What else should I add to Study Stickies? Is it good enough for more significant promotion (e.g., on StumbleUpon)? | Hacker News Reader

What else should I add to Study Stickies? Is it good enough for more significant promotion (e.g., on StumbleUpon)?

5 pointsamichail23 comments

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As I have already stated in another thread, I think the idea of your app is good and I got it straight away. I agree with most people here though that you could do with a better design and layout of the site. I think you should invest some time in this, no matter how daunting it might seem now.

That said, as long as the site works, I think you should unleash it right now to the public. Don't wait to get it perfect. Release it and carry on working to improve it - using feedback you get from users. Prepare to be very busy though and I would suggest a comprehensive FAQs/Glossary section before you launch. If you don't add one then you might get swamped and not have time to get on with your improvements. Also, I think the yellow highlight is too bright across the top of the homepage.

Finally, to aid comprehension, I suggest that you replace the text in the yellow highlight with: "Take notes (stickies) from any resource including books (both printed and online), videos, podcasts, and more. Share your stickies or keep them private. Learn from others." or similar.

All the best.

I don't want to sound like an asshole.

But, I have visited your site on different accounts in the past , say about 10 times. Every time I visit your site I:

a) haven't a clue of what your site is about, b) haven't a clue of where to begin to find out what it's about, c) find the design very unpleasant and frustrating.

I have tried to address (a) and (b) with more info in the yellow box.

Could you be more specific about (c)?

I'm with kyro here. Your site's design is about ten times more complicated than it needs to be, and the 'Please wait...' loading textbox is arse ugly. Have a look at sites like Wufoo or Thinkature. They have complex concepts too, but they know how to present them in a way that draws users in.

You don't need to have import data and export data as links on the front page, especially when I can't even seem to do anything with your site without logging in. Just have "Data import/export" as a bullet point in your feature list; people will get the point.

Speaking of being able to do something with your site without logging in: this is vital. If you want me to make an account, you need to give me a reason to do it. Again, see Thinkature's site, or Adobe's kuler. If you can provide even a subset of the site's functionality to people who aren't logged in, you'll get more signups. Even if you can't do that, it helps if you can explain why the heck I'd want to use your service, like Wufoo does.

Dude, if you are not willing to take advice, you will not progress. Your software is too complicated! You say it allows one take notes. Well, how in heavens name does one do that? I do not see a button or link.

This is why a lot of these ycomb reject startups are failing. Their software has obvious flaws and when it is pointed out, they do not work on fixing it.

Your site is fatally flawed. If you wish, mail me at maximusklein at gmail dot com for further discussion. If you don't wish to, start fixing it by explaining to me (and hundreds of other dumbasses like me), what the hell a "resource" is.

A "resource" is the artifact to which you would like to attach sticky notes. It may be a book, video, online document, etc.

To add a note, you first need to add a resource. Then you can click "Add Sticky" under the resource to add a sticky for that resource.

To put it in a nicer way, what's a resource? People work better with analogy to something they already know. For example "stickies" conveys something that can be stuck onto something else. Maybe that something else is a "stickable"? Or you could drop the generic word, and just mention the specific things you can stick to, like images, webpages, and videos.

In general, your site is daunting to a new user. Most of the things are not labeled in a way that a person unfamiliar with your terminology and layout conventions could jump right in and start using it. One thing to concentrate on is the names of actions. I see that I can import stickies, but I have no clue why I would want to. Where would they come from in the first place?

A FAQ/Help page would help out some, but it's really confusing from the outset, moreso than it should be for what I think (?) is a relatively simply idea.

The import currently supports the XML format used by the export.

This allows you to make backups using export and in case of data loss on the server import your stickies back in.

It also allows you to write a utility to import stickies from some other format.

In the future, I may provide a heuristic import that works with plain text.

See:

http://studystickies.com/

http://studystickies.com/#in%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2Fvideoplay%3Fdocid%3D-8246463980976635143

http://studystickies.com/#in%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Freports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu%2Fanon%2F2005%2FCMU-CS-05-193.pdf

http://studystickies.com/#sql%20by%3Aamichail

http://studystickies.com/#computer%20science

http://studystickies.com/#by%3Aamichail

http://studystickies.com/#in%3A0071350047

http://studystickies.com/#in%3A0070527660

http://studystickies.com/#psychology

BTW, the flash demo is a bit outdated but might be worth watching anyway.

BTW, how should I promote it? Pay for advertising on StumbleUpon?

Based on your replies to my comments so far, I think you're still missing the point. You've implemented good functionality, but you don't have a product. You need to figure out a way to convey why someone would want to use your site and make it easy for them to do so without being confused.

For example, I now know what the import/export options do, but there's absolutely no reason for those to be on the front page. I'm not even logged in, so they have zero relevance to my experience. Even for a registered user, they should probably be tucked away under "Advanced" or under some options tab. It's functionality only the techiest of techies would care to use; in general we can trust that you'll keep our data safe and we won't need personal backups. And working on your "heuristic import" is not a good idea either. It's your format, no one else is using it, so just make it simple and parse it in and out.

Your users couldn't care less how cool your code is or how many features you've implemented, just make something useful and make it easy to understand.

I thought it was important to make it really obvious that export is available. Without it, people might not even want to register as they might think that the service may go away at any moment and they would lose their data.

Well, part of your job is to convince users that you're trustworthy (assuming that you are). Only the hardcore skeptics should have any doubt.

reddit never had any export button, even though members have spent a lot of time creating content for it.

People don't worry about exporting/importing until they are significantly invested in the product. And even then...

I agree with the others re the design. After loading your page it takes a while to work out what the site is actually about. The mass of text is quite confusing, and I think you need to better explain the relationship between "resource" and "sticky". Interested to see you use GWT for this, I know it can be difficult to make anything look good with it. Making the whole site javascript seems to make browsing quite slow, cant you speed it up a bit somehow? just a few thoughts, good luck!

It's faster now.

It looks like you're using AJAX to load in content when I click links. That's a really weird way to implement your site. People are fine seeing pages load, especially when there's all new content coming in. Why reimplement what the browser already does?

I don't understand your point. The client gets data from a servlet using RPC. Could you elaborate?

I'm saying you could have (more easily) just let a new page load. Then javascript wouldn't be a requirement, and if I wanted to control the loading of the page I could do it with my browser controls.

When loading the flash demo, the loading bar does not convey any information. It just keeps growing with no indication of when it will complete.

Also, during pageloads your little "loading" popup seems to have horizontal and vertical scrollbars.

amichail; you need to redesign the user interface. start by using font size 12 across the whole site, then add margin between all the blocks. and consider something else beside yellow. Check out websites like technorati and wordpress.com

just curious, how is stumbleupon "significant promotion"?

They have a paid advertising feature where ads are also "stumbles" with only a subtle indicator that the stumble is sponsored. So it's less likely that people will immediately dismiss the site because it is an ad.

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