The New 23andMe

Finally, after 18 months of waiting, my account was transitioned to the "new 23andMe" experience last week.  I had read a lot of negative comments about the new experience, so I was somewhat apprehensive about the transition.

The new experience certainly presents the information in a different way, and I wouldn't give the site any prizes for being user-friendly, but overall, I find the new experience is more useful to a genealogist than the old site was.

The new experience splits information into 4 broad categories, two of which are health related (Traits and Wellness) and two of which are ancestry related (Ancestry and DNA Relatives)

The New 23andMe Home Screen

The health-related reports are of some interest, but it's the ancestral stuff that is important to me, and this can be accessed by clicking on Ancestry Reports.  From here you can looking at your paternal and maternal haplogroup (to gain some insight into your ancient origins), see how much Neanderthal DNA you have, look at your genetic composition by region (I am 99.9% European, which is not unexpected), and view your DNA family.  These are all screens that you will likely ignore after your initial curiosity, if you want to use the site to find relatives with whom you share significant DNA.

Ancestry Reports Screen

The easiest way to access your DNA matches (those people with whom you share DNA), is by clicking on Tools on the top horizontal menu and then selecting DNA Relatives.

Tools Menu

The DNA Relatives screen is similar to the DNA Relatives screen on the old site, but with less visible information - you see only the name, predicted relationship, and amount of shared DNA.  Additional information can be viewed by clicking on an individual's name.  Two enhancements are the ability to mark matches as favourites (I use this to mark people with whom I have determined how we are related), and the use of coloured dots to indicate the sharing status of the individual (sharing, request pending, etc.).

When you click on an individual match, you see much more detail about the person (haplogroups, matching segments, ancestral surnames, geographic origins, and relatives in common).  It is this last feature that is most useful in determining which ancestral line someone may be connected through.

Some positive changes with the new experience -

• You can now contact anonymous users (a feature that was removed 18 months ago, when this transition began).
• The Relatives in Common feature is great for isolating which ancestral line someone may be connected through.
• Open Sharing - If you opt in to Open Sharing, all matches can see your Ancestral Composition and your matching DNA segments, without having to send you a sharing request and waiting for you to accept it.
• Favourites - Allows you to mark individual DNA matches with a star.  I use this to identify those with whom I have established how we are related.
• Sharing Status - The use of coloured dots on the DNA Relatives screen to show the sharing status of your matches is very useful, but the colours are not different enough to work well for colour blind people like myself.  The use of different shaped indicators (e.g. circle, square, triangle, and diamond) in addition to the colour, would be an even bigger improvement.

My only real dislike of the new experience is the lack of user-friendliness when using DNA Relatives and Share and Compare.  But each time I use the new site, I get more comfortable with it.

Overall, the new 23andMe is my second favourite DNA testing site, but FamilyTreeDNA remains my first choice.