Review the UI/Experience of this side project (FriendShuffle) | Hacker News Reader

Review the UI/Experience of this side project (FriendShuffle)

friendshuffle.com

14 pointsschlichtm22 comments

We wanted to make sure it was fast and dead simple.

We think there are a lot of things that we can improve on but we would love some feedback from the Hacker News community (specifically on the UI and experience).

Thanks!

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My review:

1) As you already know, landing on the page is very harsh. The very first thing I saw when I arrived at the page was a popup that asked me to sign in with Twitter or Facebook. I didn't really read the title or the text; I immediately pressed back. This is easily fixed by letting the user know what you are before signing in.

2) Switching between sites is really well done, I instantly understood how to do it.

3) I dislike the "I like this too" button. It's not clear with what it does; I clicked on it hoping for a "post to Facebook or Twitter" option but it went straight to my Twitter. I'd prefer having two separate buttons to know exactly what I'm doing.

Overall, neat idea -- but it feels like I'm being tricked into doing certain actions since I don't quite know what's going on at first.

Extremely poor start - people have to sign in via Facebook or Twitter before they can even find out who/what you are.

I could live with that. But what made me quit right off the bat was that by signing in with twitter I have to follow you. Annoying to say the least: make it a checkbox.

I think this might be a bit harsh. ;)

However I do agree it would be much better to set up user expectations for the benefit of linking their account: explain to me why you need this information in a simple, preferably visual way.

Also, would be great to have a way to unlink my Twitter/Facebook credential from the app.

I dont use Facebook, but for Twitter, you can go to Settings > Connections, and revoke the permission for any/all third party apps.

My point is that the creator forces the user to choose to sign up or leave - there's no discovery or guide to help the user make that choice.

Of course this is a side project, so user experience may not matter. But he asked specifically about experience, so...

Totally agree with this - We're working on improving this + explaining the value of the product better before you sign in.

We definitely don't want to trick a user into signing up - we want to be as clear as possible.

Most of the time, I dont mind signing up for apps on HN, to review them using my twitter account (I dont use FB), but I did not do it for your app, because I dont like it doing auto following by my twitter account WITHOUT an option to avoid it. Also it seems like it will spam a tweet from my account.

I dont mind giving feedback/review. I mind if apps spam my followers, to gain traction.

Agreed - I see where you are coming from.

To be clear we are not spamming upon login though - so you're ok.

Another question: why does it want to post to my FB wall?

I'm not even sure what your product is - but I do get that it probably wants to have access to my data to do its business. Allowing you access to my posts, friends, etc, is fine, but I get suspicious when an app demands write-access without justifying it.

Okay, I know a lot of other folks have already pointed out the fact that just throwing up a Facebook/Twitter login might be a bit harsh. I would listen to them. But in addition to that, I would question that rather liberal policy you have taken with what, exactly, you have access to in my Facebook/Twitter account.

I didn't actually try to sign in with Twitter, but I noticed at the bottom you post a disclaimer saying that if I sign in with Twitter, I will start following you. WHY? Is that necessary to the app running? If not, that seems like a pretty bad way to increase your follower count.

I did try to sign in with Facebook, but immediately canceled when I saw you wanted access not only to my News Feed and Friends (which I fully expected), but also to send me EMAIL, access my Facebook account WHEN I'M NOT USING YOUR SITE (offline access), and POST TO MY WALL. At least the last of those, posting to my wall, I can get behind should I choose to do an action on your site that warrants it (e.g. I like something on your site and want to share it with my friends), but you should be approaching this from a standpoint of asking me for the only the permissions you need to get me started, then following up with further requests for specific permissions on an as-needed basis.

Especially since your entire site revolves around people logging in with their other social networking accounts, your site should respect those accounts. Not ask for permissions right off the bat that are going to scare away potential users who have no idea what you're going to use the permissions FOR. If I like an item and I get a request to allow your application permission to post to my Wall, that makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense is that I have to give you permission to send me email through Facebook just to access your site at all.

My 2 cents, but hey, you already lost at least one potential user. Get that fixed and I think you increase the folks who actually proceed through the front gate by several fold.

Great app! I was clicking much too fast on the shuffle button and it took a while for the next site to come up. This made me click on the shuffle button again, leading to more slowness. Perhaps adding some kind of progress indicator to let the user know the next site is loading would be useful.

The design is intuitive too.

Hmmm... how fast were you clicking (and what browser / how is your internet connection)

Chrome on 5Mb connection. I was clicking pretty fast (two or three times a second)

The shuffle UI shouldn't get longer to load as you spam the button. There's a self-cancelling delay from the time you click shuffle button until the frame loads so that when people click through super fast that the frame doesn't try to load each one. Within 300ms of letting up on the shuffle button the frame should begin loading no differently. Can you describe what happened in more detail please? (also do you remember the site that it loaded that was slow for you)?

My 2 pennies worth: I'd take away the modal window from the start, signing in with fb or twitter accounts is a first class task and should be treated as such, graphically, editorially whatever. As it stands with the darkened "I like too" etc. buttons it feels like I missed a step, or some piece of the story.

I'd also suggest you stick to one shade of blue if possible, make your border radius the same or in harmony and make the generic icon look less like a squashed fb icon, i.e. make it unique or charming, identifiable to your project.

Animating the movement of the modal box was probably wasted on most :)

Can't say much about anything else as I don't have twitter and I don't use FB to log in to other apps.

i agree, the modal auth prompt really turns me off. tell users what the app is about (not obvious from the name) before forcing an auth.

some screenshots, a demo, video, or even a textual description should be part of a landing page.

The button text "Sweet I Got It" didn't make any sense to me at first.

I got what exactly?

I certainly didn't read any of the text above it, even though I eventually clicked the button to make it go away.

Why do apps insist on asking for every possible permission they might ever need? Can't you ask after I do something that requires advanced permissions?

This is the first thing I see: http://i.imgur.com/wfWCR.png I don't even know anything about the app, let alone whether I should trust you.

Congratulations on getting covered on RWW: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/friendshuffle_stumbleup...

It needs an option to go back to the previous in case I overenthusiastically clicked next. Also, nexts should be deterministic so I can go forward and back in the stream at will.

great job, i have nothing to complain about!It would be nice when a video ends, for the shuffle to begin.But it's not that hard to click the button!

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