The Designtechnica Review process

[Ioman]

As most of you know, our reviews are link to from multiple sites on the internet. One trend that I am seeing is that a lot of the sites are referring to our reviews as "short". My question is this: Would people rather have the review broken up by Sumarry, Full review, specs, performance or a 20 page review giving the history of the product and the company and 19 pages of technical facts?

In other words: Do our reviews suck?

I have always felt that what is important is the bottom line, is this a good or a bad product, what is it's selling points and do they meet those points? Its not always about speed and power. If a product is marketed as a digital lifestyle product, does it meet that selling point?

Thoughts?

[dang]

For myself, If i see a review that is 6 or 7 pages long, I dont read it. I will typically look briefly at the perf #'s and the conclusion.

Longer does not mean better.

Take for example many of the programming books. You have books that are 700+ pages that try to conver history of the language, how to install it, how to compile, how change the settings in the preferred program, etc..
Usually half the book is filler and little substance.

On the other hand, there are books that are 200 or 300 pages that are straight to the point, and only cover the language.

I prefer these shorter books. I dont have 2 months to read a book to try to learn how to do something, especially when I dont care about or need the first 400 pages of the book.

I like my reviews the same way, short and to the point w/out any filler/fluff.

However, I am guilty of writing long reviews, so go figure..

[Ioman]

Excellent points Dang. I look at our reviews compared to Cnet's and they are very similar. Cnet is a HUGE site so I think it is safe to say that they have the review process down. Then I go to Anandtech.com and read their 30 page reviews and people like that as well. So its a toss up in a way.

[RageSlave]

Ahem! I go through lot's of reviews all the time. I get bored into about page 3, if the reviewer is long winded or uninteresting, even though I really like the product being reviewed. If you break down the typical review, it is smattered with pics and short comments as to what you are looking at. This has it's advantages, as a pictures says a thousand words. But alot of times they seem to fill alot of space with this sort of format, and consequently, end up with buku pages and little or no usable content. Motherboards for example, need pics to show clearances and features not easily explained, while a couch for example might need a few pics of the fabric and some shots of the cushions and such. Enough to explain a couch. Video reviews are generally worthless (as the Rodster will prove over and over again), but some sort of visual representation is a must for complicated items such as video cards and computer cases. I think that it all depends on what you are reviewing. A consumer home user will want to know what features and highlights there are to an item and a geek will want to see how many capacitors are in the way of installing his ATI 9800 8x vid card. I like the reviews here from a Consumer point of view. But the format here would be less affective for another site geared more to the tech crowd. My 2 cents

[IronSerif]

Here is my take on this issue...

I believe longer/lengthier reviews don't capture the users attention as well, and have a higher chance of losing the users attention.

No, I don't believe our reviews suck.

*In most cases*, I don't believe that reviews should give the whole history and timeline of the product; from the design phase all the way to the marketing/shelving phase.

*most users* who read these reviews are reading these because they are already interested/familiar with the products...*in most cases*

There are times when company profile or product history can be incorporated into the product review, but most of the time this could be seen as waisted space, and could lead to losing the users attention/interest.

I'm sorry if these seems to be just blabbered out and not thought out, but that was exactly what I was thinking at the time I was reading through this discussion.

This might only apply to me as well, because I am heavy into researching products that I am interested in, and see no value in placing extra/misc company/product info in the product review. I can easily lose interest if there is too much other information in the review than what is needed

Bottom line: For me, our reviews are great, and are exactly what "I" would look for in a review

-Iron :)

[Archon]

I think the reviews now are fine. Too many pages is too boring, while too few means lack of details. The reviews @ DT could have more details or comparisons in them, as opposed to simply talking about them (I understand its hard to compare something, if you havent reviewed the competition either, such as with PC speakers, etc...)

Just my two cents.

[Ioman]

Originally posted by Archon
I think the reviews now are fine. Too many pages is too boring, while too few means lack of details. The reviews @ DT could have more details or comparisons in them, as opposed to simply talking about them (I understand its hard to compare something, if you havent reviewed the competition either, such as with PC speakers, etc...)

Just my two cents.

You bring up a good point about the comparison. As we get more products to review, we will be able to use their charts/graphs and benchmarks to compare each other. And since we are standardizing our testing this should be easy.

[RageSlave]

keeping a database of reviews is a good idea. something searchable to be available to the writers online would be great. Other saites do this and it seems to work ok.

[Ioman]

Originally posted by RageSlave
keeping a database of reviews is a good idea. something searchable to be available to the writers online would be great. Other saites do this and it seems to work ok.

Dan is supposed to be working on the search function and some other IMPORTANT features that will hopefully be finished soon.

[senoryoshio]

Conciseness is key...and everyone with their head on straight knows that length does not equal quality analysis. Anyone can dump a page break in a manuscript and call it effort. Not only is a short and well articulated article easier for a reader to read, they're more likely to retain the important parts of the review and remember DT in the process. --They'll come back for more.

Sure sometimes other articles are not simply text, but many times a short, well-written, block of text is much better than half a dozen poorly designed visuals. I've read research on junk like this for school, but a lot of it will look like common sense to most folks. To me it shows the strengths of the writer when I get all my questions answered quickly and without confusion, but a lot of reviewers aren't professional writers and stuff gets published that probably shouldn't on other sites. I don't need funny stories about what a reviewer's dog barfed up that morning or what happened when the UPS guy brought the package to the door. To me, stuff like that--along with gramatical, spelling, and organizational errors--just scream unprofessionalism to me. If you take pride and care in what you write, the smart folks out there are going to respect the effort that you put into writing an article no matter the length or relative importance.

I think I've gone on long enough, and now I'm going to submit this without proofreading it...:eek:

[dang]

I was working on the search part of the site, but I've been hit by a very nasty virus. I've had it since Wed. and I'm still not showing signs of improvements, and i'm on my 3rd day of antibiotics. :( Can't sleep either. Needless to say I'm surprised I can even type this at the moment (i've had about 10 hours of sleep total since thurs. night.)

When I'll be back and more features to the site will be added. :)

Back to the topic; You all seem to agree that well written reviews are important, and length does matter. Length is important to not overstep the bounds and bore the reader.

What do you all think of the current reviews that have been posted in the last couple of weeks?

How would you rate the reviews?

[RageSlave]

Too many editor's choice reviews lately. Seems like we are kissing some a$$. No offense to anyone, but 9 out of 12 I think, reviews were awarded from the last crop. We need to make editor's choice a coveted award.

my 2 cents. What exactly is the rating system? Let the readers know that. Then give 9 or 10s sparingly.

[Ioman]

Originally posted by RageSlave
Too many editor's choice reviews lately. Seems like we are kissing some a$$. No offense to anyone, but 9 out of 12 I think, reviews were awarded from the last crop. We need to make editor's choice a coveted award.

my 2 cents. What exactly is the rating system? Let the readers know that. Then give 9 or 10s sparingly.

I agree TOTALLY. I think you and I talked about this before. One thing I have noticed is that we get excited about the product as reviews and we overlook the products shortcomings because we like the product so much.

Another thing to consider is that we have been reviewing good products. We need to get some bad eggs in here deliberatly so we can earn readers trust.

[Archon]

like a Nokia phone



... or a Matrox Parhelia... :sure

[RageSlave]

Originally posted by Archon
like a Nokia phone



... or a Matrox Parhelia... :sure

Bro! get over it! Seriously. :bash