Inside Intercom

On an initial read this sounds like a lot of hot air, but it has some good points.

"*Hint: If you did, you would already have traction." -- what does that even mean? You're trying to sound cool but you just sound ambiguous.

"If you build it, they will come (and pay)." Um, no, not always.

"Growth is the only thing that matters if you are building a social network. Period." -- there was a better HN post today, that was completely solid. Read, compare, take what you will. http://insideintercom.io/if-its-important-dont-hack-it/

"Media and social networking companies should double down on analytics to find, observe, and build for actual user behavior." - Analytics, eh? Sure, you can dive through numbers all you want, but how about user research that's designed to actually tell you this? All you need is 10 people trying to solve the same problem and a well-made survey. Once you have a product, do the same thing and see how well it solves it. This will tell you more than numbers.

"Avoid bad relationships like the plague but when you inevitably find yourself in a difficult partnership, don’t waste precious energy wailing against it." -- Couldn't agree more. If the partnership is too volatile (you'll know), fix it fast or jump ship.

"We started Sonar with a belief that everyone has the potential to be amazing and that technology can unlock that potential." Well, I think I see your problem. How about starting with something more concrete? (I kid, I kid.)

Lots of good takeaways.…

Thank you so much for your advice. I love to hear feedback from people, especially from online and Kickstarter project. I'm sorry that I just found your comment today.

I've talked to various kinds of people in real life. It takes about 5-min for them to understand the benefit since it's a brand new Web 3.0 solution. Most of them are convinced and very impressed. They don't need to lie because we didn't know each other before.

I accept some of your comments, but I cannot agree on your conclusion, which is: it's doomed to fail, don't continue. I guess part of the reason is that you haven't seen the entire video which is about 75 seconds long. Even the first question may make sense if you are the people who are looking for more efficient way to find things online. Some people blamed me: why do you even need to ask? Of course everybody wants.

I agree that the BingoBo.com website UI is not fully implemented using the HTML5/CSS3 since I don't have time and resource to do so. The Kickstarter image is boring, but it really show you a pair of public/private views. It means a lot to you. I saw another online calendar project was next to mine looking exactly the same as mine. I know there are two reasons for sure that it's going to fail on Kickstarter, just like one of the project I've backed: lacking of traffic and not being a widget or gadget. I've got hardware product to show, but that's not going to be exciting in most backers' eyes either because those are the applications…

1. Tweet surveys out to hashtags.

2. Go (literally, physically) to places where your customers hang out. (Starbucks.)

3. Post in Facebook groups you think your customers would Like.

4. Post in LinkedIn groups you think professionals who'd buy your tool would participate in.

5. etc.

There are so many examples out there. Just brew some coffee, Google "how to get customer feedback", and take notes for an hour. You'll be set for at least a week of experiments.

* http://blog.kissmetrics.com/best-ways-to-get-feedback/

* https://www.helpscout.net/blog/customer-feedback/

* http://www.desk.com/blog/customer-feedback/

* http://blog.crazyegg.com/2013/09/17/customer-reviews-that-convert/

* http://insideintercom.io/3-rules-for-customer-feedback/

IMO: Considering its place currently in overall page layout, logo might be better simplified and with less contrast. E.g., take the favicon version—it's nice too, actually.

It especially concerns the application section of Predictobot: current logo will be too distracting.

Compare a few pages with similar layout to yours, note they all use more schematic logos that draw less attention to header: https://www.getsentry.com/, http://www.fiftythree.com/paper, even http://insideintercom.io/

http://www.docker.io/ is interesting: their logo looks good in ‘hero unit’ as it has the detail, and at the same time not bad in header because of more or less simple shape and not much contrast. (For favicon they've simplified it somewhat.)

I once worked on a large application whose features were driven largely by customers and it wasn't pretty. You easily end up with a bloat and 'death by preferences' [1]. So I agree, your product vision should drive your features.

What I didn't realize at the time (and I think many don't) is that when you have customer requests for features that don't align with your vision you should consider making your product extensible. Keep a small core product and provide plug-ins for additional features. Customers pick the plugins they need or write their own.

[1] http://insideintercom.io/product-strategy-means-saying-no/

As a designer, I totally, totally, totally agree with this statement:

> people say designers should code. Whether you agree with that or not, designers certainly need to define the problem and solution not in pixels, but in terms of describing what happens between components in a system (
http://insideintercom.io/the-dribbblisation-of-design/)

My job isn't to make things pretty. Rather, it's to make things understandable. Only when aesthetic appeal makes something easier-to-use & understand does it make sense for me to incorporate it into my design.

In other words: A good designer won't just polish a turd.