Hey all :) So there have been some changes to Chain. I've tried to emphasize more of the social aspect of the site, but we're still wondering if there's anything that could be emphasized a little better. I've tried to keep the process of actually managing what you're accomplishing as simple as possible.
What would you like to see? What would make the site useful or entertaining for you? I'm at your command.
I'm gonna keep editing this post with suggestions.
- Too many colors. I count like nine or ten. Taking that down to three or four would be awesome and make the site feel less complex. http://kuler.adobe.com/ to get some pretty ones.
- A tag cloud style visualization for "popular chains" would be cool and would illustrate the data in a way that's not so tabular and numerical.
- New user join times would be cooler as relative to now english statements (like "5 minutes ago" instead of 10:01). Same for new chains. And new posts.
- I think you should put some thought into what people are going to be thinking when they see the front page. Odds are, a brand new user is going to be totally confused, because there's so much content named with some pretty site-particular jargon. Why not explain the concept there, rather than hiding it two links deep (About->link to a blog post)?
- I have to admit, I don't understand what's going on when I click the name of an activity. Like, the chain pictures, what are they linking to? And what are the numbers underneath? Maybe I'm an idiot, but I'm seriously confused.
- I see up arrows around the site. I eventually figured out that I could try to click them, but I have no clue why I'd want to (what do they do??) and when I try to click, it asks me to login (for what??). I'm so confused...
- The register process was nice. Threw me right into using the site. I like. Maybe it would be nice, though, to give me the option to choose the interval of time when I'm putting in what I'm doing (rather than forcing daily, then letting me fix it).
- So now I know what a chain gang is! But a faq would be nice.
- Clicking the +0 next to my post took me to image moderation. That was wholly unexpected.
- On the "What everyone's doing page," the link for me to do that activity too looks like a plus-or-minus symbol with the underline. I would vote for a real icon here instead of text, to avoid confusion. And maybe make it more clear what happens if I click it. Text that says "I'm doing this too!" (but in fewer words) might speak better to its effect.
- Assuming I'm a continual user of the site, my number one priority when I visit is probably the ability to easily confirm that I've done the stuff I wanted to do. So, I think if I'm logged in, my front page that I see when I arrive should give me a way to check off everything I've done. As it stands, I have to click my name to get something like this, which is pretty unintuitive, I think.
I'll be back later to add more. I apologize retroactively if any of these suggestions come across offensively. Just my raw thoughts as I use the site.
2) Tag Cloud: Ehh.. Tag clouds seemed a little annoying, but it might be better than a straight table view.
3) Relative times instead of absolute times ("5 minutes ago"..): Strongly agree. Implemented.
4) Okay. I'll try to figure out how to make things more obvious for new users.
5) Hmm. Yeah, that is confusing. Whenever you're doing something (for example, "run") and you make a post about it, that post gets added to the "run" chaingang. From there, other people can read it and upvote it. If you happened to upload a picture along with it, that picture is displayed as a thumbnail.
6) That's for upvoting user content. It's probably less obvious on Chain than it is on say, YCombinator or Reddit.
7) Hm.. You can choose the interval time on the next page. I wanted to keep the frontpage as simple as possible, so I didn't include a dropdown time interval there.
8) Yes, a FAQ is probably way more useful than an About page.
9) The +0 represents how many community points you have. I need to represent it differently. This is tied in with, "How do I encourage users to moderate images?" The idea was you'd earn community points for moderating images, then it would be displayed next to your name whenever you posted a comment or a cheer. However, that's a little confusing too..
10) I was thinking consistency was better than making a new icon for that, and the consistent part is that it looks like a link. It looks like something you can click on. Whereas the uparrow does not, but I was hoping people would figure it out. But maybe an icon is required.
11) Yeah, I'm going to add cookie-based authentication so that you can stay logged in. That's a great idea to make the first thing you see be your own chains.
12) No way, not offensive or anything. That was exactly the kind of criticism I was looking for. Thank you so much! Got any more?
What would you like to see? What would make the site useful or entertaining for you? I'm at your command.