Plaxo revisited

So I got some helpful feedback on my last post from John McCrea who is VP of Marketing for Plaxo. So I logged back into Plaxo and had a little hunt around and after about 5-10 minutes found my addresses.

My initial reaction was Doh! what an idiot I was, but then after a few minutes reflection I started to think about user interface design and intuitive learning. When I showcase new functionality to my users, they will often give feedback about how easy a feature is to use or find. Often as developers or familiar users of a system we don’t see that something might not be named or located in the most natural place.

So I though I might also give some feedback to Plaxo that might help improve the user interface.

This is where the confusion started for me:

Option 1 leads you to the old Plaxo address book system

Option 2 leads you to an import wizard to get your address book from Outlook, GMail etc

Option 3 doesn’t contain any of your old address book “connections”

So these are my thoughts:

• Links with nearly the same names but going to total different actions is confusing
• Option 3: The domain language seems confused, surely the people I have already shared my address book with are already "connected" in someway. Maybe that connection only allows address book features and not all the new features.
• Option 2 doesn't seem to support importing from option 1 (You wouldn't need this option if they were already connected)
• Option 1 feels like a skinned version of old app and not really integrated into the whole experience