Maybe this is a common marketing technique, but I had (and still have) no idea what the site does. "reinventing teamwork" sounds interesting, yet it still doesn't tell me much. Don't get me wrong; I do appreciate the minimalism. However, you're asked to enter quite a bit of information before you know why.
One alternative is to start the user out with sample projects and tasks (like Trello does).
One other thing: the "invalid password" message when creating an account is not very helpful.
1) +1 for needing a button to continue after typing my email
2) should add a distinct focus state for the buttons, so when I Tab to them I can tell it is selected.
3) the password I entered ('test') wasn't accepted, which is fine, but the error message didn't say why. (It said "invalid password", could have said "password must be 8 chars")
4) You asked in the signup flow who I worked with, and then asked again when I first see the dashboard (on the "Create A Team" tab)
5) "Who are you working with?" requires a 3 char name. If I put in a 2 char name, e.g. 'IK', the box flashes with no explanation.
6) I'd probably remove the adding tasks step of the wizard, and instead put a big label / arrow pointing to the New Task button
Also, the layout feels unbalanced to me. I would greatly prefer the orange bar to extend across the screen, instead of only showing on the left side.
I'm really not sure what to think here. The cynic in me thinks that HN is being trolled. It's not as if this is a link to a blog post about your sing up process -- it's a link to a page with eleven words, two of which are dedicated to explaining what this actually is. If I were someone who wasn't really interested in any feedback, but rather wanted to game HN in to signing up for my product, this is one way I could accomplish my goal.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt in saying that I do not intend this to be an accusation. I had a look at your HN profile and it definitely looks like you've been participating in a positive way.
My only feedback would be this: I can't be the only one who is completely unwilling to provide even my email address on a web page with such little detail. So at step one, the process is broken. Put something up. Anything. Some small amount of detail with a screenshot, diagram, or graphic relevant to the product. Otherwise many users won't make it past the first step.
I felt the same way. There was no information as to what the product actually was, so I just left at the first screen. Like you, I assumed it was an attempt to game HN.
Thanks for your honest feedback. We will have to include a proper marketing site very soon, so it's clearer what siasto is; in future I'll have to be clearer in my notes and mention that this is a work and collaboration tool. My intention was not to simply generate signups. Signups for us will not be useful if they don't stick around!
Thanks for the reply. I know it's a small thing, but the ability to reply to a comment like mine with a perfectly level head says a lot about the character of your company.
I want to make clear to anyone who comes behind to read this that I believe you. Anyone with questions should take a moment to look at your profile.
Kudos to you guys and good luck with your product!
- The front page needs to offer me at least a one paragraph overview of what the service is.
- Center-aligned text inputs don't work for me
- the first few steps felt fine, being 'forced' to give details of team members etc started to annoy me: I started thinking "just either tell me what it is now, if it doesn't exist, or let me get on to playing with it". I gave up at that point so don't know if there was a working service at the end :-)
Quick and fluid and mostly self-explanatory. Only two things that threw me off to a small degree:
- Angry Birds avatars. Maybe it's just me, but I'm not a fan.
- The prompts to enter the initial to-dos; reading them made sense, but reading a multi-line description then typing over the same multiple lines (in multiple input boxes) was a little disorienting.
Also, more content on the front page would be great. Turns out - I've been exploring my team's options in terms of services similar to this one, but I had no idea that this is something I might be interested in until I already signed up.
You need a tiny bit more colour on the homepage to me. It's an off-white-pink on my screen (looking at it on a mac in chrome). Or maybe some kind better shading. That's just my one gripe.
Otherwise pretty easy to set up and get started. Do you need other people to sign up too in order to use it, or can they use the site as a guest?
Don't have an issue with the angry birds avatar, actually makes me want to change it, and is probably in keeping with the whole thing being more lively than dreary old "work".
Good luck with it.
- If you don't enter an actual email address it doesn't provide you with feedback about the mistake you made.
- Also, buttons should tell me what's going to occur when I click them.... not what will appear on the next form page.
So instead of "Create password" for your first form which has no password screen, you ought to put "Next" or "Enter Company Info".
- I think you should signify somewhere how many steps are in the process.
- Instead of a generic 'Sign up', you might want to think about identifying what information each page is supposed to get out of the user such as "Company Info".
- Not enough validation errors. I typed in something weird and it didn't present an error. Just a refresh of the page. Maybe a blinking of a field in some cases.
- Where there were validation errors, it doesn't provide feedback on the type of input is acceptable (password)
- Last page of the project creation, 3. Create tasks, there was no clear indication that those were text input fields.
The guided nature of the signup process is oddly effective. I say "oddly" because I just signed up, but I had no idea what your app does. I had some guesses, but no solid idea.
So I would say that the interface is nice, but the experience needs work because I'd have like to get some context before being asked to enter tasks.
I think its needlessly complex. Why do you need three screens to get email address, password and some data ? Also, since each screen simply asks for more fields, users will be frustrated. Of course, all this assuming users are going to signup by looking at two words : teamwork, reinvented.
Smooth and effortless -but I had no idea where it was going. So I bluffed. Finally I was asked for tasks to be performed - entered one and couldn't continue. That was the end for me.
One alternative is to start the user out with sample projects and tasks (like Trello does).
One other thing: the "invalid password" message when creating an account is not very helpful.