). Last version had "Cash in and Cash out" report as a simple chart, with numbers only showing when you hovered over them, which was a fantastic idea that should come back
Thanks for considering this feedback. I am a Xero fan and have been using it for years and would never think of switching to other platforms so if this could help create a better experience for everyone that would be great.
Yael Allan
shared this idea
Hi team, thank you for sharing back with us on the new homepage here.
Right now we are working on developing some of the widgets to allow more control of the view and information you see. As an example we are developing the Invoices owed to you and Bill to pay widgets to provide the ability to resize and change the information that is shown.
We will keep you updated on the release of these here.
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Andrew G
commented
The biggest issue with the new design is that when compared to the old dashboard, the new design applies a greater cognitive load to do the same task.
This is not a "learning" or "training" issue as Xero like to keep reiterating to us, but due to a design driven by technical choices rather than a focus on accessibility and/or end-user efficiency.
By far the biggest change/issue comes from the new dashboard preventing us from processing information in simple columns of data with little white-space. Instead it forces widgets into a horizontal layout of all the same height, resulting in some widgets (e.g. chart of accounts) which require scrolling internally within the widget to see all information, and other widgets having an excess of white-space requiring greater scrolling of the page itself.
90% of the issues being raised by people can be solved by switching to a column-first vertical layout with variable height widgets (per the old dashboard), rather than adopting a grid layout with fixed-height rows and widgets that must be a factor of that row height.
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Anna Sampson
commented
I think you need a clearer boarder around each tile as they all merge together, having 3 in a row is super cluttered and I like to keep all my bank accounts down 1 side as I have many and I can't do that anymore they keep jumping over onto the second column and it's super frustrating. I also really liked the little line graph of income for each bank account that you had before as it helped me to see if my account was getting low and needed topping up. I think it should be possible to have 2 or 3 rows as you choose. I think you will find most people would prefer the old layout as it's much more concise and easy to use and I can't make it look that way with the new design.