

Ask HN: Check out my YC app demo - rip away - freebsd_dude
http://www.statgadgets.com

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TomasSedovic
I'd start with leaving the desktop metaphor on the desktop.

Double clicks, folders, dialog windows, etc. go against the web experience.
Try to make the user interface more "webby" -- it will benefit everyone.

~~~
jayliew
I don't know if that's the right approach. If his target audience are people
who don't know the difference between Web 2.0 and 1.0 (say, accountants in the
accounting department of a big corporation), they would probably feel more at
home with the desktop metaphors.

Case in point, Google wants people to use Google Docs like their Office suite,
except it's 100% web based. But to ease the transition they have this notion
of "folders" in G Docs even know it could very well just be a bunch of tags
like in Gmail. When non Web savvy people see "folders" they go "ah, I get it."

imho.

~~~
TomasSedovic
I didn't think of that. You're right -- knowing your users' background and
knowledge is very important.

However, there are things that I believe simply shouldn't be carried over from
desktop to web.

Even in desktop, modal dialogs reek of "I don't know or care how to do it
better". Double clicks have a similar feel to me. And neither is much present
on the web (1.0 and 2.0).

Even GDocs don't rely on double clicking (though they try to mimic the Office
behaviour in other ways).

But sure, if the users never really used the web and are used to desktop
tools, it would be easier for them if this program mimicked that.

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TrevorBurnham
Hi freebsd_dude,

As a heads-up, let me tell you that I'm applying to YC with a similar concept
under the name Theoryville. We envision a very different interface, but we
haven't built a demo yet. I'd be happy to exchange ideas with you privately;
I'm not difficult to track down.

Here are some specific criticisms: I don't like the interface's reliance on
double-clicking. I don't like that datasets open in a new tab. I expect words
that are bright colors to be clickable (for instance, the word "data" under
each dataset's name). When I "open" a dataset, I don't expect to be taken
directly to the analysis screen; I expect to learn more about the dataset. For
the output to be useful, I really need to be able to save the table in some
way. The linear fit line should be shown by default. Also, there seems to be
no way to remove the fit line once you've added it.

All in all, I agree with Tomas's view that it should be more "webby." And
that's a non-trivial problem to solve for something as complex as statistical
analysis. Best of luck!

(Also, have you seen Swivel? They don't do much in the way of data analysis,
but they have a great interface for doing data visualizations. Definitely
check them out.)

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roundsquare
Neat idea. But I wonder, what are you offering that excel doesn't? So far, the
only tool I can see is y vs x and thats not tough to do in excel. I'm not
saying you aren't offering anything, but I don't know what it is.

For the interface, a few things I didn't like, but others can chime in.

1) When I click on "Basic Statistics" I see the tests there. Then, when I
click on "Multivariate Statistics" the basic title bar drops down to the
bottom. If I were trying to look for a test to use, I would want to scroll
through each category. They way you have it makes that tough.

2) When I go to analyze a data set, how do I get back to the list of files? I
figured it out (click on Data Management) but that should be easier to find.

Also, something that I think would be _very_ cool would be to allow me to take
data sets from different files. This would allow me to use your app as a
storage for my data sets. I could organize files however made sense to me and
then arbitrarily go there and look for correlations. "Oh, I wonder if there is
a correlation between temperature and mortality. Lets take the weather file
and the mortality file and check."

~~~
freebsd_dude
Thanks for your excellent feedback

"Neat idea. But I wonder, what are you offering that excel doesn't?"

Right now nothing, but excel doesnt do (easily) the more advanced statistical
procedures that will be added - for example fitting reliability data to a
distribution of failure times, etc.

Thanks for pointing out (1). I will have think about this setup.

You also make a good point above mixing access to different data sets. At this
point, its almost as if your asking if I will implement the ability for users
to connect to a database. Yes in time.

------
wheels
First, a meta-note -- if you want app reviews, don't mention that they're YC
app submissions as that usually gets them killed. (Since otherwise there would
be a bajillion apps getting submitted here.)

In general it's slick, presumably a good chunk of that coming from GWT usage.
However, I kind of lost interest after a couple minutes flipping through
stuff. There's no pain point that jumps out at me, i.e., "Oh, wow, I'd love to
use that for [...]!"

It's a natural tendency for geeks (myself included) to build platforms to
solve problems rather than solving problems directly. Fight that. :-)

~~~
freebsd_dude
Thanks for the meta-note. Make sense.

------
yannis
I did manage to see it before it disappeared first time around.

It mostly worked nicely for me but crashed somewhere in
datamanagement.nocache.js

As a proof of concept demo is ok. However, it would be better to have a demo
with the full interface even if some parts are not working so that you can
demonstrate the full workflow. (Upload file - manipulate data for example
throw away a row, choose statistic, plot save, print). Looks like is build
using EXTJS are you using R for calcs?

~~~
freebsd_dude
"Looks like is build using EXTJS are you using R for calcs?"

yes and yes. Also Im also using some python along with R (im also using a
R-python interface). Django is the web framework.

~~~
yannis
Thanks! Down the line you will need to re-skin the application to give it a
bit more of a distinct look.

~~~
freebsd_dude
Yes I will probably hire someone to make a custom CSS skin for me.

~~~
yannis
We are busy setting a small UI/design firm and if you are not in a hurry I
might get you a freebie.

~~~
freebsd_dude
im into freebies what do I have to do?

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dlevine
What does this app do? I clicked "start", and was plopped down on the home
page with a frightening amount of information. It would be nice if you
explained in a sentence or two what the app does, and why I should use it.

I see that while I clicked away to write this I got the "welcome to
statgadgets" popup. I still don't know what the data sets are or why I would
want to "analyze" them.

~~~
dlevine
Also, why do I get "permission denied" when I try to drag an item into a
folder?

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simonw
As a general tip, any time you feel the need to show a message telling the
user how to interact with your application ("double click on X to ...") you
should reconsider. Besides which, double clicking isn't a good UI mechanism
for web apps (or any other apps, really).

~~~
freebsd_dude
Thanks. I agree, I felt uneasy about this whole double click thing. It will be
gone in the next update. Do you recommed a special button like "launch"
instead?

~~~
dchest
I'd recommend using a single click to launch (and click on a checkbox to
select it).

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dkersten
This is really nice. Took me a moment to figure out how to use (eg dragging
the fields for the graphs), but nothing too tricky. Over all, its nice and
looks like it could end up being quite useful, going by the other (as yet
unimplemented) menus). Keep it up!

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pclark
Homepage doesn't tell me what it is. Start what?

Might not matter for YC demo; might matter lots to prove awareness of landing
pages or whatever.

I'm a total number retard so I'm afraid I didn't last long in the application.

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freebsd_dude
I posted this earlier but all the traffic crashed my basic test server - Im
new to HN and under estimated the traffic. So I set it up on an powerful ec2
image - lets see if this can handle it. Since Im paying for the ec2 hosting by
the hour, I will on leave this link up for a few days. Thank you for your
feedback.

Original message:

This is a VERY EARLY demo of a web application I am building. Im trying to put
statistical software on the web (almost all stat software is desktop). The
first page is a document management module (similar to the one on Google
Docs)-you can drag items into folders, share folders with other users, trash
them, etc. Double clicking on a data set takes you to the data analysis
module, where you can do statistical analysis. Right now I have only a simple
bivariate regression module up - I want to keep it simple for the demo/proof
of concept.

I dont expect to be accepted by YC but still want some feed back from the YC
community. Please dont be kind - tell me everything that is wrong - but be
constructive!

------
freebsd_dude
By the way Im open to meeting another cofounder. My current cofounder who used
to work at SAS can only commit maybe 10-20% of his time (he's working on a PhD
in stat). If you are interested in statistical software please let me know
below.

------
freebsd_dude
Ive taken the site down. Thanks everyone for their suggestions.

