

I thought my site was clear but people disagree. Suggestions for Improvement? - vargas84
https://findhn.firebaseapp.com/

======
jeffmould
Looks interesting, but a couple of things that jump out at me. First, the drop
down "About/Guidelines" section at the top is a little crazy. Personally I
would go with a landing page that describes the app, let the person enter
their username on the landing page, and then move to the search feature. If I
had not been forced to read the about section drop down I would not know what
it was at first glance.

Second gripe is that drop down area has a horizontal scroll bar on it and I
have a 27" monitor. It makes it seem as if there is content if I scroll to the
right, but there is nothing there.

Finally, I am going to assume the results are tags with the various usernames
underneath the tags. Personally I would prefer to tag specific posts within HN
and then be able to search that. If I am searching for a similar interest I
want to be directed to the specific post(s) that relate to what I am searching
for. I don't want to get a username and then have to sort through their posts
to find one that may relate to what I am searching for.

Overall I like the idea of being able to tag keywords within HN.

~~~
vargas84
Haha I was going for compact but I understand that frustration. I'll think a
little bit more about your suggestion. My reservation is that I generally hate
having to sign up for stuff before seeing the actual app. This way you can
experiment and click stuff right off the bat. I'm sure there is a happy middle
ground in there somewhere.

I'll fix the scroll issue now, thanks!

This third idea is awesome - something I hadn't even considered. If I am able
to generate enough interest, I'd love to open source this and build out
something more robust. This would be a pretty cool feature to add that I would
personally get a lot of use from.

~~~
jeffmould
Completely understand your thought process. Simple is most often better, but
at the same time too simple will leave users scratching their heads.

I don't know about others, but if you could figure out a way to tag specific
posts as well as users, to me that would be a valuable tool for searching for
past posts or things that have fallen from the first couple pages.

------
zaroth
It would help to see what it looks like with multiple users expressing
partially overlapping interests.

I think perhaps 'interests' should be, initially, independent from the user(s)
that expressed it. Maybe just indicate interests, and a count of many people
have expressed them, then clicking on an interest could give you more about
those users.

As I user, I would expect to register, and then either '+' the existing
interests that I also have, or add new ones. The taxonomy of 'interests' is
probably the hardest thing to get right.

You're re-inventing a lot of UI paradigms, like editing an interest by
clicking into something which doesn't look like an input field, and then
clicking away to save it. You won't need to explain as much how to use it if
you stick to more typical CRUD patterns. I'm not a fan of showing each
interest in a rounded rectangle, and I don't think it will scale very far...

To verify an account is owned by a given user, you could ask them to
(temporarily) add a code into their 'about' field.

You might get more registrations if you didn't ask for an email address.

~~~
vargas84
I added some examples with a throwaway account. My hope is that this would
become more intuitive as people use this and there is content available.

I think your second idea is awesome, I'll go ahead and implement this next,
thank you!

Can you elaborate a bit on your third point? I'm probably misunderstanding but
it sounds like the flow you're describing is currently implemented.

Another great idea here. To anyone else reading this, would you mind
temporarily adding a code to your about HN 'about' field? This would replace
the need for me to ask for an email (the only thing I use that for is identity
verification).

~~~
zaroth
To be secure, your app would tell the user what code to add. So after I tell
you I'm 'zaroth', you say please add 'gHypQwnm' to your about (show a link to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=zaroth](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=zaroth))
and a link 'Verify'.

I add it, submit, click back twice, click verify on your site, and then go
back to my HN profile and remove it. It sucks from a user interaction
standpoint, but better than asking the user for their HN password!

~~~
vargas84
The password I am asking for is completely independant from your HN password.
I make note of that in the text underneath the form area but you are not the
first person to assume that I'm referring to one's HN password. You are
absolutely right though, as a user, I would never give up my HN password to a
random 3rd party. Your authentication implementation idea completely sidesteps
any ambiguity - I'm going to go ahead and move towards this as soon as I can.
Again, thanks for your feedback!

------
vargas84
OP here. The biggest issue for my first iteration of this site was clarity -
people just didn't understand what it was or how it worked. I thought I fixed
that with this iteration but, after showing it to a few friends, apparently
not. Any suggestions on how to improve? I'll keep tweaking until I get it
right!

Note: You may encounter bugs, site is not totally "ready" yet.

