So, as my avid readers will know, yesterday we launched a new web application called Chatterbloc to the world. Well, I say the world, I actually mean to the HN user base for some feedback, but it’s as close to the world that we’ve gotten over the past 3 months.

Anyway, the feedback came in, and there were some important learnings that I would like to share with you.

Are your features obvious?

This was the biggie for us. We were so close to the project that we missed this minefield completely. Our biggest feature is the web collaboration feature, allowing users to share links in realtime, to say youtube vids, or live streams, or any web page. The trouble is, people didn’t get it. They didn’t realise what the web view was, where the web pages would appear, and how to share links with each other.

Even after a closed beta, this didn’t really come through much. Probably because we were demoing the features to our friends beforehand. Big learning here, you need to make your killer features more intuitive to the users, help them understand quickly how easy it is to use – without writing a book on it. Get people involved that are completely green to the application, don’t tell them anything, and let the opinions come through.

Are your buttons intuitive?

Chatterbloc Freeze Frame Functionality

This was another one where we were so close to the project that the lack of understanding of what a button does completely passed us by. It seems so obvious when you’re working on the development, although we did have reservations about this, we didn’t realise it was completely meaningless to the user…. project blindness!

We had two problems here, one the user didn’t know it was a button, and two they didn’t know what freeze frame meant. We need to iron this one out, or remove the functionality altogether.

Does your homepage accurately reflect your app?

Chatterbloc Homepage Slideshow

This wasn’t such a huge deal for us, we already had a pretty decent slideshow of functionality showcases, however because the slideshow progression is slow, and our main features were 2 or 3 slides in, they were likely not seen.

Within 5 seconds your users should be seeing what the application is all about. The homepage should instantly show them what it is, and why it’s different to everything else. Without this, they’re clueless – as we found out.

Get it out there…

We sat on Chatterbloc for a few months. The closed beta we had at Christmas 2008 is not much different to the product we have now. I closed out a few bugs since and made some fundamental underlying changes, but nothing incredible… So why didn’t we launch 2 months ago?

Well we were all busy elsewhere was one good reason, but the other I think was fear. Fear of reprisals, fear of it not quite being perfect yet, fear of failure. What I can say though is,  we could have never reached perfection anyway, there are always going to be bad things said, bugs and bits not right. You just need to work through them, as fast as you can, to show your user base that you’re listening and doing. Not sitting on your hands, daydreaming.

Conclusion

I hope you find these findings useful, I’m sure there will be more, and I will definitely be letting you know what we find. It’s actually been very useful to write this piece. It’s helped identify the key themes of where we need to focus, so hopefully turn around times will be small. More soon.

Resources to help you learn…

jQuery UI 1.6	Designing Interfaces	Learning jQuery 1.3