

Need early feedback for a website that matches entrepreneurs, developers and designers - mtw
http://blitzmaker.com
we needed a web app to match people for an upcoming camp, so i made blitzmaker. i am now getting feedback about the app, and trying to corner bugs and potential problems with the interface. any feedback appreciated, thanks!
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mechanical_fish
The menus at the top don't work. It took me ten tries (very bad) and conscious
thought (far worse) to figure out that the little arrows next to the words
were the trigger for the pulldowns. I would sweep the mouse over the word and
see this menu flicker on and off. I thought your Javascript was broken or
something.

The context is confusing. As someone who happens to be a freelance Drupal
developer, I was curious about the project that wanted a Drupal developer. But
the pitch is one line long. There's no indication of whether I'm signing up to
be a startup partner with equity but no salary, an unpaid volunteer in a
community project, a contract programmer working for someone with a budget of
$13.95, or the recipient of spam from half a dozen sleazeball recruiters.

I realize that I may be criticizing a throwaway piece of scaffolding text.
But, if I am, you need to design around a more useful piece of scaffolding
text!

I know what nonprofit-org sites are for. I know what news.yc is for. I know
what Rentacoder is for. What is your site for? The whole thing is so
minimalist that I have no contextual clues.

~~~
mtw
hey thanks for the comment. well, the menu is going to be corrected so people
will have an easier time accessing the options.

about the drupal listing, the description was written by an existing member of
the website, who thought one sentence would be enough. one thing though,
interested visitors are supposed to ask questions to the user who posted the
listing to ask for more info.

thanks again

~~~
mechanical_fish
Permit me to ramble for a bit.

There is no idea so great that a one-sentence description, made by a stranger,
will cause me to send an email asking for more. There are too many scammers,
cranks, and clueless people in the world. There are too many people who have
no idea how hard it is to complete a successful project. There are too many
people who are looking for something for nothing.

Of course, you folks are strangers, and yet you got me to give you some design
advice -- twice! But you did quite a bit of work for this "free" advice -- you
had to build an entire prototype site and post a link to it. _That_ is the
kind of presentation -- a working, criticizable prototype -- that might get
people interested in joining a random project. It's a lot more than one
sentence.

Read this essay:

[http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2005/05/08/finding_discord_in_h...](http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2005/05/08/finding_discord_in_harmony)

and this more recent one, that cites it:

<http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001017.html>

Other than providing working code -- or extensive mockups, or a detailed
written proposal, or a compelling story -- the easiest way to get me
interested in a collaboration is to get me interested in _you_. I don't care
if you plan to cure cancer -- I want to know who you are, first. That takes
time, and it takes words.

So, if people are going to meet and start collaborations on your site, you
need to give them lots of room to converse, to get to know each other. You
need to give them long comment threads and rambling discussions. (Like, um,
news.yc. Score one for PG's design sense.) If you don't feel like building an
entire social network (and you probably shouldn't) you need to encourage
people to introduce themselves with links to Facebook, or LinkedIn, or their
own blogs, or something. And you need to encourage them to put as much flesh
on the bones of their proposals as they can -- because nothing attracts
builders like something that's already half built.

As it stands, my fear is that your site just doesn't have enough _words_.
Whitespace looks clean and professional, but it doesn't tell me what the site
is for, and it doesn't tell me what the individual projects are about.

EDIT: changed the link to the first essay to the one that I really wanted to
cite. :)

------
barns
Wouldn't this be better built as a Facebook app? Just because users already
have profiles there and won't need to signup for a new service. Just a
thought.

