

Ask HN: Review my webapp - Goalbot - mmorris
http://www.goalbot.org

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thismat
Really like this idea, it's a really nifty concept. On the design side of
things I'm on the fence, I like the logo and serif font at the top, though I'm
still unsure about the monospace caption, it's possible the entire header
would look better in a monospace font, worth exploring.

From the design of the header, the buttons and heavy gradient don't really
work for me, you start out very crisp and clean, but quickly clutter with
excessive gradients and rollovers, and the central page layout feels very
'cramped' as well, possibly playing with the spacing between objects and the
contrasts would help.

Honestly I think your design would greatly improve with a more liberal use of
whitespace, possibly no borders for the content, no boxing things in? and I'm
not sold on the rounded navigation either, but this is possibly just due to
the images not really jiving with me.

Here's an example: <http://thismat.com/images/goalbot.png>

Obviously this all subjective to taste, but I thought I'd throw it in as food
for thought...you might not even be ready to tweak on the design yet.

~~~
mmorris
Wow! This is really helpful. I've often felt like the design was sort of
cramped, as you say. Unfortunately, I'm only an aspiring designer so sometimes
I can't figure out just how to fix my problems. I've also been a bit hesitant
to play around with the design too much as I've been trying to get the
functionality into place.

But you've inspired me. I'm going to play around with the spacing and borders
this weekend. At this point I don't think I want to do away with the content
borders entirely, but your graphic shows how much more open it would be.
Hrmm... I'll have to ruminate on it.

I know the screenshot wasn't a super intensive edit or anything, but it was
really nice of you to go through the trouble. Thanks so much!

~~~
thismat
Not a problem, for the record I just used firebug to hide the background
images and took a screen shot ;)

~~~
mmorris
Ha! You sly dog.

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seven
Hi, I triggered a 500 error somehow.. probably because of my javascript being
disabled. You should add a small but very visible warning that js is required.
Wondering how many hn-readers are using noscript. About the whole concept. I
do not get it. At least I am not sure if I do. To be fair. I spent less then
90 seconds on your page. I would recommend that you produce some sort of
workflow-demo. Wink (<http://www.debugmode.com/wink/>) does a nice job. I use
the linux version to do the screencapturing and use the more advanced windows
version to add audio. Do you have a business model in mind? Or is this just a
fun project? Best wishes, have fun.

~~~
mmorris
Yes, I'm still working on getting the non-javascript enabled functions working
properly. At the moment the site does require JS, but it won't when it's
"done", though the UI will be somewhat clunkier without the JS.

I've thought about adding a flowchart of some type, but in actuality there
isn't really a sequential path through, other than having to plan your goal(s)
before you can track and connect on them. I'll considerate further and see
what I can come up with though.

Thanks for the feedback.

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amackera
A tried a few things like: "go to law school", "develop a video game", "work
on open source", none of which came up with any suggestions. I really like the
idea, I think the database just needs some population before it becomes really
useful.

Also it would be super cool if people could have public profiles where they
post how they did things. You might be able to pay/interest some authors or
famous people (like Neil Gaiman or Steven Fry, both of whom LOVE services like
Twitter). Get them to write public how-tos on achieving your goals.

~~~
mmorris
Absolutely, the site needs a lot more content before it's particularly useful.
Those are all great goals, I'll definitely be doing some research and
developing content in those areas.

I have a lot of thoughts on where the site is going, and how public profiles
will work, but I hadn't particularly thought about the "famous how-tos" angle.
Thats really interesting, I'll add it into the brainstorm soup!!

Thanks!

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weaksauce
Not to be nitpicky, but in startups every little bit helps, you should change
loose weight to lose weight in the "start a business" goal. Loose refers to
the opposite of tight. Lose refers to the act of removing something.

Other than the dialog boxes that pop up like crazy the site is interesting.
One thing you might want to elaborate on is how the system uses the data you
provide to fine tune the algorithms.

If you are crowdsourcing the data for goals how are you going to prevent
malicious activity from corrupting the goal set?

~~~
mmorris
You're absolutely right. I should fix that title.

The "loose weight" entry was from a beta tester and I haven't quite finished
the 'similar goals' part of the database, which will connect "loose weight" to
the correctly spelled goal "lose weight" (which is also in the database). That
should be working soon, which will help to minimize accidental entries.

In regards to malicious entries, this is a tricky subject. I'm thinking of
malicious entries in terms of spam-type and just plain junk entries, is that
what you mean? To some degree, worthless entries will be weeded out because no
one will select them, so they will fall to the bottom of the recommended goals
list (more to the point, the opposite will happen - the good will rise to the
top). There are also a number of other steps I'm taking, including
implementing a flagging system that will help with manual moderation.

Thanks for taking the time to check out the site! I'm going to be making a
number of changes based on the feedback I've received here. I'll report back
once things are further along.

~~~
weaksauce
No problem. The site definitely has potential. It might be a good idea to add
some kind of chronological aspect of the goal system into it too. By that I
mean to have the goals sorted by chronology in addition to rank. Most goals
have a linear progression that if the suggested goals are ranked in a manner
that is consistent with the natural progression of attaining the goal it will
help in make the system more usable. If you wanted to implement this system
you could take a look at how people order the subgoals when the goals are
added to the main goal. You could also keep stats on what goals are added in
addition to the goal that someone just added and do a netflix style "We
noticed that you added 'get married' as a subgoal to your main goal of 'live a
full life' might we suggest 'find a date' as a correlated goal?" or something
along those lines. Good luck on it and I look forward to seeing your progress.

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ErrantX
I'll be honest; dialogue boxes appearing _everywhere_ put me off.

~~~
mmorris
Thanks for the honesty!

I'm assuming you mean the pop up dialogues when you've started planning a new
goal (and not the tool tips when you hover over certain items). This is really
designed for first time users to help explain how the system works.

Do you think that level of explanation is unnecessary? Or is there a better
way of adding that information?

~~~
ErrantX
no I think it is good to see it.

Just within a few seconds of getting to that screen I had about 5 boxes appear
in front of me and it was a bit confusing.

Maybe just a reorganisation of where they appear?

EDIT: ok I went back to have another look. It's not the placement that put me
off; it was the speed. It sounds crazy but I think the popups are too fast in
appearing - I bet if you got them to fade in a little slower (2-3 seconds)
then it would feel more natural.

~~~
mmorris
Okay, I'll play with the timing and see what I can do. Thanks for taking the
time to look again!

EDIT: I slowed it down a few seconds, but from the feedback so far I think I
might need to rethink how the instructions work exactly...

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rogeriopvl
I like the design, although the dialog boxes are somewhat annoying. I don't
find it useful to me, but the concept is very interesting and original. Good
luck with your webapp.

~~~
mmorris
I've slowed the popup dialogs down a bit, but I might need to rethink how it
works based on the feedback here.

Thank you for taking the time to check it out.

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Maciek416
I'm curious whether you're planning to have Goalbot automatically learn from
the collective successes of your users (example "people who skipped this step
were twice as likely to fail at goal X"). Surely some goals are going to be
personal, but I could imagine a lot of interesting insights arising from
studying the paths of those who were successful.

~~~
mmorris
Yes, the plan and track sections of Goalbot are based around 'learning' which
subgoals are most effective in reaching the parent goal. This was actually
part of the original inspiration behind the idea.

Also, I agree that there will be some personal goals added. At the moment
we're getting around the public/personal issue by making goals public once a
certain threshold of people have typed it in manually. This way no private
goals will ever be made public (though as the site develops I'll likely have
to make it a bit smarter).

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vibhavs
Nothing big, but something I just thought I'd bring to your attention if you
haven't noticed.

I'm assuming you have different colored images for the menu bar items ("Plan",
"Track", etc) when users hover. It doesn't look like the images loaded
immediately and it caused a couple second lag where a mouse-over caused the
button to go all white.

~~~
mmorris
Yes, I've noticed the lag on some of the roll-over graphics.

I'm planning on converting the images to use CSS Sprites, which I believe will
solve the problem without having to resort to preloading (and, of course, make
the site run a bit faster too).

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adnam
Nice site. I'd personally use the word "checkpoint" or something instead of
"sub-goal", but it's a small thing.

~~~
mmorris
Funny you should mention that. One of my beta testers was particularly hung up
on the word "subgoal". She thought it sounded too technical, but so far
everyone else has thought it was okay.

There are some other wording changes I'm contemplating, so I'll have to give
this one some further thought as well.

Thanks

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sync
Yeah, I got a 500 error as well when I said I really want to ... poop

I have JS enabled.

~~~
mmorris
Ah, thanks for pointing that out. I figured out where the error was and fixed
it. It wasn't the wording that was the problem!

But, yes, the site now accepts poop. :)

~~~
thamer
I too have Javascript. Nothing works, I get an error 500 every time.

Note: this is not browser-related:

$ curl -I <http://www.goalbot.org/plan/start/sleep/>

HTTP/1.1 500 INTERNAL SERVER ERROR

[...]

~~~
mmorris
I have to dig further into what happened there. It should be fixed now though,
I've tested through several options.

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Quiark
I think I like it, but I'm probably not going to use it, at least now.

~~~
mmorris
Understandable. I'm still working on getting enough content in the learn and
plan sections to make it truly valuable without network effect from the
connect section (which is a social network/forum combo).

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prabodh
cool idea Can we add timelines in the goals somewhere ..and i feel popups need
a bit of rework..it annoys a bit initially....

~~~
mmorris
A lot of details like due dates, etc. are set up in the back end but haven't
been exposed through the UI yet. I'm working towards that, should be soon.

I agree about the pop-ups, several people have mentioned how annoying they
are. As per the suggestion of a previous commenter I'm going to set it up so
that it is controlled by the user (i.e., they can select if they've had enough
instructions after the first pop up or if they want to see more instructions).
I think that will help.

On a side note, those pop ups should be seen rarely by the user once they've
actually set things up (though I realize first impressions are critical).

