7 ms·

Ask HN: Looking for feedback/advice on handwritr.com

12 points by deutronium 16y ago

I've been working on this little site in my spare time which makes use of Amazon Mechanical Turk. I got some really useful feedback from you guys off #startups last night, so thought I'd post here too. Thanks!

DanLivesHere 16y ago
How much are you paying AMT workers?
- deutronium 16y ago
  At the moment that is quite flexible, I'm thinking of creating different pricing schemes to get jobs completed within set time frames.
petervandijck 16y ago
Looks like an AWESOME service. Now it's all marketing, you have to find groups of people that are interested in this. (College professors?)
- DanLivesHere 16y ago
  That's kind of what I was thinking. I feel like I could market it (it's what I do) but the margins could be too tight.
  - deutronium 16y ago
    Hi Dan, I'd really like to talk to you about that, couldn't see any e-mail on your profile, mind dropping me a mail at sales [at] handwritr.com?
- deutronium 16y ago
  Thanks! Colleges where one of the places I thought of targeting too.
Jabbles 16y ago
http://www.handwritr.com/ http://www.handwritr.com/ Sounds like a nice idea, you may need more stringent rules on what constitutes a "page" though.
- deutronium 16y ago
  Good point, possibly pricing could be based on word count instead.
percept 16y ago
Interesting idea. I wonder which businesses might be interested in the service (assuming higher profit margins there since you're paying human workers). Maybe attorneys, for discovered documents? Accounting? Or historical research? Some authors prefer to write in longhand . . . Do scanning companies ever outsource manual jobs? For consumers, how about family histories or recipes? [There are companies which create family cookbooks, for example.] I think the site copy is like a first draft in its current state--a good start, but could be shorter and punchier (copywriting's hard). Find out what people are searching for in your niche and weave more keyphrases into the text. I also suggest working on the text layout to better distinguish your points. I consider the remainder "good enough," with the possible exception of the logo. But selling is more important--clearly and briefly explain what you're selling and present a call to action (maybe make the "Go" action clearer).
- deutronium 16y ago
  Thanks a lot! You've given me lots of things to think about.
user24 16y ago
Great idea. Why not tack on an OCR package too for people who are scanning in printed documents or screenshots that they want converting to text. You can automate that. If the quality of OCR isn't good enough then you might be able to reduce your turk costs by saying "correct this page" instead of "transcribe this page". Good luck!
- deutronium 16y ago
  Cheers, thats a nice idea i'll look into that.
  - entreprenewb 16y ago
    Bump on this. I know that with medical transcription using speech recognition and then a transcriptionist turnaround time can improve from around 4 or 5 hours to 20-30 minutes or less. Along those lines, consider charging per line transcribed rather than per page. Customers with short documents might balk at the price when they don't need a full page transcribed. And using a standard transcription character width means that you'll have more granular data. And if you don't already have a terms of service (I didn't delve deep into your site, but didn't see it readily obvious) you need one that informs the user that the final documents are not guaranteed perfect and have some agreement that will relieve you from the liability if the user doesn't review their own document before using it in a professional capacity. A minimal error in a legal or medical document that isn't reviewed could have costly implications. Lastly, two nitpicks: 1) you have the word "transcriber" on the landing page, but "transcriptionist" is the more common term for the occupation (e.g. medical transcriptionist) 2) The "Go" link in the header and footer isn't descriptive. Why not have a link that says "Transcribe" or something more readily meaningful than "Go"?
    - deutronium 16y ago
      Thanks for your advice, I've just added a ToS and privacy policy based on it.
unohoo 16y ago
look for some website templates at themeforest.com -- you can use them as a base to increase usability.
- deutronium 16y ago
  Cheers for the link, the original design was semi-based on one from there. I've just switched to another from there, which I think looks nicer.
abyssknight 16y ago
Wow, that's a great idea. The only thing I'd say you need is more information about the service itself. Emphasize that real humans are looking at these documents, and explain the physics of the system a little more. That would differentiate you from OCR and other silly handwriting recognition software. Might want to flesh out a privacy policy too just in case someone uploads their personally identifiable information or the plans to some kind of bad thing.
- deutronium 16y ago
  Cheers, thats a very good point.
alastair 16y ago
Neat idea. Not sure if you're already doing this but you could OCR the document first and have the MT worker just fix the mistakes. This may reduce your costs + provide a faster turn around.

12 points by deutronium 16y ago

DanLivesHere 16y ago

How much are you paying AMT workers?

deutronium 16y ago
At the moment that is quite flexible, I'm thinking of creating different pricing schemes to get jobs completed within set time frames.

petervandijck 16y ago

Looks like an AWESOME service. Now it's all marketing, you have to find groups of people that are interested in this. (College professors?)

DanLivesHere 16y ago
That's kind of what I was thinking. I feel like I could market it (it's what I do) but the margins could be too tight.
- deutronium 16y ago
  Hi Dan, I'd really like to talk to you about that, couldn't see any e-mail on your profile, mind dropping me a mail at sales [at] handwritr.com?
deutronium 16y ago
Thanks! Colleges where one of the places I thought of targeting too.

Jabbles 16y ago

http://www.handwritr.com/ http://www.handwritr.com/ Sounds like a nice idea, you may need more stringent rules on what constitutes a "page" though.

deutronium 16y ago
Good point, possibly pricing could be based on word count instead.

percept 16y ago

Interesting idea. I wonder which businesses might be interested in the service (assuming higher profit margins there since you're paying human workers). Maybe attorneys, for discovered documents? Accounting? Or historical research? Some authors prefer to write in longhand . . . Do scanning companies ever outsource manual jobs? For consumers, how about family histories or recipes? [There are companies which create family cookbooks, for example.] I think the site copy is like a first draft in its current state--a good start, but could be shorter and punchier (copywriting's hard). Find out what people are searching for in your niche and weave more keyphrases into the text. I also suggest working on the text layout to better distinguish your points. I consider the remainder "good enough," with the possible exception of the logo. But selling is more important--clearly and briefly explain what you're selling and present a call to action (maybe make the "Go" action clearer).

deutronium 16y ago
Thanks a lot! You've given me lots of things to think about.

user24 16y ago

Great idea. Why not tack on an OCR package too for people who are scanning in printed documents or screenshots that they want converting to text. You can automate that. If the quality of OCR isn't good enough then you might be able to reduce your turk costs by saying "correct this page" instead of "transcribe this page". Good luck!

deutronium 16y ago
Cheers, thats a nice idea i'll look into that.
- entreprenewb 16y ago
  Bump on this. I know that with medical transcription using speech recognition and then a transcriptionist turnaround time can improve from around 4 or 5 hours to 20-30 minutes or less. Along those lines, consider charging per line transcribed rather than per page. Customers with short documents might balk at the price when they don't need a full page transcribed. And using a standard transcription character width means that you'll have more granular data. And if you don't already have a terms of service (I didn't delve deep into your site, but didn't see it readily obvious) you need one that informs the user that the final documents are not guaranteed perfect and have some agreement that will relieve you from the liability if the user doesn't review their own document before using it in a professional capacity. A minimal error in a legal or medical document that isn't reviewed could have costly implications. Lastly, two nitpicks: 1) you have the word "transcriber" on the landing page, but "transcriptionist" is the more common term for the occupation (e.g. medical transcriptionist) 2) The "Go" link in the header and footer isn't descriptive. Why not have a link that says "Transcribe" or something more readily meaningful than "Go"?
  - deutronium 16y ago
    Thanks for your advice, I've just added a ToS and privacy policy based on it.

unohoo 16y ago

look for some website templates at themeforest.com -- you can use them as a base to increase usability.

deutronium 16y ago
Cheers for the link, the original design was semi-based on one from there. I've just switched to another from there, which I think looks nicer.

abyssknight 16y ago

Wow, that's a great idea. The only thing I'd say you need is more information about the service itself. Emphasize that real humans are looking at these documents, and explain the physics of the system a little more. That would differentiate you from OCR and other silly handwriting recognition software. Might want to flesh out a privacy policy too just in case someone uploads their personally identifiable information or the plans to some kind of bad thing.

deutronium 16y ago
Cheers, thats a very good point.

alastair 16y ago

Neat idea. Not sure if you're already doing this but you could OCR the document first and have the MT worker just fix the mistakes. This may reduce your costs + provide a faster turn around.