
IfIRanTheWorld I would.. - jonmc12
http://ifwerantheworld.com/
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dflock
It seems that most people using it have missed the point about micro-platforms
and micro-actions, to actually enable the ideas to be broken into tiny
achievable steps and be implemented. All the suggestions that I saw on there
were basically in the form 'If I Ran The World I Would... boil the oceans.'

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cindygallop
You're right - we want to encourage people to take things they really care
about and think about how to tackle them via initially tangible goals they can
then use friends, networks, and the connections we can provide to achieve via
microactions. We're working to address and rebalance this.

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olalonde
Usability was great until I tried finding a listing of IfIRanTheWorld answers.

~~~
juliamae
I'm the developer for the site, although I've only been on the project for a
few weeks. The initial vision, as I understand it, was to not bombard people
with what they _could_ do, but let people find it themselves. We've since
gotten a lot of comments about just wanting to see an index, which we're put
up at /action_platforms for the curious. This page is in the works, which is
why there's no link to it.

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JMiao
i like this. some thoughts:

a) everyone i've shown this to clicks on the "fake" input box and initially
ignores the "i'm game" link.

b) is the "i'm game" section supposed to overlap the newly posted statements?
i'm using safari.

c) i wish i could use my browser's back button to return to the list of items
based on my statement.

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juliamae
Yes Yes and Yes I agree with you on all those n_n

A&B - we have a redesigned home page to get rid of the wall of text and the
confusing overlay coming very soon.

C- This is one of my least favorite things about the site. I'll +1 to this
issue.

Thanks!!

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nazgulnarsil
funny how when people talk about changing the world they never want to get
into the specifics of what THEY should be doing. it's always about what others
should be doing. so, are we going to force others to go along with us? if we
get 51% of the votes we should be able to enforce ourselves on the other 49%
with guns right?

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andrewcooke
maybe - just maybe - that's exactly what this site is addressing? maybe you
should have a look?

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cindygallop
To everybody who's commented so far - we really appreciate the feedback, the
compliments and the constructive criticism.

Just to add to my team's responses below:

\- fulltime employees currently are 3: myself (founder/CEO/ business
development/'customer service'), Jason our general manager who also operates
as project manager and programmer, and Julia, programmer. Oonie has been
working on user experience alongside her day job and joins us fulltime very
soon. Sougwen our brilliant designer is currently on the digital media course
at Hyper Island in Stockholm and works with us part-time. And Corey and Rachel
at Pivotal Labs worked with us to build this while we were looking for full-
time developers, are passionate about the venture, very much part of the team
and we want to give them full credit for that.

\- we pushed IfWeRanTheWorld out in beta very much in 'minimum viable product'
mode because we wanted a real-world, real-time test to garner exactly the kind
of feedback you are kindly giving us below, so we could jump on user
experience/usability issues pronto, and address and refine accordingly
alongside our own development timeline (which has additional features and
functionality being added on a daily basis, along with addressing IE issues).

\- you're quite right about the fact that while 'If I ran the world I would'
is designed to inspire you to act on what you really personally care about,
it's prompting users to think rather too big at the moment - we're jumping on
that with some different ways of suggesting how you approach that, in order to
turn big thoughts into tangible goals you (and everyone else helping) can turn
into microactions that make them achievable.

\- we, and I personally, really appreciate everything we're saying and will be
acting on it

\- I should just add that we are big fans of 'abnormal' - as in,doing things
differently and coming up with innovative ways to achieve goals and be
effective. Including where that, ahem, references the unusual instance of a
startup team being female-dominated..:)

~~~
cindygallop
Whoops, apologies for typo, that should be 'we really appreciate everything
YOU'RE saying..':)

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jhuckestein
This site is beautiful, obviously.

I also love the idea of challenging people to think big, like what they'd do
if they ran the world. For me, this question involves ethical considerations,
prevention of global conflict, the battle of hunger and poverty and the
maximization of happiness.

I don't understand how their microactions relate to that question at all. They
seem to be asking two questions at the same time. One is a hypothetical
mindgame that makes people think about the challenges of the world and one is
the very specific question of what each individual can do. As a result the
answers they get are apparently either overly general or not relevant at all.

If anyone wants to discuss the big question, you can check out a thread I
recently opened at HN :)

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juliamae
The idea is that you CAN do what you would do if you ran the world, if you had
enough man hours to get you there. A little help here & there, and you can
achieve it. All this is possible because you're likely not the only one who
wants to do what you want to.

The workflow as we have envisioned it is that you answer the question, and we
show you similar action platforms and microactions, so that you can get
involved right now with the platform you care about. Or, if nothing matches
what you have in mind, you can start your own.

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martythemaniak
7 employees and 2 of them guys, one a programmer. huh.

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smanek
What's your point?

Granted, I have no idea what they're doing that requires 7 people (and only 2
coders ...).

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andrewljohnson
His point is that's insane :). The general consensus on Hacker News is a good
brand new start-up is 2-3 people, who are all coders. I tend to agree with
this, except for exceptional projects like search engines. Most websites can
be handled by a hacker or two at the beginning.

This site could be done by just one mostly incompetent programmer in short
order. What the other six guys could possibly be doing is a mystery. They are
probably just slowing down the one guy doing any work.

~~~
tripngroove
You folks may have missed the boat in assuming this is a startup. I think it's
more about the idea/message/whatever.

These people have other (good) jobs. Cindy Gallop (Founder/CEO) is a
(quasi)retired ad exec. Her last web experiment: makelovenotporn.com. She
talked about it at TED last year. No revenue model there. Oonie Chase is
creative director at Blast Radius. The list goes on.

Plus, not less than 3 people on the about page have the word "Code" in their
job title, so uhh... fuzzy math.

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jliebrecht
You get it.

We also decided to launch this as an experiment as well to get input and
feedback like we are getting here. Rather than try to make it perfect at
launch, we'll get the minimum viable product out there and see what the world
wants from it. We've already made some changes and are continuing to do so
based on feedback from the masses.

Thanks!

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juliamae
Hey, everyone, thanks for your feedback! I'm the dev for the site and we know
we have a long way to go.

We launched the site a few weeks ago in the interest of getting it out there
and see how people are using it and what they want. So yea, there's a lot of
stuff that's not there/broken/weird. But that's kind of the point!

We didn't stick a huge beta icon in the corner, but we think people need to
stop being apologetic about what they're putting out there and more receptive
to feedback and real-world use cases.

So, please, if you have any ideas about what could make this more useful to
you, let us know! You can ping me here, or on getsatisfaction.

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pedalpete
Strikingly beautiful design. Incredibly simple and interesting premise. This
site has done a GREAT job of letting the user do one simple thing before
enticing them to get more involved. Very well done. One of the best new sites
i've seen in a while.

Oh, if you are the site creator, there is a bit of a bug in chrome&FF. the 'ok
i'm game' button is placed over the 'x hours ago' line which I suspect is
supposed to be above.

I hate to say it, but you loose some points by not supporting IE at all. Not
supporting IE6 i can appreciate. But it doesn't take THAT much extra time to
support IE7 & 8.

~~~
silversmith
Ummmmm, on the point of beautiful design, are we seeing the same thing? This
is what I see: <http://imgur.com/0Jk8I.png>

-Not high enough contrast for my liking,

-Bulks of text in low contrast = 'tl;dr',

-I keep clicking what looks like input field but it won't work. Oh, I have to click...

-...the 'I'm game' button below. That's practically invisible, due to being just outline, with the text hovering over another block of text.

Sure, it all goes away after you click the top layer off. But my initial
reaction was 'What is this mess? What do they want from me? Why would I want
to stay here?'.

~~~
jliebrecht
Yep, we totally get that. We're changing out that intro page to something much
better.

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sougwen
Hey all, I'm the interface / visual designer for the site. Very appreciative
of all your positive feedback, and especially your keen and insightful
constructive criticisms.

It's been a truly unique experiment so far, and it's only just begun. Really
pleased to hear any and all responses as we push interface / functionality
tweaks, new updates, and new features!

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est
First I read the title as Iran something.

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vito
Interesting; it could be used like online petitions, but with actions instead
of words. Hopefully most/all large tasks can be divided with such granularity
that everyone can take part without major roadblocks.

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geuis
Fix your site so that it works oN the iPhone

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juliamae
An iPhone site wasn't in the works for phase one release (minimally viable
product), but it's definitely in the works.

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hungrybeast
nice design

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cindygallop
Thank you!

