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Ask HN: Please review my concept

signinstyle.com

10 pointsabhishekdesai52 comments

I like the idea. I have a horrible signature. I'm not sure I would part with real money for a better one, but I like the idea.

What I don't like is the front page of the site. The text there basically conveys nothing. I had to re-read the first paragraph several times to make sure I hadn't mis-read it. It just doesn't give any sense of what the service is!

Thanks for the suggestions. You are right we need to work on the presentation. I am glad you liked he idea though.

I love the idea. The site needs more to it though, it feels kind of "shallow". I know that is not very good feedback, but it kind of comes off like "different/odd" instead of designer.

But all of that is not what causes me to hesitate...

My current signature is basically a big stylized "B". It works, it's kind of unique and it gets the job done. It's also on my drivers license, passport, 2 mortgages, my checking account (not that I write many checks) 3 credit cards, a hundred + legal documents and probably a few places I'm forgetting. So, I pay you $30 and I get a new cool sig. Sweet. What about the last 20 years of accumulated signed cruft that my fancy new sig now no longer matches? It wouldn't even be a slight derivation from what I have now, it would be totally different, might almost look forged. How do I handle that? Some info/advice/etc on your site along those lines might help...

Reminds me of this:

http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit/

Yes actually in the older version of site we had this section. I guess we need to put it back here. Thank you for the feedback. It really helped.

Nice idea, maybe I'm not your target audience though :)

Questions:

1) what's the point ?

(this is probably proof that I'm not your target audience...)

2) how do you expect to get people to use your product ?

in other words, are they expected to 'practice' your signatures ?

3) what are the legal issues surrounding changing your signature ?

(mine is on just about every official document I have, passport, driving license, various permits, business documents and so on)

1) There are many people who hate their signature but just does not know how to get a better signature 2) We provide videos with the images of the Signature using which they can practice the Signature. They do. 3) There are not much legal hassle in changing the Signature. You may need to have paper telling this is your old and this is your new signature and you may have to remember how to do the old signature.

I wanted to like this, really I did, but you lost me about here: It is a proven fact that handwriting and signatures are the best tools to understand a personality.

Why do you say that? You don't think they are the tools to understand personality? Or they are not the best ones?

>> It is a proven fact that handwriting and signatures are the best tools to understand a personality.

> You don't think they are the tools to understand personality?

In a word "no".

The site in question provides a new signature for a fee. Do you believe that people can change their personality by paying a fee to a web site and writing their name differently?

I'm pretty sure that almost anyone can produce 20-50 different signatures. If someone does so, have they developed new personalities? (Claiming that they had those personalities before doesn't help your position.)

Signature/handwriting analysis is as useful as analyzing the bumps on one's head. It help with identification, but tells you nothing about the person.

Handwriting analysis tells everything about that person. Probably that is why each person has unique handwriting and it also changes depending on the age and circumstances person is living in.

If you change your Signature as per the Graphological inputs from an expert it surely brings positive changes to your personality. It is psychological.

"If you change your Signature as per the Graphological inputs from an expert it surely brings positive changes to your personality."

citation needed. I'd like to see any scientific backing for this claim. Sounds like mystical mumbo jumbo to me (and deosn't belong on HN in my opinion)

> Handwriting analysis tells everything about that person.

Oh really? I can change my handwriting at whim. I'm pretty sure that my personality doesn't change that fast.

Let me ask you a question in return: I'd like you to understand somebody's personality. You have a choice between a) looking at their signature, or b) spending a few hours with them in face-to-face conversation. Which would you choose?

I may choose spending few hours with them because I can not do the handwriting analysis myself. But you know what I will not be able to understand that person completely in those few hours. Analyzing handwriting gives much more clear idea about the personality of the person as he can not hide his inner traits in his handwriting.

Even if he learns a new signature from your site?

Sorry, but handwriting may be one factor in the expression of a persons identity, but it is by no means the most important one, and to pretend so puts you so far outside of the mainstream as to render the project outside of my interests.

What follows is not physical truth, but emotional truth --- alas, that is what counts when you want to market a product like this.

I find your concept alarming. On paper or digitally, my signature is a symbol whose only referent is me. Not Sam, or diiq --- Sam points to a thousand thousand different individuals. But my signature points to me because I am the only person who can produce it.

If you want people to accept this product, you'll need to convince them that the signature they recieve is:

  a) absolutely unique to them
  b) representative of them
  c) still points back to them

If I sign my name using Disney's trademark hand, people will see Disney, despite the fact that it's my name. Is there really enough variety in your showcase that I will believe people won't recognize your work?

To make this work, your designer(s) will have to become such master forgers that any hint of their own personal style vanishes. I... wouldn't want to be one of those designers.

Each signature we create is absolutely unique for that person, we can guarantee that. It also represents their personality in case graphological signature. When each person adopts to the signature we have created for her, She adds her own personality traits in doing that which makes signature points back to them. There is no way any person can do exact match of the Signature we have created for her.

I frequently open a bunch of tabs in firefox and then go through them one by one. I got to the tab with your site and was genuinely confused;

I had the general idea that you were selling something, but wasn't sure what.

I didn't know why you only used a tiny amount of my pretty normally sized screen (no content?)

It was only when I got to the showcase that I felt remotely interested (as it is, I only got that far based upon the faith that I opened the tab so it MUST have something of interest in it). I think the showcase should be on the front page.

On a related note I frequently check out "new programming language!" websites. Unless they have a quick example on the front page I close the tab and forget about them.

I'm pretty sure that most people will exhibit this kind of disinterest: if you want my money you need my interest first. Show me something interesting and concise straight away or I'll walk.

Second the showcase remark, that's a really good observation, I had exactly the same feelings while going through the site. Only when I reached the showcase I got a faint feeling there might be something to this concept after all. If the text of the posting had not been 'please review' then I would have been gone long ago.

This violates the 15 second rule:

http://webadvice.org/archives/17

Thanks. We sure need to work on this.

Thanks for the feedback. Yes showcase is the most interesting thing on the site and we should keep that on the homepage somehow. I am glad I am getting such cool feedback from you guys. I appreciate your time to review this.

Product explanation needs to improve, a collage or a slide show of the signatures might help people to understand the product.

yes true. thanks.

Totally agree. Once I found the gallery I pretty much immediately "got it" but up to that point I was having a hard time figuring out what it the product actually was.

I think your idea is ridiculous. I'm not sure how you plan on overcoming years of muscle memory in order to provide... what? Some kind of extension of my personal brand?

I really don't care what my signature looks like. I can't even remember the last time I signed for something, and I'm not bothered about what the UPS guy thinks of my signature. Maybe I'm missing some cultural difference here, but I've never judged anyone on their signature, nor do I expect to be judged by my own.

As for Graphology being a science? It isn't. I realize that saying so supports your marketing copy, but the style of someone's handwriting is purely a product of the method by which they were taught to write.

May be you are not the target audience for this site. But there are many people who hates their Signature and want to change it for better. They feel let down by their Signature. I was one of them and thus this idea started.

I am not sure Graphology is science or not but to the people whom we have given handwriting analysis we have accurately identified their personalities from their handwriting sample and current signature. We have received the feedback on the same saying "we have done the great job in identifying my personality traits". This is true for even those people for whom we have given negative review of their personality.

Your feedback is totally appreciated though. I also need to know why people may hate my concept.

I've got to say, you're handling a lot of negative criticism very well. Kudos.

I don't understand why anyone would feel let down by their signature - you need seriously low self-esteem to feel that your scratch on a page is something worth getting worried about. Will your audience be large enough? Are there enough of those people out there? Do you REALLY have 5000 customers? Paying customers?

As for graphology, it falls in the same area of astrology and spiritualism in which the proponent can toss out any reasonably broad trait, and someone will say "thats JUST like me!" - it's basically all bullshit.

Yeah I guess I can take negative criticism :)

People like you may never understand this but not liking your Signature does not mean let down feeling. You simply dont like something and you want to change it. In case of Signatures we come into picture.

We do have > 5000 customers not all paying customers but yes hundreds of customers who have paid us.

We used to run a free services for the first 3 months and because of our mention in CNBC India we got thousands of visits in couple of nights. We stopped shipping free after that and started charging for the Signatures.

In graphology we toss lot of specific personal traits which does not qualify in the broad spectrum. I can send you one sample analysis if you want.

I'd love to see that, actually. My email address is the first three letters of my username, followed by @, followed by my entire username, followed by .co.uk

I think it would be a good idea to put one sample report up on the site.

Point taken. Thanks.

I don't understand the product. Am I seriously supposed to watch videos to learn how to write my signature in a new way? Or am I wildly misunderstanding this?

You need to signup and pay for the Designer Signature. You will get 3 Designer Signatures developed by our inhouse artist after understanding your requirements. You can choose any one of the Signature you like and watch the video to know how to go about it. Video is a means to understand how you can actually do the Signature.

Are there any security issues with this? I mean, if I used this, I would be adopting a signature that has been perfected by someone else...

I also agree with working the gallery into the front page somehow. The gallery is what explains it best i think.

No there are no security issues. We do not take any contact information of the person. We also give them 3 signatures out of which they are free to choose any.

Yes gallery we will be moving to homepage very soon.

You should replace the colored water images on the left of each page with actual signatures. The colored water images are overly generic, and that's really disappointing coming from a business that claims to do visual design.

Having signatures may also help people understand the difference between your 2 products... right now, it seems like your premium product (the graphological signature) is just the "extended bs edition" of your entry-level product.

Seems like a nice idea. Thanks for the feedback.

I still have no idea what this site offers. :) It certainly needs to be a lot more clearer at a glance, I lost interest very quickly.

yes this is the major part we need to work it seems. thanks for the feedback.

Just from a first view of the site, I'd check the kerning on your business name. It can easily come across as 'Sig n in St yle'.

ok cool. thanks. will work on it asap.

that kerning makes me think that when I get home I'll run the text through a font checker. I don't think anyone who writes English normally would write calligraphy like that.

Presumably for a low number of users you could return simply one of 3 or 4 different styles of signature, taken simply from good handwriting fonts and facsimiled on video for the lessons? Not necessarily a bad idea.

Well we create signatures from scratch for each and every user. Our team of calligraphers create them according the inputs given by user. We can not use ready made fonts to do that.

I'm not saying you do, I'm saying a dishonest person could and would probably get away with it for quite a while.

I have to say, I love this. I'm a typography enthusiast with horrible, horrible handwriting, and an even worse signature.

What I'm worried about though, is dropping $30 on a signature and possibly not liking your 3 options, or even worse, falling in love with one of them and not being able to reproduce it.

Well it has happened very rarely that a person had not liked any of the 3 signatures. But if it happens we are more than happy to provide 1 or 2 more options as per his additional inputs and feedback.

Rule 101: please dont send me my password in an email, in plain text. :)

true. thanks.

Hey Guys, I have done some changes as per your feedback. Please let me know if it is easier to understand the concept now.

Thanks, Abhishek

Is this a mylivesignature.com knock off?

Heard about it for the first time. Thanks for the tip though. We have started this from February 2006. I am not sure how old is mylivesignature.com

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