
Donate an idea to HN: Checklists - RiderOfGiraffes
Here's an idea that I'm never going to get time to follow up.  Maybe it has merit, maybe not.  If you want it, it's yours.  If it makes billions, remember me.<p>A colleague who is a hobbyist aerobatics pilot says that aviation has become as safe as it is through the ubiquitous use of checklists.  Everything has a checklist, and said checklist goes into the smallest detail.  I've taken that on-board and we're starting to use explicit checklists when we deploy new systems, run through tests, diagnose problems, etc., and it's starting to make a real difference.<p>But building the checklists was a pain.<p>Recently I had a new boiler installed at home.  No problems, great hot water, great heating, everything seemed fine.  Now I find that some of the hot water taps are leaking.  They were installed with the older, lower pressure system in place, and they need upgrading to cope with mains pressure hot water.  Similarly, sometimes the kitchen hot water tap makes loud, ugly noises.<p>If I'd had a checklist of things to confirm before signing off, the plumbers would never have left the building without dealing with them.  They're being great, but it's costing them time and money, and me hassle, to get these things put straight.<p>A checklist would save time, money and hassle.<p>How about a web site where I type in "Hot water" and it gives me a checklist.  Or "New ISP" and it gives me a checklist.  Perhaps the checklist can then be refined further, or perhaps it allows me to mark things as done or pending.<p>I think I'd pay money to be registered with a site like that.<p>Comments?
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moonchuck
<http://chcheck.com>

You can create checklists, create and track changes between instances, diff
changes between the master and instances, create iterative checklists, embed
checklists in other checklists and set dependencies. Also the interface was
built with usability and flexibility in mind.

I have also added task, data list, comment, contact and document management
since all of those are necessary for a good process management tool.

My inspiration for this was the fact that process and workflow management is a
pain point for individuals and small businesses and there have been no easy-
to-setup, user focused solutions out there.

I will be putting up a directory of public checklists in the near future, once
the rest of the product is stable and usable.

I was waiting to post this but until I was ready to open signups but I have
working on it for the last 4 months.

Email me if you want to be a Beta user: daniel at chcheck dot com. There are
some bugs but it is definitely usable.

~~~
jlees
_I will be putting up a directory of public checklists in the near future._

Isn't the idea posted above more focused on the crowdsourcing/directory aspect
of this, and not so much the "I've created a great checklist creator!" part?
It's not "EXACTLY" what s/he's talking about by any means.

~~~
moonchuck
I apologize if that seemed like an exaggeration. The directory is why I
created this product, that feature is just not out-the-door yet. This post was
a little earlier than I was planning.

One of the intentions of the product is to handle these large distributed
processes with the management of a Master Checklist that can be diffed with
other masters and instances. I added that feature to facilitate those sort of
crowdsourced checklists/processes.

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dmlorenzetti
On the power of checklists, see also Atul Gawande's article in the New Yorker
(10 December 2007)
([http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande)).

The article describes how medical checklists, especially when nurses are
empowered to force doctors to follow them, can improve patient outcomes.

The article also mentions an interesting example of checklists in aviation
history.

~~~
apu
This article is amazing!

I am also struck when reading Gawande that in many ways, his writing is like
Gladwell's: interesting anecdote, statement of principle, seemingly unrelated
anecdote, full description of principle.

However, given these same elements, I feel much more convinced by Gawande than
by Gladwell. The latter's principles never really seem to follow from the
anecdotes quoted; there's a logical gap, or he seems to be misinterpreting the
research, or he's found a corner-case, or he's just grasping for straws.

Yet, I can't really figure out why I don't feel the same way about Gawande.
Perhaps because he writes mostly about medicine, and as a (former?) doctor, he
lends more credibility? Whereas Gladwell writes about more everyday and varied
things, in which he is obviously not an expert?

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matt1
eHow kind of does that:

[http://www.ehow.com/search.aspx?s=hot+water&Options=0](http://www.ehow.com/search.aspx?s=hot+water&Options=0)

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jcdreads
Given internet access, one could build such a thing pretty easily atop
SpringPad, which has pretty extensive template generation and sharing features
built in:

<http://springpadit.com>

I used to work with a number of these guys. Given what I know about how the
site works, they could probably get you off and running pretty quickly in the
unlikely event that it doesn't already do what you want.

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lacker
I really wanted something like this for going hiking. When you go on a four-
day hike it really, really sucks if you forget something important. But there
are about 20 important things, so you can't rely on remembering them all. You
need to build a checklist. But this process takes a while and discourages
casual hikers from going on longer hikes.

So I would love a checklist tool that I could use for this. Right now I am
using jottit and just making a list; if your system worked better I would use
it.

~~~
bb_mn
I similarly think of this every year when I go on an annual camping trip with
a group of friends. We have a short group list on a website that we use, but
it would be helpful if we could edit that and add to it. Each year it is
inevitable that something is forgotten or we talk about something in January
but fail to remember it in August/September.

I often check my gear against lists that are published by camping supply
companies (Coleman, etc). Much further down the line, it might be an
interesting business model to allow for "sponsored" lists.

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jacquesm
None other than that if you or somebody else builds it let me know, I'll be a
user for sure. That's an excellent idea.

Combine it with a todo list service maybe ?

~~~
moonchuck
<http://chcheck.com> \- daniel at chcheck dot com if you wanna try it out

~~~
jacquesm
I had a look at this and it is quite promising.

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cake
I had the same idea !

Hunch.com inspired me for a website like that.

It could be really useful to solve basic car troubles or anything technical.

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skmurphy
See <http://www.ehow.com/> they have a wiki-enabled process description model:
they are a decade old and have a large set of checklists.

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oppositionradio
I would need to dig for the article - but recently some doctors have radically
reduced the mistakes made in surgery by utilizing checklist procedures - you
are on to something here.

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amichail
How useful would it be if users make checklists for themselves because the
tasks involved are likely to be repeated many times (e.g., going on a trip)?

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brown9-2
Interesting idea.

How would you deal with differences of opinions in what should be on the
checklist for a topic? Wiki-style colloboration?

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appl3star
there are THOUSANDS of site offering this product. Do you research your ideas
before you post them? :) Still, there could be a search site just for all the
checklist sites... (!)

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slater
so basically a site where you can share user-made checklists? a wikipedia of
checklists?

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RiderOfGiraffes
With tagging and/or search.

Yes.

Think of a household or service disaster, and ask whether it could've been
saved/improved by asking the right question at the right time.

~~~
nonrecursive
Crazy, I had this same idea around the beginning of the year and actually
fooled around for a couple hours working on a prototype. It'd be great if
someone actually made this :)

