

 Review the UI/Experience of this side project (FriendShuffle) - schlichtm
http://www.friendshuffle.com
We wanted to make sure it was fast and dead simple.<p>We think there are a lot of things that we can improve on but we would love some feedback from the Hacker News community (specifically on the UI and experience).<p>Thanks!
======
fourneau
My review:

1) As you already know, landing on the page is very harsh. The very first
thing I saw when I arrived at the page was a popup that asked me to sign in
with Twitter or Facebook. I didn't really read the title or the text; I
immediately pressed back. This is easily fixed by letting the user know what
you are before signing in.

2) Switching between sites is really well done, I instantly understood how to
do it.

3) I dislike the "I like this too" button. It's not clear with what it does; I
clicked on it hoping for a "post to Facebook or Twitter" option but it went
straight to my Twitter. I'd prefer having two separate buttons to know exactly
what I'm doing.

Overall, neat idea -- but it feels like I'm being tricked into doing certain
actions since I don't quite know what's going on at first.

------
radley
Extremely poor start - people have to sign in via Facebook or Twitter before
they can even find out who/what you are.

~~~
radley
My point is that the creator forces the user to choose to sign up or leave -
there's no discovery or guide to help the user make that choice.

Of course this is a side project, so user experience may not matter. But he
asked specifically about experience, so...

~~~
schlichtm
Totally agree with this - We're working on improving this + explaining the
value of the product better before you sign in.

We definitely don't want to trick a user into signing up - we want to be as
clear as possible.

~~~
random42
Most of the time, I dont mind signing up for apps on HN, to review them using
my twitter account (I dont use FB), but I did not do it for your app, because
I dont like it doing auto following by my twitter account WITHOUT an option to
avoid it. Also it seems like it will spam a tweet from my account.

I dont mind giving feedback/review. I mind if apps spam my followers, to gain
traction.

~~~
schlichtm
Agreed - I see where you are coming from.

To be clear we are not spamming upon login though - so you're ok.

------
silverlight
Okay, I know a lot of other folks have already pointed out the fact that just
throwing up a Facebook/Twitter login might be a bit harsh. I would listen to
them. But in addition to that, I would question that rather liberal policy you
have taken with what, exactly, you have access to in my Facebook/Twitter
account.

I didn't actually try to sign in with Twitter, but I noticed at the bottom you
post a disclaimer saying that if I sign in with Twitter, I will start
following you. WHY? Is that necessary to the app running? If not, that seems
like a pretty bad way to increase your follower count.

I did try to sign in with Facebook, but immediately canceled when I saw you
wanted access not only to my News Feed and Friends (which I fully expected),
but also to send me EMAIL, access my Facebook account WHEN I'M NOT USING YOUR
SITE (offline access), and POST TO MY WALL. At least the last of those,
posting to my wall, I can get behind should I choose to do an action on your
site that warrants it (e.g. I like something on your site and want to share it
with my friends), but you should be approaching this from a standpoint of
asking me for the only the permissions you need to get me started, then
following up with further requests for specific permissions on an as-needed
basis.

Especially since your entire site revolves around people logging in with their
other social networking accounts, your site should respect those accounts. Not
ask for permissions right off the bat that are going to scare away potential
users who have no idea what you're going to use the permissions FOR. If I like
an item and I get a request to allow your application permission to post to my
Wall, that makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense is that I have to give
you permission to send me email through Facebook just to access your site at
all.

My 2 cents, but hey, you already lost at least one potential user. Get that
fixed and I think you increase the folks who actually proceed through the
front gate by several fold.

------
raheemm
Great app! I was clicking much too fast on the shuffle button and it took a
while for the next site to come up. This made me click on the shuffle button
again, leading to more slowness. Perhaps adding some kind of progress
indicator to let the user know the next site is loading would be useful.

The design is intuitive too.

~~~
schlichtm
Hmmm... how fast were you clicking (and what browser / how is your internet
connection)

~~~
raheemm
Chrome on 5Mb connection. I was clicking pretty fast (two or three times a
second)

~~~
mcs
The shuffle UI shouldn't get longer to load as you spam the button. There's a
self-cancelling delay from the time you click shuffle button until the frame
loads so that when people click through super fast that the frame doesn't try
to load each one. Within 300ms of letting up on the shuffle button the frame
should begin loading no differently. Can you describe what happened in more
detail please? (also do you remember the site that it loaded that was slow for
you)?

------
earnubs
My 2 pennies worth: I'd take away the modal window from the start, signing in
with fb or twitter accounts is a first class task and should be treated as
such, graphically, editorially whatever. As it stands with the darkened "I
like too" etc. buttons it feels like I missed a step, or some piece of the
story.

I'd also suggest you stick to one shade of blue if possible, make your border
radius the same or in harmony and make the generic icon look less like a
squashed fb icon, i.e. make it unique or charming, identifiable to your
project.

Animating the movement of the modal box was probably wasted on most :)

Can't say much about anything else as I don't have twitter and I don't use FB
to log in to other apps.

~~~
ammmir
i agree, the modal auth prompt really turns me off. tell users what the app is
about (not obvious from the name) before forcing an auth.

some screenshots, a demo, video, or even a textual description should be part
of a landing page.

------
dmix
The button text "Sweet I Got It" didn't make any sense to me at first.

I got what exactly?

I certainly didn't read any of the text above it, even though I eventually
clicked the button to make it go away.

------
toolate
Why do apps insist on asking for every possible permission they might ever
need? Can't you ask after I do something that requires advanced permissions?

This is the first thing I see: <http://i.imgur.com/wfWCR.png> I don't even
know anything about the app, let alone whether I should trust you.

------
fezzl
Congratulations on getting covered on RWW:
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/friendshuffle_stumbleup...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/friendshuffle_stumbleupon_for_facebook_likes.php)

------
shalmanese
It needs an option to go back to the previous in case I overenthusiastically
clicked next. Also, nexts should be deterministic so I can go forward and back
in the stream at will.

------
tudor122
great job, i have nothing to complain about!It would be nice when a video
ends, for the shuffle to begin.But it's not that hard to click the button!

