IfIRanTheWorld I would.. | Hacker News Reader

IfIRanTheWorld I would..

ifwerantheworld.com

29 pointsjonmc1241 comments

It seems that most people using it have missed the point about micro-platforms and micro-actions, to actually enable the ideas to be broken into tiny achievable steps and be implemented. All the suggestions that I saw on there were basically in the form 'If I Ran The World I Would... boil the oceans.'

You're right - we want to encourage people to take things they really care about and think about how to tackle them via initially tangible goals they can then use friends, networks, and the connections we can provide to achieve via microactions. We're working to address and rebalance this.

Usability was great until I tried finding a listing of IfIRanTheWorld answers.

I'm the developer for the site, although I've only been on the project for a few weeks. The initial vision, as I understand it, was to not bombard people with what they _could_ do, but let people find it themselves. We've since gotten a lot of comments about just wanting to see an index, which we're put up at /action_platforms for the curious. This page is in the works, which is why there's no link to it.

i like this. some thoughts:

a) everyone i've shown this to clicks on the "fake" input box and initially ignores the "i'm game" link.

b) is the "i'm game" section supposed to overlap the newly posted statements? i'm using safari.

c) i wish i could use my browser's back button to return to the list of items based on my statement.

Yes Yes and Yes I agree with you on all those n_n

A&B - we have a redesigned home page to get rid of the wall of text and the confusing overlay coming very soon.

C- This is one of my least favorite things about the site. I'll +1 to this issue.

Thanks!!

You can find that here for the time being:

http://ifwerantheworld.com/action_platforms

funny how when people talk about changing the world they never want to get into the specifics of what THEY should be doing. it's always about what others should be doing. so, are we going to force others to go along with us? if we get 51% of the votes we should be able to enforce ourselves on the other 49% with guns right?

maybe - just maybe - that's exactly what this site is addressing? maybe you should have a look?

To everybody who's commented so far - we really appreciate the feedback, the compliments and the constructive criticism.

Just to add to my team's responses below:

- fulltime employees currently are 3: myself (founder/CEO/ business development/'customer service'), Jason our general manager who also operates as project manager and programmer, and Julia, programmer. Oonie has been working on user experience alongside her day job and joins us fulltime very soon. Sougwen our brilliant designer is currently on the digital media course at Hyper Island in Stockholm and works with us part-time. And Corey and Rachel at Pivotal Labs worked with us to build this while we were looking for full-time developers, are passionate about the venture, very much part of the team and we want to give them full credit for that.

- we pushed IfWeRanTheWorld out in beta very much in 'minimum viable product' mode because we wanted a real-world, real-time test to garner exactly the kind of feedback you are kindly giving us below, so we could jump on user experience/usability issues pronto, and address and refine accordingly alongside our own development timeline (which has additional features and functionality being added on a daily basis, along with addressing IE issues).

- you're quite right about the fact that while 'If I ran the world I would' is designed to inspire you to act on what you really personally care about, it's prompting users to think rather too big at the moment - we're jumping on that with some different ways of suggesting how you approach that, in order to turn big thoughts into tangible goals you (and everyone else helping) can turn into microactions that make them achievable.

- we, and I personally, really appreciate everything we're saying and will be acting on it

- I should just add that we are big fans of 'abnormal' - as in,doing things differently and coming up with innovative ways to achieve goals and be effective. Including where that, ahem, references the unusual instance of a startup team being female-dominated..:)

Whoops, apologies for typo, that should be 'we really appreciate everything YOU'RE saying..':)

This site is beautiful, obviously.

I also love the idea of challenging people to think big, like what they'd do if they ran the world. For me, this question involves ethical considerations, prevention of global conflict, the battle of hunger and poverty and the maximization of happiness.

I don't understand how their microactions relate to that question at all. They seem to be asking two questions at the same time. One is a hypothetical mindgame that makes people think about the challenges of the world and one is the very specific question of what each individual can do. As a result the answers they get are apparently either overly general or not relevant at all.

If anyone wants to discuss the big question, you can check out a thread I recently opened at HN :)

The idea is that you CAN do what you would do if you ran the world, if you had enough man hours to get you there. A little help here & there, and you can achieve it. All this is possible because you're likely not the only one who wants to do what you want to.

The workflow as we have envisioned it is that you answer the question, and we show you similar action platforms and microactions, so that you can get involved right now with the platform you care about. Or, if nothing matches what you have in mind, you can start your own.

oh also, thanks for starting that other thread. the more people think about what our world _could_ be and the complexity of change, the better equipped we are to do something given the opportunity. plus, maybe someone will be inspired to start something on IWRTW ;)

7 employees and 2 of them guys, one a programmer. huh.

What's your point?

Granted, I have no idea what they're doing that requires 7 people (and only 2 coders ...).

His point is that's insane :). The general consensus on Hacker News is a good brand new start-up is 2-3 people, who are all coders. I tend to agree with this, except for exceptional projects like search engines. Most websites can be handled by a hacker or two at the beginning.

This site could be done by just one mostly incompetent programmer in short order. What the other six guys could possibly be doing is a mystery. They are probably just slowing down the one guy doing any work.

I probably should have been more clear - I was more curious about why he felt the need to bring up genders.

Perhaps to better emphasis the abnormal structure of this company.

You folks may have missed the boat in assuming this is a startup. I think it's more about the idea/message/whatever.

These people have other (good) jobs. Cindy Gallop (Founder/CEO) is a (quasi)retired ad exec. Her last web experiment: makelovenotporn.com. She talked about it at TED last year. No revenue model there. Oonie Chase is creative director at Blast Radius. The list goes on.

Plus, not less than 3 people on the about page have the word "Code" in their job title, so uhh... fuzzy math.

It is about the idea/message/whatever, but it is also a startup. Currently, other than Cindy, there are only 2 of us on it full time (Jason & me), with a user experience person coming on full-time soon.

You get it.

We also decided to launch this as an experiment as well to get input and feedback like we are getting here. Rather than try to make it perfect at launch, we'll get the minimum viable product out there and see what the world wants from it. We've already made some changes and are continuing to do so based on feedback from the masses.

Thanks!

I understand your view point. I've done a number of projects where all of us were coders/hacks and the product didn't go anywhere. It was awesome, but, no one knew about it. This is Cindy's vision so we can't very well kick her off :-)

Currently, there are only three of us on this full time. The others are part-time and great contributors to the project. We had Pivotal Labs on board early until we could find someone like Julia to join us full time. And, for some big chunks, we'll likely get them to help out again. They are a great shop.

Hi there! There are only two of us working full time on it (Jason & me, the only programmer at this point).. The site was bootstrapped by Pivotal Labs, but those two developers aren't working on the site anymore.

Hi, I'm one of the programmers. The site was bootstrapped with help from Pivotal Labs, so two of the programmers listed are from there. I'm currently, as of a week ago, the only programmer on the project, and one of the two people working full-time on the site.

Hey, everyone, thanks for your feedback! I'm the dev for the site and we know we have a long way to go.

We launched the site a few weeks ago in the interest of getting it out there and see how people are using it and what they want. So yea, there's a lot of stuff that's not there/broken/weird. But that's kind of the point!

We didn't stick a huge beta icon in the corner, but we think people need to stop being apologetic about what they're putting out there and more receptive to feedback and real-world use cases.

So, please, if you have any ideas about what could make this more useful to you, let us know! You can ping me here, or on getsatisfaction.

Strikingly beautiful design. Incredibly simple and interesting premise. This site has done a GREAT job of letting the user do one simple thing before enticing them to get more involved. Very well done. One of the best new sites i've seen in a while.

Oh, if you are the site creator, there is a bit of a bug in chrome&FF. the 'ok i'm game' button is placed over the 'x hours ago' line which I suspect is supposed to be above.

I hate to say it, but you loose some points by not supporting IE at all. Not supporting IE6 i can appreciate. But it doesn't take THAT much extra time to support IE7 & 8.

You are probably wondering why you can't use the site with Internet Explorer. That's our bad. We're having some issues with making some of the advanced functionality work on the site. We are however working diligently to make this happen! We will be supporting Internet Explorer 7 and 8. (Sorry, no IE6 support, but there are options!) As soon as it's working you'll be the first to know.

They're working on it.

Ummmmm, on the point of beautiful design, are we seeing the same thing? This is what I see: http://imgur.com/0Jk8I.png

-Not high enough contrast for my liking,

-Bulks of text in low contrast = 'tl;dr',

-I keep clicking what looks like input field but it won't work. Oh, I have to click...

-...the 'I'm game' button below. That's practically invisible, due to being just outline, with the text hovering over another block of text.

Sure, it all goes away after you click the top layer off. But my initial reaction was 'What is this mess? What do they want from me? Why would I want to stay here?'.

Yep, we totally get that. We're changing out that intro page to something much better.

Thanks for your feedback! We have new homepage in the works which should hopefully clear up some of the confusion.

IE7/8 support is almost done. Almost! :/

Like Julia said, we're working on it. And for basic stuff, supporting IE is cake. Some of the features weren't cake and rather than release them non-functioning we made the call to get it working right. Soon!

Thank you for that! Check out our designer Sougwen's own website:

http://sougwen.com/

Hey all, I'm the interface / visual designer for the site. Very appreciative of all your positive feedback, and especially your keen and insightful constructive criticisms.

It's been a truly unique experiment so far, and it's only just begun. Really pleased to hear any and all responses as we push interface / functionality tweaks, new updates, and new features!

First I read the title as Iran something.

Interesting; it could be used like online petitions, but with actions instead of words. Hopefully most/all large tasks can be divided with such granularity that everyone can take part without major roadblocks.

Fix your site so that it works oN the iPhone

An iPhone site wasn't in the works for phase one release (minimally viable product), but it's definitely in the works.

We definitely plan to do that.

nice design

Thank you!

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