

Ask HN: Review our startup - EventGel - kirubakaran
http://eventgel.com/ev/startup-school/

======
samuraicatpizza
First criticism, concerns, then praise in no particular order. Apologies for
duplicates feedback. And I may have gotten carried away...

Criticism:

* We'll start with the offcolor comment: the name EventGel sounds like something KY or Trojan Condoms would sell. This may or may not be a plus depending on your audience and market.

* I am not a fan of the timeline widget (third party?). It's difficult to use and not entirely intuitive. Click-and-drag is slow to respond and when I click on a location in the zoomed out timeline at the bottom it doesn't jump to that location in the main timeline. Why considerations made you choose a timeline widget instead of a calendar layout?

* The design seems clunky and boxy. Maybe if you removed the horizontal bars at the top. In firebug I made all of the top 3 bars the same color as the 3rd bar and it already seemed more "together".

* Blue text on black background is hard to read. * It seems like the yellow help box should be at the top of the landing page, not the bottom. The description you currently have doesn't really pop out visually or promotionally.

* Consider a multi-column layout or a sidebar for things like the twitter feed. You have a lot of different information to present and presenting it in a list makes it hard to find the information I'm looking for.

* Your textareas do not resize when I resize the browser.

* I agree with the comments on the map being too small.

* On the front page, I click on an event and it doesn't tell me where it is. And the bubble that pops up says: "This is the schedule bar for your event." The purpose of the date range is obvious. This text is probably unnecessary or could at least be condensed.

* I agree with the comments about dates. No military time or seconds. Also, please add timezone abbreviations.

* Add the time of day to the activities list.

Concerns:

* Why should I be interested in the site, what is it this is providing that I can't get via a number of other tools like facebook or craigslist?

* How is this going to scale by location? I'm in Boston, why should I care about events anywhere else, unless they are virtual? Will you add an event filter?

* Do you have a plan to avoid spam? Already I see an activity for "Have sex"

* Like spam, how are you going to handle signal to noise ratio on the front page?

* You may want to consider having a proper logo.

* Can you add a description field for the events? What is the event about? What do I need to bring? Etc.

* You seem to have duplicated functionality between the discussion and twitter feed. What is the distinct purpose of each?

* Do you have any plans on helping people promote their events?

Praise:

* I like the twitter feed on the events. Seems like a good marketing tool.

* Big points for the easy signup.

* This is cool. I like the openness of the concept. I agree that this has a lot of potential. Any thoughts on monetization? I could see this being very useful for event planners and caterers and the like to get new business.

* You've covered the event details of when, where, who (but not what).

* The activity feature is helpful for planning events with a lot going on.

~~~
icey
We really appreciate that you've taken all the time to give us this feedback -
if there's any duplication it just tells us that you're not the only one who
feels that way :D

We've started the process of fully redesigning the site based on this feedback
and the other great feedback from this thread. Hopefully we'll have something
up in the next few days to reflect some of the great design feedback we've
gotten here.

I think down the road we will probably remove some of the event focus from the
front-page; our focus isn't as much event discovery as it is what happens when
the event actually starts.

Thank you for taking the time to give us such in-depth feedback, it really
gives us a lot to consider.

------
kirubakaran
Paul (icey) and I have been working on a tool that helps people coordinate
plans while attending an event. We've put together a sample "Startup School"
event for you to play with.

We're still early in the process of starting up, so any and all feedback will
be really helpful to us.

The idea for this came out of frustrations trying to keep track of what was
going on at a number of events; right now people are forced to coordinate over
the phone, twitter, email, texts, etc. We think that having a central location
for everything makes coordinating these activities easier.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

If you think email would be better to get it touch with us, it is :
support@eventgel.com

------
spokey
Congrats on the launch. I second much of the feedback that's already been
given on this page, but I wanted to mention two other specific things I've
noticed:

1) Your "What is EventGel?" box at the bottom of the page (which is evidently
anchored to #help) has too much text. It looks like you've listed every
feature of your app. Can you reduce that to a few bullets that speak to
EventGel's primary benefits, and maybe move the longer copy to an "about"
page?

2) Under each comment is a "permalink" link. I think permalinks to your
comments here are probably unnecessary in general, but right now those are
links to the event page itself rather than to a comment.--so that an event
page with dozens of comments has dozens of links to itself labeled
"permalink".

Also, tk999 mentioned difficulties scaling the timeline widget. Just as
another datapoint: In my experience where this starts to fall down is in the
user exprience when you have very many events in the timeline. It is difficult
to get this to look and work just right with a large number of user or
programatically generated events. But you could also spend some time on design
within the timeline. (For examples of both, see, for instance,
<http://open.britannica.com/timelines?id=128>. The timeline UI becomes
unwieldy when the events are densely packed, eg.
<http://open.britannica.com/timelines?id=107>) But as previously mentioned,
I'm not sure the SIMILE timeline is the right widget for you to be using
anyway. I think I'd look to other approaches to display the event information.

~~~
kirubakaran
Thank you.

1) Fixed.

2) Fixed.

Yup, we are taking care of the timeline issues.

------
alex_c
One nitpick: when scrolling up and down the page (using either two-finger drag
on macbook, or mouse wheel) the scrolling gets "trapped" once the cursor gets
over the timeline.

~~~
kirubakaran
Good point. We'll fix it.

~~~
tk999
Meanwhile, you need to becareful about the timeline widget. We used it before
but it did not scale up to couple thousand points. I think at the end, you
need to write your own timeline widget.

~~~
icey
Thank you for the heads up - We've been looking at writing a more specific
version of the timeline already, and it's useful to know there may be other
issues with the timeline when we try to figure out what to work on next.

------
mrduncan
A few things that I noticed right away:

\- While I personally like 24h time for start and end time, I doubt most other
people will feel the same way

\- The map is tough to read being so short, a little bit of height there would
go a long way.

\- Links in discussions would be a lot easier to use if they were auto-
hyperlinked.

\- The "X attending" under the attend this event button is almost unreadably
(did I just make up a word?) small.

I think it's got potential, how do you plan on differentiating yourself from
something like meetup.com?

~~~
icey
Thanks for the input!

We'll definitely have a think about 12h vs 24h time formatting, you're the
first person who's actually mentioned that and it is a bit of an oversight on
our part, thank you :D

With regards to differentiating ourselves from meetup: we're building a tool
that takes over once the event has started. Evite, meetup, etc are great at
getting people to an event, but tools for organizing random mobs of people are
lacking once an event kicks off.

I guess you could say that we're focusing on more ad-hoc event planning than
something structured like a Meetup.

Thank you as well for your feedback regarding readability!

~~~
mrduncan
That differentiation totally makes sense, thank you for that. I can see this
being really useful for something like SXSW where there are a lot of impromptu
meetups/gatherings.

Something else that just stood out at me: The margin for the description under
the "Activity Calendar" section doesn't seem to match the margins used under
those sections elsewhere.

~~~
icey
_" I can see this being really useful for something like SXSW where there are
a lot of impromptu meetups/gatherings."_

You just made me really happy, that's _exactly_ the sort of thing we're
targeting!

(Looking in to the margin issue now, thanks!)

------
uptown
I'd recommend placing some focus on what it looks like when printed. The
nature of many events is that people will be going somewhere they may not be
familiar with. If you look at how things are printed out, you'll see that it
spans multiple pages, and isn't very easily readable. The printable version
probably only needs a subset of what you show on the on-screen view, but you
should lay it out in a manner so it can all fit on one piece of paper.

~~~
kirubakaran
Great point. Thank you! We'll put together the printer-friendly page.

------
officemedium
The interface makes me feel very "uncomfortable" and a little confused. You
should consider laying things out a little nice - perhaps side by side?

The logo / menu / page title instantly create some confusion and clutter. The
timeline doesn't look too user-friendly either.

I'm just commenting on the interface though, I haven't looked at the
functionality too much yet.

~~~
icey
Side by side layout sounds interesting; do you mean putting the activities
next to the timeline?

So far, this has definitely been "design by developer"; so feedback regarding
the interface is most definitely welcomed.

~~~
mrduncan
Since you mention that it's been developer designed - Ryan Singer of 37signals
gave a really great talk at WindyCityRails on how developers can build better
UIs that you might want to check out: <http://windycityrails.org/videos#4>

~~~
icey
Thanks for this, I have it bookmarked now to check out this evening.

------
marknutter
It looks like it was designed by programmers.

~~~
chwolfe
So does Google.

~~~
ugh
Google’s UIs always look slightly odd and unpolished at first glance but their
apps are all nice and elegant. When actually using it you quickly notice that
everything is thought through and works as expected. It’s not flashy, the
overall theme is a little childish, but all the elements are at the right
spot.

I don’t want to start that old stupid thing about programmers and how they are
unable to create useful UIs (Sorry programmers, you don’t get off the hook so
easily.), that’s just stupid. The above linked site was made by someone who is
clueless about UI design. You maybe a programmer, but that’s no excuse. And
just some polishing won’t do.

(I would just like to add: I think the idea is great an practically screaming
for a sleek UI.)

~~~
kirubakaran
Good points. Thank you. We definitely want the very best UI and we are not
thinking that it is of secondary importance or that we can just spray it on.
We _will_ get it right.

------
joshfinnie
When you sign up, it automatically fills in where it thinks you live. I'd be
careful about this since I signed up @ work and it is not where I actually
reside. I'd like a bit more information about myself in the profile, but I
understand this is just the first iteration. I'd work on the profile page if
you want this to be socially focused.

~~~
icey
That's an interesting point; we'd kind of gone back and forth over this one a
few times (guessing your location).

We are going to be changing to allow you to modify your location pretty soon
here.

What sort of information do you think is useful in a profile for something
like this?

(Also, thank you for taking the time to provide feedback, it is really helpful
to us!)

------
gruseom
It's timely, considering that this came up yesterday:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881636>

You should convince the HN/Chicago crowd to use it.

~~~
kirubakaran
It would be awesome if they did! Thanks.

------
mailarchis
You might wanna consider adding an address book import feature or some kind of
invite sending feature via which you can invite folks you know.

Great concept. All the best

~~~
kirubakaran
Thanks. Good idea. We'll add that feature.

------
vlod
your probably aware that clicking on the 'test' activity seems to cause some
sort of exception?

MultipleObjectsReturned at /ev/startup-school/test/ get() returned more than
one Activity -- it returned 2! Lookup parameters were {'urlname': u'test',
'event__urlname': u'startup-school'} Request Method: GET Request URL:
<http://eventgel.com/ev/startup-school/test/> Exception Type:
MultipleObjectsReturned Exception Value: get() returned more than one Activity
-- it returned 2! Lookup parameters were {'urlname': u'test',
'event__urlname': u'startup-school'} Exception Location:
/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/db/models/query.py in get, line 307

~~~
icey
Ouch, thanks for the heads up, we'll take care of it right now.

------
mcxx
Ha, I had a similar idea. Now I don't have to create it myself, I can use
yours, thanks guys :)

------
icey
I should mention that since this is in an early stage that you guys are
welcome to enter data or say you're going to attend events that you don't
intend to actually go to. I promise you won't hurt anyone's feelings.

------
levirosol
honestly, trying to be consumer minded, i opened your link, throat vomited at
the design, and closed it.

You may have a valid product, but the design, and I'm going to assume the
usability, is killing you. consumers like shinny and clean.

Now i'll take a second look at your site and provide some feedback on the tool
itself.

congrats on going live. It's an accomplishment no matter what state it's in.

~~~
icey
Sorry about that; design has been the #1 suggestion we've gotten so far and we
have made design our top priority now.

------
iterationx
I don't like the tagline: "Events made interactive" from your about statement
I think you want something like "Collaborative events"

------
prakash
Congratulations, Kirubakaran and Paul!

~~~
kirubakaran
Thank you! :-)

------
edw519
This is great! I'm so glad to see you guys launch something. The first step is
the biggest.

I don't want to repeat what the others have said, but I've been playing around
a little bit and off the top of my head:

    
    
      - Separate dates and times into their own fields
      - Only one date field for single day events
      - Add Day of Week
      - Use Date Mask MM/DD/YY
      - Don't use military times.  Don't show seconds.
      - Map widget is too small to be useful.
      - Instead of depending solely on text, add some data fields.
         Some possibilities:
           - Who's Attending
           - Reviews of previous instances of this event
           - Parking
           - Public Transportation
           - Dress Code
           - Don't forget to bring...
           - Wifi available?
         (You get the idea)
      - Sort/filter events by date, location, who's attending
    

More to follow...

~~~
icey
I can't thank you enough for the detailed feedback!

I think right now we're going to focus on getting the design up to snuff, and
then we'll probably hit a significant number of these shortly thereafter.

