
Show HN: SketchDaily.io – Free educational and fun sketching tool - ripexz
https://www.sketchdaily.io/
======
ripexz
I've been tipping away at this side project for over half a year (in full-time
employment), but it's finally at a stage where I'm not ashamed to make it
public.

By no means finished but it's first time I've shipped a side project from
start to finish so it feels good :)

------
WheelsAtLarge
Annoying, having to login is not practical without knowing what the app is.
So, I could not get past the 1st screen. You lost me and I'm sure many others.

~~~
ripexz
So with your feedback in mind, I've reworked the onboarding/signup process and
you start with a sketch first and sign up to save it, give it another chance
if you have the time. :)

[https://www.sketchdaily.io/#get-started](https://www.sketchdaily.io/#get-
started)

~~~
brudgers
If it is free, why have signup at all?

At least for right now. If the goal is something bigger, then getting users
and solving the problems related to use that come from edge cases in browser
configuration; drawing size and style; and saving across the internet can be
field tested by reducing the impediments to use.

Getting rid of accounts also means getting rid of account management
chores...like the one here...that eat into the time needed to make the user
experience better. To be clear, no matter how good you make the signup, it is
a bad experience that stands between a user's enthusiasm for the product and
their use.

Going further, there are approximately two user experience scenarios that go
with signup.

1\. The security conscientious user will spend time thinking about security
and managing identity and assessing risk associated with adding another
account because every account increases attack surface area.

2\. The security naive user will just use an existing identity pattern and
that makes your site a more attractive target for black hat hacking and
therefore increases effort that must be exhibited on non-functional aspects of
the site.

Or to put it another way, would you rather spend your time managing an account
system or doing creating something interesting...and productive: I found your
comment from this resubmission of your site (plus an HN search):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15283017](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15283017).
It goes to the normal page instead of the new better experience, as would be
expected. And so my experience was worse than you hoped because it is hard to
control incoming links.

Adding signup and accounts are a task that frameworks make easier than the
important functional work. But they are hard to get right because no user
says, "I wish I had to sign up for this instead of doing the interesting thing
I came here to do." This means accounts are hard to get right. It is only the
ease with which frameworks make creating a user account system possible that
makes adding user accounts "best industry practice."

tl;dr = Treat the need for user accounts as a possible edge case.

Good luck.

~~~
ripexz
I see where you're coming from - definitely not an easy problem to solve
though, from my experience other free learning web apps can't do without
accounts either.(Duoling, Codecademy, etc).

Maybe my views are outdated about this, but I haven't see this done without
registration, sure I can store stuff locally in the browser/device but the
second you switch, your data is lost.

I guess I could make it easier for the latter security-naive user by offering
SSO with Facebook/Twitter/what-have-you but in the end it's just glorified
signup, a better UX sure, but working around the same problem.

If you can give me examples of other apps that have done this well, I'm all
ears, this is very much a learning experience for me and I'd like to take away
as much as possible.

~~~
brudgers
To me, the big idea of sketching daily is sketching daily. It's not lessons.
It's not getting reminders. It's not a system that tracks progress...because I
can see if my sketches are better or worse and the better and worse that
matters is "better and worse for me."

An example of a site that does not require signup is this one. The most
important user function -- encountering intellectually interesting material --
does not require signup. And my suspicion is that most of the people who
create an account, read Hacker News for a while before doing so and that many
people read Hacker News for a long time without making an account (unless
applying to YC). And it is worth noting that an HN account only requires
selecting a user name and password: no email and verification nonsense.

And again it is worth emphasizing that HN offers substantial benefit without
signing up. The same with Google because singing up is orthogonal to the core
function.

Looking at SketchDaily.io, the reminders and email are orthogonal to the acts
of sketching and learning to sketch. They apply as much to sketching with a
pen on paper as to sketching on a web site.

Because a person can sketch daily using a pen and paper instead of a website,
the value of the website has to be in providing a better user experience. The
odds that providing a website with a _valid_ email address will provide a good
user experience are often close to zero.

Maybe there are great features behind the signup screen. Maybe there aren't.
Putting the signup screen in front of those additional features means that
_the website_ misses the opportunity to sell those features to any potential
user who does not want to bother with the friction of signing up.

How bad is it? Well I'm no your page and your signup process sends me away
from your page to another application in order to verify my email address and
I cannot proceed until I do. So I can get distracted or not bother or the
email can go into my spam folder or just get stuck because SMTP is an
unreliable protocol. And all of those things stand between me and whatever
enthusiasm I had five minutes ago.

I mean it's good for Google if I check my Gmail account. It's not good for me.
It's probably not really good for your site either because your site gave me a
chore. And the chore is in lieu of what is really useful for both me and the
site...my use of the site so that you can learn what works better and worse
and make improvements.

I'd put it this way, two people have complained about signing up after
actually landing on your page. This might be evidence that some fraction of
potential users don't see an obvious benefit from signing up. If the signup
was not there, you might have received more interesting and better feedback
about the actual function of the site rather than its administrative policies.

~~~
ripexz
I guess I got carried away with the usual dev stuff, "oh well need an account
to keep track of sketches", "oh better require email address so they can reset
their password", "hmm better confirm it so bots cant spam sketches and fill my
s3 buckets" and so on... I've just gone through the signup process myself -
for the nth time, and felt myself that after submitting that first sketch it
didn't feel right that the next step is to leave the page and confirm an email
address...

I did make the confirmation optional previously, I think first step will be to
go back to that and work from there towards a signup-as-an-edge-case approach.

Thank you, you've given me a lot of food for thought.

