5 ms·

Email as the interface is really interesting to me. Users don't necessarily need a username/password combo. They don't need to learn a new workflow. They don't

by swanson 14y ago

Email as the interface is really interesting to me. Users don't necessarily need a username/password combo. They don't need to learn a new workflow. They don't need to install any new tools. Company IT depts take care of making sure people can access their email on their phones/laptops. I've built a product that tracks team mood that is based almost entirely on email. Instead of having a team of 10 developers each make their own accounts, there is just one account for the manager - who manages the list of the team's emails. The team members record their mood by clicking one of three links in the email, no complicated forms or sliders. Usage and adoption rates have been beyond my expectations (~70% response rate to daily emails) and I think the use of email is a major factor. Email-first is very constraining - but ultimately constraints help spur creative and elegant solutions.

scottmagdalein 14y ago
Love this idea. Can I see it somewhere online?
- swanson 14y ago
  Sure - https://www.moraleapp.com/ https://www.moraleapp.com/
  - scottmagdalein 14y ago
    Love it.
shurcooL 14y ago
> no complicated forms or sliders. I find this very interesting. What made you want to avoid use a slider? Personally, I really dislike such limiting options. Good, meh, bad? It doesn't let me express if I'm a little better than good or somewhere between Good and Meh. I'd often have to truncate my true expression. For myself, I would love a single simple slider. It would let me express myself with any degree of accuracy I want. Very specific, or just rough. Am I an exception from the average user? Because this bugs me in so many places. So many things are in or out. I want them to be a floating point value between 0 to 1. Website favourites. I wish I could favourite them by any amount between 0 to 1, etc. (Then you could do all sorts of things like display the higher-ranked items larger, or filter displaying only >= 0.75 items). Same goes for app/movie rankings. Why do I have to truncate my feelings to 1-5 stars instead of just dropping a slider to where I feel like?
- swanson 14y ago
  My take is that when you use a slider - or the common 5-item Likert scales (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree) - people will waffle over their answer. The fewer the options, the lesser cognitive overload of having decide is today a "great" day or just a "good" day. I don't want answering the question "how is your day going?" to take more than the 2 seconds it takes to move your mouse to the link. The problem with the slider is that you have you interface with it. So the workflow would be: get an email, click a link, move a slider (compared to get an email, click one of 3 links). I know I'd want to avoid the extra step as a user, so that's why I opted for that approach. There is also an option for the user to enter an anonymous comment after they have logged their mood - so if you want to express why today is bad or add note that it is an especially excellent day you can do that. At a higher level view, I think the value in this particular app is not a scientifically rigorous computation of a teams mood, but rather as a conversation starter ("why has there been a few 'bads' this week? let's talk about it") and a general trend indicator ("morale is down since we moved to the new office, what's up with that?").
  - shurcooL 14y ago
    Yeah, I think having more options (like 5-item Likert) would be worse for exactly the reasons you mentioned. It's a good point that you can't do a slider in email, I didn't think of. Unless email allows embedding an html form that you can submit? I've never seen anything more than static html in my email so I guess it must not be possible. Anyway, thanks for your explanation, it makes sense. I think I'll make myself a 0-1 floating point favourites tracker and see how I like using it.
    - swanson 14y ago
      Yeah, forms in an email are tricky. Some clients actually do support them - which was a big surprise to me! http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-work/forms/ http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-work/forms/ Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.
- pjungwir 14y ago
callmeed 14y ago
>> Users don't necessarily need a username/password combo. This is where I really love the Token Authenticatable module in Devise (for Rails). Your rails app can start by just collecting emails. As your app grows, you can then turn that table into a Devise User model. Turn on token auth. and your emails can now include links that auto-login users.
- WA 14y ago
  Sounds good in theory, but login-links are a security issue, because they: show up in browser history can be pasted accidentally somewhere are send usually unencrypted via email You'll need one-time login links, which is partly okay, partly inconvenient. Don't get me wrong, I play with the idea of login-links as well, but they have some drawbacks that one should at least be aware of.

by swanson 14y ago

scottmagdalein 14y ago

Love this idea. Can I see it somewhere online?

swanson 14y ago
Sure - https://www.moraleapp.com/ https://www.moraleapp.com/
- scottmagdalein 14y ago
  Love it.

shurcooL 14y ago

> no complicated forms or sliders. I find this very interesting. What made you want to avoid use a slider? Personally, I really dislike such limiting options. Good, meh, bad? It doesn't let me express if I'm a little better than good or somewhere between Good and Meh. I'd often have to truncate my true expression. For myself, I would love a single simple slider. It would let me express myself with any degree of accuracy I want. Very specific, or just rough. Am I an exception from the average user? Because this bugs me in so many places. So many things are in or out. I want them to be a floating point value between 0 to 1. Website favourites. I wish I could favourite them by any amount between 0 to 1, etc. (Then you could do all sorts of things like display the higher-ranked items larger, or filter displaying only >= 0.75 items). Same goes for app/movie rankings. Why do I have to truncate my feelings to 1-5 stars instead of just dropping a slider to where I feel like?

swanson 14y ago
My take is that when you use a slider - or the common 5-item Likert scales (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree) - people will waffle over their answer. The fewer the options, the lesser cognitive overload of having decide is today a "great" day or just a "good" day. I don't want answering the question "how is your day going?" to take more than the 2 seconds it takes to move your mouse to the link. The problem with the slider is that you have you interface with it. So the workflow would be: get an email, click a link, move a slider (compared to get an email, click one of 3 links). I know I'd want to avoid the extra step as a user, so that's why I opted for that approach. There is also an option for the user to enter an anonymous comment after they have logged their mood - so if you want to express why today is bad or add note that it is an especially excellent day you can do that. At a higher level view, I think the value in this particular app is not a scientifically rigorous computation of a teams mood, but rather as a conversation starter ("why has there been a few 'bads' this week? let's talk about it") and a general trend indicator ("morale is down since we moved to the new office, what's up with that?").
- shurcooL 14y ago
  Yeah, I think having more options (like 5-item Likert) would be worse for exactly the reasons you mentioned. It's a good point that you can't do a slider in email, I didn't think of. Unless email allows embedding an html form that you can submit? I've never seen anything more than static html in my email so I guess it must not be possible. Anyway, thanks for your explanation, it makes sense. I think I'll make myself a 0-1 floating point favourites tracker and see how I like using it.
  - swanson 14y ago
    Yeah, forms in an email are tricky. Some clients actually do support them - which was a big surprise to me! http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-work/forms/ http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-work/forms/ Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.
pjungwir 14y ago

callmeed 14y ago

>> Users don't necessarily need a username/password combo. This is where I really love the Token Authenticatable module in Devise (for Rails). Your rails app can start by just collecting emails. As your app grows, you can then turn that table into a Devise User model. Turn on token auth. and your emails can now include links that auto-login users.

WA 14y ago
Sounds good in theory, but login-links are a security issue, because they: show up in browser history can be pasted accidentally somewhere are send usually unencrypted via email You'll need one-time login links, which is partly okay, partly inconvenient. Don't get me wrong, I play with the idea of login-links as well, but they have some drawbacks that one should at least be aware of.