
What else should I add to Study Stickies?  Is it good enough for more significant promotion (e.g., on StumbleUpon)? - amichail

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louisadekoya
As I have already stated in another thread, I think the idea of your app is
good and I got it straight away. I agree with most people here though that you
could do with a better design and layout of the site. I think you should
invest some time in this, no matter how daunting it might seem now.

That said, as long as the site works, I think you should unleash it right now
to the public. Don't wait to get it perfect. Release it and carry on working
to improve it - using feedback you get from users. Prepare to be very busy
though and I would suggest a comprehensive FAQs/Glossary section before you
launch. If you don't add one then you might get swamped and not have time to
get on with your improvements. Also, I think the yellow highlight is too
bright across the top of the homepage.

Finally, to aid comprehension, I suggest that you replace the text in the
yellow highlight with: "Take notes (stickies) from any resource including
books (both printed and online), videos, podcasts, and more. Share your
stickies or keep them private. Learn from others." or similar.

All the best.

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kyro
I don't want to sound like an asshole.

But, I have visited your site on different accounts in the past , say about 10
times. Every time I visit your site I:

a) haven't a clue of what your site is about, b) haven't a clue of where to
begin to find out what it's about, c) find the design very unpleasant and
frustrating.

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amichail
I have tried to address (a) and (b) with more info in the yellow box.

Could you be more specific about (c)?

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inklesspen
I'm with kyro here. Your site's design is about ten times more complicated
than it needs to be, and the 'Please wait...' loading textbox is arse ugly.
Have a look at sites like Wufoo or Thinkature. They have complex concepts too,
but they know how to present them in a way that draws users in.

You don't need to have import data and export data as links on the front page,
especially when I can't even seem to do anything with your site without
logging in. Just have "Data import/export" as a bullet point in your feature
list; people will get the point.

Speaking of being able to do something with your site without logging in: this
is vital. If you want me to make an account, you need to give me a reason to
do it. Again, see Thinkature's site, or Adobe's kuler. If you can provide even
a subset of the site's functionality to people who aren't logged in, you'll
get more signups. Even if you can't do that, it helps if you can explain why
the heck I'd want to use your service, like Wufoo does.

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maxklein
Dude, if you are not willing to take advice, you will not progress. Your
software is too complicated! You say it allows one take notes. Well, how in
heavens name does one do that? I do not see a button or link.

This is why a lot of these ycomb reject startups are failing. Their software
has obvious flaws and when it is pointed out, they do not work on fixing it.

Your site is fatally flawed. If you wish, mail me at maximusklein at gmail dot
com for further discussion. If you don't wish to, start fixing it by
explaining to me (and hundreds of other dumbasses like me), what the hell a
"resource" is.

~~~
amichail
A "resource" is the artifact to which you would like to attach sticky notes.
It may be a book, video, online document, etc.

To add a note, you first need to add a resource. Then you can click "Add
Sticky" under the resource to add a sticky for that resource.

~~~
aston
To put it in a nicer way, what's a resource? People work better with analogy
to something they already know. For example "stickies" conveys something that
can be stuck onto something else. Maybe that something else is a "stickable"?
Or you could drop the generic word, and just mention the specific things you
can stick to, like images, webpages, and videos.

In general, your site is daunting to a new user. Most of the things are not
labeled in a way that a person unfamiliar with your terminology and layout
conventions could jump right in and start using it. One thing to concentrate
on is the names of actions. I see that I can import stickies, but I have no
clue why I would want to. Where would they come from in the first place?

A FAQ/Help page would help out some, but it's really confusing from the
outset, moreso than it should be for what I think (?) is a relatively simply
idea.

~~~
amichail
The import currently supports the XML format used by the export.

This allows you to make backups using export and in case of data loss on the
server import your stickies back in.

It also allows you to write a utility to import stickies from some other
format.

In the future, I may provide a heuristic import that works with plain text.

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amichail
See:

<http://studystickies.com/>

<http://studystickies.com/#in%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2Fvideoplay%3Fdocid%3D-8246463980976635143>

<http://studystickies.com/#in%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Freports-
archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu%2Fanon%2F2005%2FCMU-CS-05-193.pdf>

<http://studystickies.com/#sql%20by%3Aamichail>

<http://studystickies.com/#computer%20science>

<http://studystickies.com/#by%3Aamichail>

<http://studystickies.com/#in%3A0071350047>

<http://studystickies.com/#in%3A0070527660>

<http://studystickies.com/#psychology>

BTW, the flash demo is a bit outdated but might be worth watching anyway.

~~~
amichail
BTW, how should I promote it? Pay for advertising on StumbleUpon?

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aston
Based on your replies to my comments so far, I think you're still missing the
point. You've implemented good functionality, but you don't have a product.
You need to figure out a way to convey why someone would want to use your site
and make it easy for them to do so without being confused.

For example, I now know what the import/export options do, but there's
absolutely no reason for those to be on the front page. I'm not even logged
in, so they have zero relevance to my experience. Even for a registered user,
they should probably be tucked away under "Advanced" or under some options
tab. It's functionality only the techiest of techies would care to use; in
general we can trust that you'll keep our data safe and we won't need personal
backups. And working on your "heuristic import" is not a good idea either.
It's your format, no one else is using it, so just make it simple and parse it
in and out.

Your users couldn't care less how cool your code is or how many features
you've implemented, just make something useful and make it easy to understand.

~~~
amichail
I thought it was important to make it really obvious that export is available.
Without it, people might not even want to register as they might think that
the service may go away at any moment and they would lose their data.

~~~
aston
Well, part of your job is to convince users that you're trustworthy (assuming
that you are). Only the hardcore skeptics should have any doubt.

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tcwc
I agree with the others re the design. After loading your page it takes a
while to work out what the site is actually about. The mass of text is quite
confusing, and I think you need to better explain the relationship between
"resource" and "sticky". Interested to see you use GWT for this, I know it can
be difficult to make anything look good with it. Making the whole site
javascript seems to make browsing quite slow, cant you speed it up a bit
somehow? just a few thoughts, good luck!

~~~
amichail
It's faster now.

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aston
It looks like you're using AJAX to load in content when I click links. That's
a really weird way to implement your site. People are fine seeing pages load,
especially when there's all new content coming in. Why reimplement what the
browser already does?

~~~
amichail
I don't understand your point. The client gets data from a servlet using RPC.
Could you elaborate?

~~~
aston
I'm saying you could have (more easily) just let a new page load. Then
javascript wouldn't be a requirement, and if I wanted to control the loading
of the page I could do it with my browser controls.

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dmnd
When loading the flash demo, the loading bar does not convey any information.
It just keeps growing with no indication of when it will complete.

Also, during pageloads your little "loading" popup seems to have horizontal
and vertical scrollbars.

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rami
amichail; you need to redesign the user interface. start by using font size 12
across the whole site, then add margin between all the blocks. and consider
something else beside yellow. Check out websites like technorati and
wordpress.com

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juwo
just curious, how is stumbleupon "significant promotion"?

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amichail
They have a paid advertising feature where ads are also "stumbles" with only a
subtle indicator that the stumble is sponsored. So it's less likely that
people will immediately dismiss the site because it is an ad.

