New Front Update--Opinions

My prediction – they’ll sit tight for a few weeks until their user base starts hemorrhaging and the negative reviews pop up, then management will move into damage control mode. 

I know that I have already (reluctantly) started looking into alternatives...

How about an update to make Front look and work exactly like Outlook.   I’m not a fan of Front and I’m being forced to use it.   :(

Here’s a perfect example of just how bad the legibility and delineation between elements is in the new UI. The only visual distinction between texts being sent through the Front/Dialpad sms integration, and internal comments is a couple millimeters of indent? It’s even worse in light mode. I refuse to believe anyone user testing this thought this was an improvement to visual clarity and actual usability.

​@alhasan 

I understand your frustration. Our Product and Design teams will be sending further updates regarding the redesign, but for now I want to clarify that the Product Update was not accessible this morning due to an outage with the community service, not because we took anything down. Transparency remains something we stand behind, even when the customer sentiment is negative. The post you are likely referring to is the following, which should be viewable, all negative comments included:

Please fix these issues ASAP, I’m about to switch back to GMAIL, the design issues and accessibility of light and dark mode is awful.

I think there’s some hidden costs for Front on this too. While we’re looking into alternatives, we have also put a pause on any plans to onboard more of our departments and teams into Front due to this UI update.

Front, as it was, was a transformative experience in terms of workflow, info, and ease-of-use. It is now just a seemingly minor upgrade but at a premium price. 

The design seems to try to encourage Front users to learn shortcuts to perform tasks that originally were a 1-2 clicks. Like, multiple times I’ve seen the keyboard shortcuts heavily encouraged as part of this new update. If the only application we used was Front, then that’d be fine. But we don’t. We use a few different systems and platforms. This will sound silly, but this means that I don’t have my hands resting on the keyboard at all times to learn 15-20 new shortcuts to navigate around Front. I use one hand on the mouse and maybe I use the other hand to hit ctrl+e to archive messages, at most. But I need that hand on the mouse because I am often needing to open links that navigate to other websites, other systems and to work in those systems.

I think there’s been an incorrect assumption that users will just learn keyboard shortcuts to make-up for recklessly redesigning the entire UI and then releasing to all users in one-go. I think some will, but a lot are just going to try to use the system as they always have, and when it fails to be as productive as it was before, they’re not just gonna go “oh hey let me learn all these Front shortcuts.” They’re gonna start looking into other platforms. 

I don’t say all this to just berate Front. I love Front. The support has always been excellent. It integrates really well with other systems. It had a perfect UI and design, and the end of the day, the UI is the core of Front’s identity. Everything else can be great, but if the UI brings down the user experience like it is right now, it’s going to start to drive people away, imo. I really, really hope they reverse course, honestly. 

Please fix the contrast on the emails and inbox generally, it’s difficult to differentiate the emails from one another.  

As one of the biggest Front advocates, this is extremely disappointing. One of the worst updates I’ve seen and almost makes the entire product unusable. 

 

We NEED access to the old version asap. Listen to the feedback from your customer and allow us to revert back while you make updates. I have a team of 100 people who unanimously agree. 

This is terrible. Just terrible. 

The search function is no longer functional. I need to be able to search sub-inboxes without all the noise from all my other inboxes bleeding through. 

One of, if not the worst updates to come to an app. Everything that made Front so easy an user friendly has been stripped, and what’s left is an unremarkable Microsoft Outlook wannabe. The orange on emails that have come up from being snoozed comes out so faint, it’s almost impossible to see, blending in with new unread emails. Having to take extra steps to tag an email has slowed down. Not to mention if I want to snooze multiple emails, it is not one of the default options..making me go all the way to a drop down. 

Not to mention no longer having the options at top to quickly switch from inbox to calendar...

This is an update that no one had asked for, and to remove the old view is a slap to the face to Front’s users. Do better.