4 ms·

You need to log in first. Click log-in in the upper right hand corner. However, thanks for mentioning that, as you are the second person to point out a bit of

by cbeley 14y ago

You need to log in first. Click log-in in the upper right hand corner. However, thanks for mentioning that, as you are the second person to point out a bit of confusion with that. In fact, I'll see if I can push out a quick fix to clarify that error.

nickler 14y ago
Logged in now, thanks for the clarification.
- cbeley 14y ago
  No problem. Also, I just pushed out an update that automatically brings you to the login screen if you are not logged in. Hopefully that'll clear some confusion.
  - nickler 14y ago
    Ok, I have to agree on the front end, and I can enthusiastically endorse bootstrap as a great start. The UX is rough, and I would recommend a lot of 'mom testing'. Explore visual representation of the inventory, lists can be overwhelming, and push a new user right back to their excel spreadsheet. I find that I'm really wanting clearer, and more compelling calls to action. I recognize it isn't your target market, but I would suggest going to a small business owner that does regular inventory like a restaurant and take a look at what they use, there might be some interesting learning there. I did it for many years using excel, and the constant need to catalog and maintain inventories is a legitimate pain that needs solving. Good luck!
    - cbeley 14y ago
      I'll definitely be revamping the UI in the near future. Also, a random note, but there are a lot of subtle features such as no pages (you just keep scrolling), easy category exploration (items show up immediately on the right as you browse categories), auto-completion, table headers that always stay at the top, and other little UI things that don't show up until you have at least a few items in the system. It's many of those things that make it much more enjoyable to use compared with other solutions (at least, in terms of what me and a few others who have used it a bit more extensively think). I think the overall UI may be discouraging people before they even realize that all those other features exist. On that note, do you think putting a public demo that's populated with much more data would be a good idea? The biggest problem is that public demos are a bit outlet for spam and other abuse. "I find that I'm really wanting clearer, and more compelling calls to action." -- I was wondering what you meant by this. Also, I have been reaching out to small business owners and I actually have a restaurant owner who is interested. Whether he ends up using it or not, I hope he'll be able to provide some good feedback. EDIT: Also, I was curious if you have any further thoughts about the representation of the inventory. Right now, it displays items as tables with the ability to customize what attributes you see while browsing (this can be changed by clicking your name in the upper right hand corner). When you say to explore other representations, are you saying to work more on just the displaying of the tabular data or coming up with some sort of hybrid-list-table thing?
      - nickler 14y ago
        Get in touch by email, I can help more by sending over some excel files of example restaurant inventories that are currently being used by the industry. Restaurant inventory has clear needs that i can go into further, if you're interested in pursuing that market of course. I'm not sure they'll pay for it, and they're not the best early adopters, so I would hesitate to build a business model around them. That being said, take a look at http://www.scanitinternational.com http://www.scanitinternational.com as an example of one group trying to solve it.

by cbeley 14y ago

nickler 14y ago

Logged in now, thanks for the clarification.

cbeley 14y ago
No problem. Also, I just pushed out an update that automatically brings you to the login screen if you are not logged in. Hopefully that'll clear some confusion.
- nickler 14y ago
  Ok, I have to agree on the front end, and I can enthusiastically endorse bootstrap as a great start. The UX is rough, and I would recommend a lot of 'mom testing'. Explore visual representation of the inventory, lists can be overwhelming, and push a new user right back to their excel spreadsheet. I find that I'm really wanting clearer, and more compelling calls to action. I recognize it isn't your target market, but I would suggest going to a small business owner that does regular inventory like a restaurant and take a look at what they use, there might be some interesting learning there. I did it for many years using excel, and the constant need to catalog and maintain inventories is a legitimate pain that needs solving. Good luck!
  - cbeley 14y ago
    I'll definitely be revamping the UI in the near future. Also, a random note, but there are a lot of subtle features such as no pages (you just keep scrolling), easy category exploration (items show up immediately on the right as you browse categories), auto-completion, table headers that always stay at the top, and other little UI things that don't show up until you have at least a few items in the system. It's many of those things that make it much more enjoyable to use compared with other solutions (at least, in terms of what me and a few others who have used it a bit more extensively think). I think the overall UI may be discouraging people before they even realize that all those other features exist. On that note, do you think putting a public demo that's populated with much more data would be a good idea? The biggest problem is that public demos are a bit outlet for spam and other abuse. "I find that I'm really wanting clearer, and more compelling calls to action." -- I was wondering what you meant by this. Also, I have been reaching out to small business owners and I actually have a restaurant owner who is interested. Whether he ends up using it or not, I hope he'll be able to provide some good feedback. EDIT: Also, I was curious if you have any further thoughts about the representation of the inventory. Right now, it displays items as tables with the ability to customize what attributes you see while browsing (this can be changed by clicking your name in the upper right hand corner). When you say to explore other representations, are you saying to work more on just the displaying of the tabular data or coming up with some sort of hybrid-list-table thing?
    - nickler 14y ago
      Get in touch by email, I can help more by sending over some excel files of example restaurant inventories that are currently being used by the industry. Restaurant inventory has clear needs that i can go into further, if you're interested in pursuing that market of course. I'm not sure they'll pay for it, and they're not the best early adopters, so I would hesitate to build a business model around them. That being said, take a look at http://www.scanitinternational.com http://www.scanitinternational.com as an example of one group trying to solve it.