A great way to figure out the weak spots in your product is to demo it live in front of an audience (not just a couple people at an office). Talk through it and read the UI out loud as you click around and do stuff. You’ll notice all sorts of little things that can be improved.
Bryan
on 29 Oct 09What I’ve noticed strange in Haystack:
—Why do you have a footer yet you’re never able to get to it since you constantly make the page longer
— There are so many listings that after I page down about once or twice, I simply just give up and leave the site. Visually, my eyes just begin to glaze over all the content. This will be difficult to solve though.
—There is a lot of visual noise on the site. You should have gone with one of the earlier mockups like: https://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/331-haystack-home-v02-small.png
Noah Clark
on 29 Oct 09Even if you don’t have 20, 30, 50 people giving the speech to someone not in your industy/field/specialty is a great way to get feedback.
I recently gave a speech on IT in the corporate world to a bunch of CS students, who may or may not have been aware of some of the tools used to manage and/or backup a corporate network. I gave that speech to my girlfriend who has very little understanding of how computers, networks, ad such works. Her non-specialized feedback made it so I wasn’t making assumptions about my audience.
RA
on 29 Oct 09While I agree with this statement in general, it is important to be careful that you don’t start to go overboard and start making changes to the product just so it will demo better…especially if those changes only add demo value and no real value to the end users. I’ve seen this happen more than I’d like to admit and we’ve even come up with a name for it: “Demo-driven development”. Not good.
Noah Clark
on 29 Oct 09I can see your point, I almost mentioned something about it actually.
There were some things that as a non-technical person she didn’t understand that I didn’t put in there because the assumption that they did have some technical background was true.
Ben Marini
on 29 Oct 09So true. Similar to showing someone some code you’ve been working on and having them point out all the comments that don’t make sense anymore because your eyes move right past them. The only way to see something with fresh eyes is with fresh eyes.
Chad Garrett
on 29 Oct 09This reminds me of a certain product demo of Windows 98, where Bill Gates plugs a USB scanner into a computer, and gets a blue screen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZQGRATlwA
Zach
on 30 Oct 09One thing I’ve noticed is that if I’ve left “placeholder” content in, and then I find myself having a hard time explaining it, then either somethings too complicated, or the placeholder is unnecessary.
Stephen
on 30 Oct 09@Bran… Where is this excess of visual noise on Haystack? I can’t see any. It just looks simple and elegant to me?
Stephen
on 30 Oct 09Sorry, I meant @Bryan.
@Stephen
on 30 Oct 09Is your last name Krug?... just wondering?
Stephen Jarman
on 30 Oct 09@@Stephen… No.
Bard
on 30 Oct 09Re Demo-driven development: if you guys believe that the prime directive is selling, selling, selling, then I don’t see what could possibly be wrong with the demo-driven development? It is a well known fact in the world of software purchasing that people who are making the purchasing decisions only care about the demos, as they will never be expected to use the products they’ve purchased. Ergo, the most important thing is to hone in on creating the most polished demo, after which you can ship any old clunker.
Raj
on 30 Oct 09I agree with Bard. Demos are necessary
Matti
on 30 Oct 09Web Designers are getting great leads with Haystack
Raju
on 30 Oct 09I’ve gotten 6 email leads in a week. Not bad at all! thanks to Haystack
Rajmati111
on 30 Oct 09http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZQGRATlwA
nice video
Blue Sail Creative
on 30 Oct 09This goes right along with your read your copy outloud post. The more hands you get on a project or eyes you get on the demo the easier it is to diagnose any weaknesses you have.
It’s important to distinguish the difference between weaknesses and opinions thought. Sometimes giving peopel the option to give their opinion is counter productive. You will know when there is a weakness in a presentation thought.
Great Post!
David S
on 04 Nov 09Great advice!
Doing this does 2 things I think:
1—helps you to see your work as if you are one of the others (fresh eyes)
2—helps point out details to those watching the demo, allowing them to focus on each little thing and then ask questions or make comments when they don’t understand something about your work
This discussion is closed.