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You'll either make it work or you won't. Find a way around it, learn how to code, or quit. Those are the reality and you have to pick one and go with it. If you

You'll either make it work or you won't. Find a way around it, learn how to code, or quit. Those are the reality and you have to pick one and go with it. If you do happen to stick with it, here is some feedback for you: - I'm not totally sure what's going on by the short headline. Generally short headlines are the goal but they should also tell me what it is so I have little to no uncertainty about what the goal of the product is. In this case the write throws me off because that's a huge process in itself. Am I actually writing books with the app or do I just upload my finished book? Can I still use the product if I'm not writing? etc. - The discover great books button takes me down a little but it's not perfect that it's taking me to the next section. The next section has a lot of book covers but I'm not sure what to do with them still. The title is on the books so that may not be necessary but I think possibly having the category underneath would be beneficial. For editors picks there sure seems to be a lot of books which leads me to believe they aren't the editors picks. They seem to go on forever, then what am I supposed to do? - I click on a book and now what? I see a huge cover of the book with a little image to the right with the authors name. If I wasn't extremely curious I wouldn't know the resize bar underneath resizes the cover and even then what am I supposed to do? It needs to be clear I can read through the book. Again I randomly pressed arrow keys and it opened the book. - While the animations and all that are nice, all I want to do is read the damn book. There's a ton of wasted space by having the other page take up a big portion of the real estate and when I zoom out the text gets smaller. All I want to do is read, I don't give a shit about fancy page turns or graphics. I shouldn't have to scroll and squint to read a page. Maybe the ideal experience is only showing enough text to make a comfortable reading experience and use the arrow keys to go to the next page when I'm done, like on a kindle. - All I see is a login button and not sign up button. While it may be obvious to some users to click login in order to sign up, you have to assume most users are somewhat dumb and not curious. I have no idea why I should sign up for an account, where to sign up for account at, or how that will benefit me when I do. Why the hell do you have a login with Facebook button when it doesn't actually log me in? I still have to create a username and password. - The writing screen has the same issues as reading. It's cluttered, it looks sloppy, and you could've made this look amazing by going with a simplistic approach. Where do I add a cover? I published with no content and now I'm not sure what to do. I JUST WANT TO TYPE. Make it easy for me to just type, look at medium or svtle and see how they do an amazing job at it. Copy and do something similar to start, no gimmicks or fake pages. Fuck pages we are online now, think different. - The user screen isn't obvious at all as to what I should be doing. The describe yourself text doesn't indicate any type of text field and like before we have to assume most users are oblivious to current trends. Why is there a My Flipbooks section and then I see a list of books on the right? A lot of space and I'm not sure what's going on. - There should be padding under the black user section between it and the book cover image. The paper icon in the top nav bar doesn't tell me what it is or why I should click it, it should have a plus sign or something. - The 'bookstand' has the same issues as the 'editors picks' because they are the exact same thing. They need categories and I need to be able to filter and peruse. You may not be there yet technically but just saying. Let me discover books that are interesting to me. How are you different than even Goodreads or Google? Let users tag books and let me search by those tags. Startups, business, econ, fiction, etc. - My homescreen dashboard is completely empty. It looks pathetic, make me feel better about having an empty dashboard. Even text like 'hey I see you don't have any books yet, how about getting started here?' or maybe I don't want to be a writer but I want to have collections of books. Don't assume I'm going to be writing when I'm just looking and collecting. Ok, I'm done with this brain dump. I hope it helps. As with all things, if you're passionate enough about it, you'll find a way to push through and make it work and when you do consider these issues. :)

IpxqwidxG 13y ago
It does help a lot. Thanks for taking the time to look at Bubblin. - Marvin
- joshmlewis 13y ago
  No problem. You can at least fill your immediate time with fixing some of these as they are mostly design issues and then when you find a new dev you can have a list ready to go.
  - IpxqwidxG 13y ago
    I am on it, already. You needn't signup to read books on bubblin. So when you signed up you're mostly looking at it like a "writer/creator" of books. That should explain the internal interface a bit. But I do agree that user on-boarding or it has to be dead simple.
- Pacabel 13y ago
  What is that you mean by "Youtube of Flipbooks"?
  - IpxqwidxG 13y ago
    Unlike Amazon or other distribution platforms we sort of broadcast books online. So the reader doesn't have to download or manage it before he/she could start reading. It also means community aspect, more eyeballs to early writers/freelancers who want wider readership and simpler publishing that works just like blogs. etc. etc. That's about it.
User8712 13y ago
Agree with a number of these points. First off, isn't the main goal creating flip books and reading flip books? I poked around with reading a few books, and the experience was flawed. 1. You're using the old gimmicky page turn animations. I've never been a fan of these, and I don't think I'm alone. It would be much better to simply flip to the next page if I click the right side, or flip to the previous page if I click the left side. Optionally, you could add arrows, or setup the clicks for bottom right and bottom left corners. 2. I can click the edge of the page to go ahead one. I can't go to the previous page, unless I drag the page across. 3. Page turn animations got stuck once in a while, and the animation would be following my mouse, when it wasn't clicked. Then if I did click, I'd have two page turn animations moving at once. 4. It looks like a traditional book, forced into my widescreen monitor. If it's zoomed in, the bottom half of the book is cut off, so I need to scroll up and down constantly. If it's zoomed out, the book is a little box in the center of my screen. 5. I have no idea how many pages are in a book, or the percentage I'm done reading. Is this 10 pages, or 500 pages? That's kind of an important question. 6. The cover images on the homepage are pretty catchy, and I clicked on a few books because the art style or title caught my eye. A suggestion would be something like, http://i.imgur.com/YxdZgW3.jpg http://i.imgur.com/YxdZgW3.jpg, where you have categories in a left column, search on top, and book covers on the right. 7. Center the page you're reading. For example, take a look at http://www.20thingsilearned.com/en-US http://www.20thingsilearned.com/en-US. It suffers from the same page turning issues, but the book is centered when reading, and the left side simply fades off the screen. It also gives you a few thumbnails at the bottom and a table of contents, which is a nice extra. 8. Why not display multiple pages at once? Why leave the back of every page blank? Currently when I open your first featured book, I see http://i.imgur.com/BeaNf3B.jpg http://i.imgur.com/BeaNf3B.jpg. Why don't I see something like, http://i.imgur.com/0YolAY3.jpg http://i.imgur.com/0YolAY3.jpg, where I get two pages at once to take better advantage of my widescreen? Or, you could even go three pages wide, http://i.imgur.com/lUs2aYl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/lUs2aYl.jpg. I also added a simple arrow to click on the right. In short, although I like the concept of creating and reading books online, the user experience is a little poor. I would never use the site to read a book in its current state. Nonetheless, I think there is some potential, but you really need to focus on the user experience for reading books.

IpxqwidxG 13y ago

It does help a lot. Thanks for taking the time to look at Bubblin. - Marvin

joshmlewis 13y ago
No problem. You can at least fill your immediate time with fixing some of these as they are mostly design issues and then when you find a new dev you can have a list ready to go.
- IpxqwidxG 13y ago
  I am on it, already. You needn't signup to read books on bubblin. So when you signed up you're mostly looking at it like a "writer/creator" of books. That should explain the internal interface a bit. But I do agree that user on-boarding or it has to be dead simple.
Pacabel 13y ago
What is that you mean by "Youtube of Flipbooks"?
- IpxqwidxG 13y ago
  Unlike Amazon or other distribution platforms we sort of broadcast books online. So the reader doesn't have to download or manage it before he/she could start reading. It also means community aspect, more eyeballs to early writers/freelancers who want wider readership and simpler publishing that works just like blogs. etc. etc. That's about it.

User8712 13y ago

Agree with a number of these points. First off, isn't the main goal creating flip books and reading flip books? I poked around with reading a few books, and the experience was flawed. 1. You're using the old gimmicky page turn animations. I've never been a fan of these, and I don't think I'm alone. It would be much better to simply flip to the next page if I click the right side, or flip to the previous page if I click the left side. Optionally, you could add arrows, or setup the clicks for bottom right and bottom left corners. 2. I can click the edge of the page to go ahead one. I can't go to the previous page, unless I drag the page across. 3. Page turn animations got stuck once in a while, and the animation would be following my mouse, when it wasn't clicked. Then if I did click, I'd have two page turn animations moving at once. 4. It looks like a traditional book, forced into my widescreen monitor. If it's zoomed in, the bottom half of the book is cut off, so I need to scroll up and down constantly. If it's zoomed out, the book is a little box in the center of my screen. 5. I have no idea how many pages are in a book, or the percentage I'm done reading. Is this 10 pages, or 500 pages? That's kind of an important question. 6. The cover images on the homepage are pretty catchy, and I clicked on a few books because the art style or title caught my eye. A suggestion would be something like, http://i.imgur.com/YxdZgW3.jpg http://i.imgur.com/YxdZgW3.jpg, where you have categories in a left column, search on top, and book covers on the right. 7. Center the page you're reading. For example, take a look at http://www.20thingsilearned.com/en-US http://www.20thingsilearned.com/en-US. It suffers from the same page turning issues, but the book is centered when reading, and the left side simply fades off the screen. It also gives you a few thumbnails at the bottom and a table of contents, which is a nice extra. 8. Why not display multiple pages at once? Why leave the back of every page blank? Currently when I open your first featured book, I see http://i.imgur.com/BeaNf3B.jpg http://i.imgur.com/BeaNf3B.jpg. Why don't I see something like, http://i.imgur.com/0YolAY3.jpg http://i.imgur.com/0YolAY3.jpg, where I get two pages at once to take better advantage of my widescreen? Or, you could even go three pages wide, http://i.imgur.com/lUs2aYl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/lUs2aYl.jpg. I also added a simple arrow to click on the right. In short, although I like the concept of creating and reading books online, the user experience is a little poor. I would never use the site to read a book in its current state. Nonetheless, I think there is some potential, but you really need to focus on the user experience for reading books.