Hey,
wanted to quickly answer this myself, not have it sit there.
Short version: I did a ton of user surveys in the past and we looked at the data and most people who started a tasting never finished the spider. Really most. People did stars, tags, a comment, and then the radar just stayed empty. I didn’t expect the gap to be that big. And yes, I used the spider a lot myself, so this is also a feature I personally (temporarily) killed.
The other thing, the part you don’t see from outside the app: on our side the recommendation system and match score we run on each rum already talks in sweet/dry, fruity/woody, mild/intense. That’s the language we use internally to compare bottles, find similar ones, do recommendations. The old 14 sliders never mapped to any of it. So whatever you filled in basically stayed in your own note and went nowhere else. That bothered me for years. You did the work and we did nothing useful with it on our side.
The new 3-pole compass is not a “beginner version”. It’s the same vocabulary the rest of the app already speaks. So now your input lines up with how a rum gets compared in the system.
A few things you should know:
- Old spider entries are still there. We didn’t migrate, didn’t touch, didn’t overwrite anything. If we bring a detailed mode back later, your data is exactly where you left it.
- This is an experiment, not a final decision. We gave ourselves a window and a bar to clear. If the compass does not end up clearly more used than the spider was, we change course. I’d rather say that openly here than pretend.
- A “detailed mode” with more depth could come back later as an opt-in. No promise, no date. But it’s on the list and the people in this thread are pretty much exactly who that mode would be for.
What I’d ask from you:
- Use the compass for two weeks on real tastings. Not one quick test pour. Then come back and tell me what was actually missing.
- “Feels too simple” or “feels unfamiliar”. I already know, and that fades. What I really need from you is concrete: which rum did you taste, what did you want to say, what axis was missing?
Something like “this Hampden had a smoked-leather thing going on and the compass had no way for me to put that in” is feedback I can do something with. “Bring back the spider” I already heard, and that one I cannot build from.
Looking forward to your thoughts the next weeks,
Oli 