

Ask HN: Please review our redesigned Web App, GradeMate - biggitybones
http://mygrademate.com

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maxklein
I'm not going to sign up for this unless you tell me what pricing ballpark you
are looking at, or give me some guarantee it will always be free.

Do you know the amount of trouble it would be to move an entire school to your
system? And what if you come and say $500 a month and then we have to move the
entire school back.

That's why I'm not going to sign up - I don't want to enter a bait and switch
situation.

Another thing that turns me off is the language - the teachers I deal with are
serious people. Smileys, share the love, Sit tight and such things will make
the tool seem frivolous to them. The school owners would see this as a toy and
not a proper tool for management. You are speaking designer language, not
school teacher language.

What about the exams and the result generation for the students? Can't see it
in a quick look over.

~~~
mikegioia
Thanks Max. Right now it's completely free and not designed to be used as a
school wide system. The main purpose is for individual teachers to use it in
their classrooms. We wanted to make something that teachers could use to
manage all of their course material and eventually view really granular
reports on their students' progress as well as use the service to add more
collaboration to their classes. We have discussions set up now but are
planning to roll out project pages and and public profiles for students.

Hadn't thought as in depth about the language but that's a great point.

~~~
maxklein
You assumption is that teachers are motivated enough to actively seek out ways
to make their classrooms better. Hope you've insanely tested that assumption
out and you're sure it's true.

~~~
ams6110
And your basis for the contrary assumption is....?

~~~
maxklein
Experience running a private school.

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gkoberger
Beautifully designed, and looks easy to use. Seems to be heavily inspired by
Basecamp (which isn't a bad thing).

Two questions:

    
    
      - Out of curiosity, how do you make money?
    
      - How are you marketing it,since grade school teachers are rarely the techie type?

~~~
biggitybones
Thanks for the feedback!

Right now the site is completely free and will remain that way for students.
The next release will include a variety of improvements aimed at teachers, and
we plan to incorporate a freemium model of sorts that allows teachers to use
the current feature-set for free for a set number of courses, while paying for
unlimited use and the more advanced features.

As for marketing, we plan to meet with a few teachers in the NYC area to get a
feel for what they would want / need and then promote it through schools in
the area. We feel that teachers are becoming more and more familiar with the
feel of web applications, especially those recently into the profession. The
key for us is to create supporters out of this demographic and work from
there.

~~~
Retric
You might want add the ability for teachers to share info as part of your
premium service. AKA, teachers share the same holidays based on the school
etc.

------
brandon272
I think that the lack of pricing is a big problem. It's the first thing I was
scanning for as soon as I hit the website. For some reason, it almost seems
kind of insulting, and I'll tell you why:

Teachers are already quite organized. They already have methods, processes and
often software in place for managing most of what you're offering here.
Switching to this system from their current system would take an investment of
time and effort.

A website with a "we'll tell you the pricing later!" strategy basically sends
the message that you think that the service is either so wonderful, or that
their current methods of staying organized are so crappy, that it need not
matter what the prices are. But the truth is, you should be showing them the
prices from the get go so that they can get some kind of immediate register of
value in their mind before they proceed to investigate your service.

------
mikegioia
You can access the demo here: <http://www.mygrademate.com/demo>

username/password: demo/demo

~~~
Mallard
Small point regarding the demo-- I love that it's open and really gives you a
feel for the entire product, but you might want to consider making an
editable, disposable session for each time someone logs in. For example, one
of the assignments I saw was "testicle1", which I doubt you put in, and may
put off potential users. Instead of controlling for that sort of input, I'd
just have a default recurring demo screen that is editable but not saveable,
and gets destroyed once you end your demo session.

~~~
biggitybones
That's a good point and definitely going on the to-do list.

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mrduncan
Initial thoughts - It looks really nice, very clean and organized compared to
most education related software.

It seems like there are a lot of settings that can be updated, but what about
just picking good defaults and cleaning up the unnecessary ones all together?
For example, why would I want to turn _Enable iCal formatted feed for my
Calendar._ off? Does _Enable my RSS feeds for upcoming assignments and tests._
do? pull in other RSS feeds, or make my rss feeds available? If it makes mine
available, why would I ever want to turn it off? If I have a profile picture,
who gets to see it and where is it displayed?

Editing course grades (clicking on the numbers) didn't seem very intuitive to
me. It took a little clicking around to realize that I could even update them.
Same thing with the _Mark as complete_ button on assignments, it looks like
the button is disabled.

Hope that helps, I only took a quick look at the demo so don't take me too
seriously.

~~~
biggitybones
Thanks mrduncan.. all valid points. Probably best to separate into 'advanced
settings' and 'basic', with good defaults selected. As the feature-set grows,
the amount of settings will probably grow as well but we'll keep this advice
in mind. We want to leave the site as simple as possible while giving the
flexibility to power users to customize their experience.

------
CoryMathews
The idea is really good, I really could have used this in college.

However it seems like its trying to do to much thus it is a bit confusing at
first.

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vaporstun
One thing I found a bit odd is when editing a course, the button at the bottom
says, "Edit <course name>"

It seemed as though I had to click that button to edit the course when in fact
I was already editing it.

Seems to me it would make much more sense to have that simply say "Save
Changes" or something to that effect to be a bit more clear.

------
Vindexus
What are you using for that help function? That's pretty well done. I like
that it shows help relevant to the current page.

I don't really get the reminders. I can't set the date they show up so they're
not really that helpful to me.

I made something similar to this as a Facebook application back when I was
getting started with stuff. One thing I thought would be awesome would be a
Wiki for your course notes that anyone in your class could edit. Probably out
of the scope of your project, but I still think it's a good idea :)

I really like the design. It's very clean.

On the Grades page it wasn't immediately obvious to me that the grades fields
were textboxes. They have no border or anything to make them look like inputs
so I was looking for an "Add a Grade" button.

Also, how do you make money?

~~~
mikegioia
The help function uses the osx plugin for simplemodal (jquery plugin). You can
get it here: <http://www.ericmmartin.com/projects/simplemodal/>

Reminders are really just like post it notes right now but we're planning to
make them more like SMS reminders and tie in to your assignments soon.

I really like that idea about the course wiki. We're trying to eventually gear
this as a collaboration tool for students that fits in perfectly actually.

Right now, we don't make money but once we release more features for teachers
will begin to offer it on a freemium model for now, but always open for
suggestions :)

~~~
Vindexus
Thanks for the link. I took a look and it's a pretty cool plugin. I'd make the
animation faster. When I want help, even that .5s delay is frustrating.

For your reminders, maybe you could partner up with a reminder service? Could
save you a ton of development time. Maybe get in touch with <http://task.fm>
or <http://www.rememberthemilk.com/>

------
srik
Couple of questions.

1\. Possible to update through mobile/email/iphone-app/phone-call, do u have
plans to do so anytime soon ?

2\. __* Could you be more clear about your intentions on offering the student
account for free.

3\. Is all my information exportable (also as spreadsheets etc.), do u have
that option right now/plan to do so soon?

4\. Possible to check grades with a classmate, but not a teacher(privacy
features etc.) and compare ?

5\. __* Possible to arrange the courses according to semesters/years ?

Also perhaps, a facebook/goog/openid/ etc. login should help convincing
students to signup.

~~~
biggitybones
Great questions srik..

1\. Mobile is a huge item on our to-do list.

2\. Students will always have access to a free version of the site to manage
their assignments, courses, files, and other aspects of their classes.

3\. This is another big task that we'll be developing in the next iteration.

4\. There is no current grade sharing as of right now. Students can only see
his or her own grades, and teachers can only see grades for their students in
the teacher's respective courses.

5\. Working on it

Adding third party login support isn't something we've discussed in detail,
but it's a great idea and may be incorporated at some point.

------
alexk
I've noticed that sign up page was http only and felt quite uncomfortable.

~~~
biggitybones
Thanks so much for going through the site in so much detail! Can't find your
email in your profile, would you mind shooting us an email at
jason@mygrademate.com?

~~~
alexk
upload on empty file causes an error, you can probably check the input value
isEmpty($(input).value) before actual upload

------
_Lemon_
One question that comes to mind: does my teacher have to be using it for it to
be worthwhile/possible for me to use?

When you say teachers, who are you aiming at? Would it be helpful for a
university student? Would it help if I'm in the UK and not the US (aside from
perhaps different lingo)?

I don't think who the web application is for is communicated effectively.

~~~
mikegioia
Thanks _Lemon_. We designed this to be used both ways - teachers can use it
for their classrooms, but students can use it to manage their own grades as
well. They even work in tandem, so you could be subscribed to a few courses
your teachers set up but also make your own private courses.

This will definitely need to be explained on the homepage / website further, I
appreciate the feedback.

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sync
Very pretty, I'll give you that.

But it feels like a database. All I'm doing is creating, updating, deleting...
CRUD all over the place, and not much else.

~~~
bemmu
Sometimes a database is what people need.

------
karanbhangui
Great job, I'm going to use this when I go back to college this summer. Btw,
would it be possible to add email to the reminders section?

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ThomPete
Very 37Signals, perhaps a bit to much.

But overall looks good and at least it's clear and concise.

------
daok
Very nice design. Love the way it was clear to get to your demo. Love it.

