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This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping we'd get! I'm just going to go line by line, after which I'll start redo-ing the PDF to reflect some of the c

This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping we'd get! I'm just going to go line by line, after which I'll start redo-ing the PDF to reflect some of the changes. 1. Hint text. Good point. That implementation definitely sounds more useable, and of course, there's a jQuery plugin for it :) 2. There's no explicit way to merge groups, because it sounded like more of a hassle than it was worth. What do you think of avoiding the problem in the first place by suggesting existing groups as the user types in a group name to be created? 3. Separate add link button: good point. changing this. 4. Video: lets forget it. I've never done anything involving video uploading, and once I had a look at what a hassle it is to do, I don't think it's worth it for the amount of our users that will actually use it. 5. Step editor. Yes, also a good point. CKeditor seems perfect. 6. the importance of border-radii: cannot be underestimated. the PDF is supposed to be a bit more than wireframes, but is not intended to be that high-level of a design. 7. Captcha vs. email verification. I did think about this one a bit. I personally hate email verification more than I hate captchas, but is there some other reason to prefer one over the other? 8. ban user is about as useful as video uploads, and is probably not worth the hassle it entails. lets cut this. 9. early on, many of the people who've expressed interest in the site wanted to use it in non-english speaking settings. since there is no "settings" page yet (not enough settings to make it worth having one) the languages selector goes on the top menu rather than inside a settings section. Changing it at the very least changes the language of the UI (assuming this isn't too difficult) but could also change which protocols are shown (this sounds much harder.) Not an essential launch feature, on reflection. 10. The blog is just a link to a posterous/tumblr/whatever, for now. 11. The last page has a crude data structure diagram, but i'll add the users into it. 12. DIY bio page: That is a group page. The different headings on the page are categories within a group. I'll put this into the data model as an example.

stevelosh 16y ago
2. There's no explicit way to merge groups, because it sounded like more of a hassle than it was worth. What do you think of avoiding the problem in the first place by suggesting existing groups as the user types in a group name to be created? This is kind of a big deal, in an estimating-cost-of-website sense. How are suggestions displayed? Inline, as-you-type, AJA* updating, or only once you hit create? Also, how do you determine if two groups are similar? Just based on the words in the titles, or in the descriptions as well? What about synonyms? It's a hard problem, and a perfectly reasonable answer for an initial launch is: no merging, and no suggesting. If two similar groups are created: tough. Deal. 4. Video: lets forget it. I've never done anything involving video uploading, and once I had a look at what a hassle it is to do, I don't think it's worth it for the amount of our users that will actually use it. To be honest, I think videos would be extremely useful (though I'm not a scientist), but a lot of work. 7. Captcha vs. email verification. I did think about this one a bit. I personally hate email verification more than I hate captchas, but is there some other reason to prefer one over the other? No, not really, not until someone comes up with some hard data about the spam-reduction rates of the various methods. 9. early on, many of the people who've expressed interest in the site wanted to use it in non-english speaking settings. since there is no "settings" page yet (not enough settings to make it worth having one) the languages selector goes on the top menu rather than inside a settings section. Changing it at the very least changes the language of the UI (assuming this isn't too difficult) but could also change which protocols are shown (this sounds much harder.) Not an essential launch feature, on reflection. For the UI: Who translates the UI? How do they do it? Who checks their work? For the protocols: Yes, this would be hard to get right. Very hard. What about translating groups? Who owns those? How does a translator know when a group's "original" description has changed and need re-translating? What if someone edits a translated group -- who reverse-translates the edit back to the original group? What if the original has changed since then? 12. DIY bio page: That is a group page. The different headings on the page are categories within a group. I'll put this into the data model as an example. Somehow I missed the "groups have categories" concept. Sorry.
Kliment 16y ago
An extra bit of feedback, those auto-scrolling "feedback" vertical button things are incredibly annoying, especially on mobile devices and/or small screens. They obscure part of the page, can't be scrolled out of the way, can't be (easily) switched off, and are also a huge slowdown when scrolling, again particularly on mobile devices. It's also unclear what clicking it will do. Will it take me to another page so I lose the context I'm in, will it open a popover form, will it open a menu? Is said "feedback" targeted at the current protocol/page or at the site itself? I recommend getting rid of this, or at least moving it to the top menu. Sorry, minor nitpick, but I've been so frustrated by these unremovable auto-scrolling things obscuring information I actually need to see. Oh, and as for the linking, you might want to check out how Ravelry does it (Ravelry is a site for knitters to organize their projects at). They have a text field where you can type in the name of a yarn/designer/pattern, and a link button. Clicking the link button pops up a little box where it searches for anything with a similar name in the respective database, and you can click on a search result to auto-populate and link the field to the result.
GICodeWarrior 16y ago
If you are willing to leverage proprietary services, you can use Panda Stream for video support. http://www.pandastream.com/ http://www.pandastream.com/ http://addons.heroku.com/pandastream http://addons.heroku.com/pandastream For the editor, a WYSIWYG editor may better target your users, but I recommend keeping the formatting options to the bare-minimum you have already defined. Providing enough options to typeset a book is cool, but would probably distract both editors and viewers.

stevelosh 16y ago

2. There's no explicit way to merge groups, because it sounded like more of a hassle than it was worth. What do you think of avoiding the problem in the first place by suggesting existing groups as the user types in a group name to be created? This is kind of a big deal, in an estimating-cost-of-website sense. How are suggestions displayed? Inline, as-you-type, AJA* updating, or only once you hit create? Also, how do you determine if two groups are similar? Just based on the words in the titles, or in the descriptions as well? What about synonyms? It's a hard problem, and a perfectly reasonable answer for an initial launch is: no merging, and no suggesting. If two similar groups are created: tough. Deal. 4. Video: lets forget it. I've never done anything involving video uploading, and once I had a look at what a hassle it is to do, I don't think it's worth it for the amount of our users that will actually use it. To be honest, I think videos would be extremely useful (though I'm not a scientist), but a lot of work. 7. Captcha vs. email verification. I did think about this one a bit. I personally hate email verification more than I hate captchas, but is there some other reason to prefer one over the other? No, not really, not until someone comes up with some hard data about the spam-reduction rates of the various methods. 9. early on, many of the people who've expressed interest in the site wanted to use it in non-english speaking settings. since there is no "settings" page yet (not enough settings to make it worth having one) the languages selector goes on the top menu rather than inside a settings section. Changing it at the very least changes the language of the UI (assuming this isn't too difficult) but could also change which protocols are shown (this sounds much harder.) Not an essential launch feature, on reflection. For the UI: Who translates the UI? How do they do it? Who checks their work? For the protocols: Yes, this would be hard to get right. Very hard. What about translating groups? Who owns those? How does a translator know when a group's "original" description has changed and need re-translating? What if someone edits a translated group -- who reverse-translates the edit back to the original group? What if the original has changed since then? 12. DIY bio page: That is a group page. The different headings on the page are categories within a group. I'll put this into the data model as an example. Somehow I missed the "groups have categories" concept. Sorry.

Kliment 16y ago

An extra bit of feedback, those auto-scrolling "feedback" vertical button things are incredibly annoying, especially on mobile devices and/or small screens. They obscure part of the page, can't be scrolled out of the way, can't be (easily) switched off, and are also a huge slowdown when scrolling, again particularly on mobile devices. It's also unclear what clicking it will do. Will it take me to another page so I lose the context I'm in, will it open a popover form, will it open a menu? Is said "feedback" targeted at the current protocol/page or at the site itself? I recommend getting rid of this, or at least moving it to the top menu. Sorry, minor nitpick, but I've been so frustrated by these unremovable auto-scrolling things obscuring information I actually need to see. Oh, and as for the linking, you might want to check out how Ravelry does it (Ravelry is a site for knitters to organize their projects at). They have a text field where you can type in the name of a yarn/designer/pattern, and a link button. Clicking the link button pops up a little box where it searches for anything with a similar name in the respective database, and you can click on a search result to auto-populate and link the field to the result.

GICodeWarrior 16y ago

If you are willing to leverage proprietary services, you can use Panda Stream for video support. http://www.pandastream.com/ http://www.pandastream.com/ http://addons.heroku.com/pandastream http://addons.heroku.com/pandastream For the editor, a WYSIWYG editor may better target your users, but I recommend keeping the formatting options to the bare-minimum you have already defined. Providing enough options to typeset a book is cool, but would probably distract both editors and viewers.