Show HN: Firesub – Reusable checklists for teams [MVP] | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Firesub – Reusable checklists for teams [MVP]

firesub.com

17 pointsFrejNorling40 comments

I'm confused, is this ready to be used or not? I was excited to play around with it so I signed up, only to be hit with a 'still in development' notification.

Typically, MVP implies a product that's ready to be use. This appears to be more of a landing page teaser.

Regardless, looks like a cool service, and congrats on your progress thus far!

Thank you, it was never my intention to trick anyone into beleving it was a fully functioning service. Thats why I put the [MVP] tag in the title. There is of coures different views on what a MVP is. Sorry again if you feel tricked. You can email me at frej@firesub.com and I will remove your mail address so you don't get a email when this is ready to be tested if you want.

That being said, thanks for your encuragement, it helps! =)

"MVP" => Minimum Viable Product (at least here). You just showed the "M" part. I don't see how it's actually possible to misunderstand the fact that it should be a bit more than that.

You might be right, but I could not come up with a anything better to put in the title then MVP, you have anything better I will change the title.

MVP doesn't mean it have to be perfect but it also doesn't mean that even basic things have not been taken care of. It's always good to receive feedback early in the cycle but to receive the feedback one should be able to play with the app. I liked the information about the product but it is definitely not MVP. Currently It is no different that showing a ppt.

I do not dissagree with you, the hacker news community is, of course used to play with new ideas showcased here, but after reading stuff from Eric Rise and Steve Blank and .co I decided to go after a "Minimal MVP" so to speak.

Hopefully no one is feling tricked by the title, if so, I'm sorry and beg your pardon.

I think the easy solution here would be to adjust your wording a little on the landing page to tell me I'm signing up to hear more information and be informed when it launches - not that I'm signing up to "get started". You have saved my email I gave you so you can keep me updated right? That's not clear in your text either but you really should be doing it and letting people know that you are.

In terms of feedback, well I tried to sign up so I guess that tells you I liked it a lot, can you elaborate on how far along it actually is? Are the various screenshots current development status or are they just mockups at the moment? Your blog only has one post and it just shows a photo of a laptop on this landing page. I'm not a big fan of the tagline, it seems really convoluted - reusable checklists for teams is much closer to what it should be I think. Also I spotted a small typo, "Create beautiful and simple checklists that is easy to maintain and...", is should be are. :)

You should put a sign up button under each of the package options too, and use your analytics to see where people sign up. But really, most importantly, your website tells me your product is ready to get started with, I tried and now I don't know where in the process of being built it is. I really suggest clearing it up. :)

That's true, I do not want to come across as a email gatherer. I have added a short description below the email input form for now, I need to go thru all wording to see how I can avoid confusion moving forward.

The current screenshots are the current development, I'v linked to a vide I recorded today as a way to clear up a the idea and workflow used in the app [0].

I will certainly fix the blog, I have no excuses for not updating it. =)

About the tag line, I am using "Reusable checklists for teams" or do you mean on the that I should remove the second heading on the landing page?

The typo is fixed, thanks!

[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivw7XEI8xDs

Much clearer! Great to see it's at that stage already, the video makes it much easier to see how far along you are. Yep for the tag line I meant the second one, sorry that wasn't clear - I can see why you want a secondary one but the first one is much stronger.

Hi Frej, your MVP landing page is beautifully designed, but it it does not tell me why I would need your product, or really what it is. There are lists and lists of features, but no demos or examples to explain why they are useful. Sell benefits, not features. Good luck!

Hi, thanks for your feedback, appreciate it, you are right, I fell in the classical trap of feature selling. I was aiming for a video to showcase the app, but it would have been a lot of work just to validate a simple idea: is this useful, do people need this?

Looks useful. You might want to have a friend copy-edit your page. There are quite a few grammar errors on here. "Your Feed allow" -> "Your Feed allows". "when your team need them" -> "when your team needs them"

Thanks. Ohh man, I'v had 3 different people proof read the page multiple times. Guess you can't have to much copy edit. =)

I'v corrected your suggestions, thanks!

You might check out http://www.criticue.com -- I use them as a quick grammar/WTF check before press pushes.

Thanks, will definitely look them up. It's hard when you're not english speaking. =)

"but it would have been a lot of work just to validate a simple idea: is this useful, do people need this?"

I would say the opposite. You could easily do rapid experiments to validate the idea before investing any development time, figuring out why you are building the product, and how people would use it. It's the whole purpose of UX experimentation and idea validation before investing code time. Not that I'm saying you wasted time, but rapid experimentation, prototyping and storyboard mockups is the opposite of a lot of work, its rapid validation that can help you start off on the right foot. I recommend this video "creating a culture of rapid experimentation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-WLX8gc8WY"

Sorry, I missed your comment.

The initial plan was to release a viedeo of the app, like Drew Houston did with Dropbox. But in my mind the video needed to be perfect, not showing any signs of bugs or misshaps, so I got a bit stuck with that. So instead I decided to go with a good landing page and screenshots insted. Thats way I thought it would be a lot of work in making a video demo.

I created something similar a few years ago: http://openhercules.com/ . It supports reusing lists through an explicit clone. Source is at https://github.com/flyingmachine/openhercules .

Looks great! Well done!

Just a quick comment about the first heading: "Every team have recurrent tasks to perform" doesn't sound right to me. I'd probably put: "Every team has recurring tasks to perform" - or at least replace the 'have' with a 'has' :-)

Thank you very much!

I have change the heading. Now it has has in it. =)

I'v captured a screencast [0], literally a minute ago, of how app works, it's the worst quality ever but it showcases the idéa and the problem the app solves.

[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivw7XEI8xDs

If someone wants an existing but offline only checklists app you can try mine: Fast Lists [0]. It includes options for nesting and hiding the already ticked items so it can be used with large lists.

I haven't added synchronisation yet as I'm not sure the return would be worth the time and I'm also concerned about conflict resolution and data loss.

The OP has a picture of a cockpit which would imply a safety critical environment. I would think long and hard before selling my app in that way especially for an online service.

[0] https://itunes.apple.com/app/fast-lists-checklists-for/id481...

Your app looks nice, good work.

When it comes to your valid concern about the safety of pilots using a always-online application I agree with you, that would not be very smart, but nowadays there is technical soulutions around this problem [0]. Alsow it is a hint to everyone who have read the book "The checklist manifesto" by Atul Gawande, I recomend it!

[0] http://diveintohtml5.info/offline.html

Edit: Sounded to harsh, not my intention.

Looking forward to seeing what the first/final version of this looks like and offers. Definitely need this kind of service a lot. I was thinking about something like this ever since I heard them speaking of a social checklist app on http://techzinglive.com/page/1419/250-tz-discussion-rise-of-... . Actually I would strongly think about adding a way to share and find checklists, maybe even a checklist store for larger checklists (e.g. conference planning) instead of having to come up with every checklist from scratch.

Good luck and endurance!

Hey Alex,

Thanks for the feedback.

The very first prototype had a discovery feature where you could publish your own checklist under categories, much like the App store but within the app and for checklists. I decided early on that it would be a version 2 feature, because what good does it make to be able to easily find new checklists if completeing them is not "butter-smoth", another concern is of course that the "store" would be exceptionally empty in the beginning. But the featuer is still in the "future features"-list.

Thanks for the enguragement, it gives energy! =)

If you like the idea of this sort of thing, you might also check out https://github.com/csquared/checkcheckit. It lets you make checklists in Markdown, execute code in code blocks, and share progress live on the web with your team.

I have seen it, and it's nice and a fun idea but for the ordinary man or women, well, I really don't need to say more. =)

Yeah. It works really well on a dev team. We use it in our team all the time for things before we transition them into a fully-automated process.

I really like this notion after reading "The Checklist Manifesto" and seeing how important recurring checklists are.

Me too, recurring checklists is a very powerful tool.

A little "easter egg" is the backgrounds that comes after the first image in the header. Everyone who have read "The Checklist Manifesto" will understand. =)

Haha I noticed that!

Hi, I'm the creator of Firesub.

Hopfully you like the idea. I'm very happy to answer any feedback you guys have.

Clicking "Show more" doesn't show me an example. Could it?

Sorry of it is unclear, it is suposed to scroll you down so you can read more about the app, what browser do you run on?

It scrolls down, but I never see an actual example of the product.

That's a misstake I'v made, to not provide a demo. I'v recorded a quick screencast [0] how it looks and works that you can view.

[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivw7XEI8xDs

Big hat tip!

I feel that to do apps are all very lacking in this respect, the reusable aspect.

Thanks, I do to. Also I belive checklists in companies and teams are under used. There is a lot of great To Do apps out there but nothing specially design for reuse within teams and organizations.

It should be titled MVC => Minimum Viable Concept

That would have been a more accurate description. I can´t change the title now, the edit button is gone.

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