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Agreed that you should be making your product better...I think that's perhaps the unsung goal with our reporting system. If an article gets read a lot, look at

Agreed that you should be making your product better...I think that's perhaps the unsung goal with our reporting system. If an article gets read a lot, look at how you can improve it in your product. But you can't fix things fast enough and there will always be someone confused (If you build it one day, user X will be confused. Build it another, user Y will be confused.) so having good documentation is key, in our opinion.

andrewljohnson 15y ago
You just have to be sure you don't eliminate the customer support with documentation, and then not ever fix the problem. I think it's better to feel the pain in the short run, and have a better product in the long run. This reminds me of another thing we do - when we make new apps, we don't provide a manual to the beta group. We make one after the fact, but we want to get feedback from users as if there are no instructions. Your product is awesome btw. We use it in two apps, and plan to add it to a third soon.
- evanhamilton 15y ago
  Totally! I'm obsessed with telling our team about customer problems, our support folks are obsessed with helping them, and our Head of UX is obsessed with fixing the actual problems. It's a good set of checks and balances. Thanks for the kind words and for being a customer! :)
andrewljohnson 15y ago
I also disagree with this assertion - "If you build it one day, user X will be confused. Build it another, user Y will be confused." I agree that you can never make a product that 100% of people can use with ease, but you can get close, and you can make changes that help User X without alienating User Y. Case in point: iPads don't come with instruction manuals, and toddlers and old people both use them with ease.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  Case in point: iPads don't come with instruction manuals, and toddlers and old people both use them with ease. Although it took me nearly an hour to figure out how to copy some videos I had transcoded to the device.
- evanhamilton 15y ago
  Not sure I agree with that point: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=ipad%20help&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=ipad%20help&cmp... Yes, they're easy to use. Are they so easy to use that nobody ever needs any help with them? No.

andrewljohnson 15y ago

You just have to be sure you don't eliminate the customer support with documentation, and then not ever fix the problem. I think it's better to feel the pain in the short run, and have a better product in the long run. This reminds me of another thing we do - when we make new apps, we don't provide a manual to the beta group. We make one after the fact, but we want to get feedback from users as if there are no instructions. Your product is awesome btw. We use it in two apps, and plan to add it to a third soon.

evanhamilton 15y ago
Totally! I'm obsessed with telling our team about customer problems, our support folks are obsessed with helping them, and our Head of UX is obsessed with fixing the actual problems. It's a good set of checks and balances. Thanks for the kind words and for being a customer! :)

andrewljohnson 15y ago

I also disagree with this assertion - "If you build it one day, user X will be confused. Build it another, user Y will be confused." I agree that you can never make a product that 100% of people can use with ease, but you can get close, and you can make changes that help User X without alienating User Y. Case in point: iPads don't come with instruction manuals, and toddlers and old people both use them with ease.

kenjackson 15y ago
Case in point: iPads don't come with instruction manuals, and toddlers and old people both use them with ease. Although it took me nearly an hour to figure out how to copy some videos I had transcoded to the device.
evanhamilton 15y ago
Not sure I agree with that point: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=ipad%20help&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=ipad%20help&cmp... Yes, they're easy to use. Are they so easy to use that nobody ever needs any help with them? No.