That said, I found it a little buggy at the moment. A couple of bugs I noticed were that scrolling too quickly to the right produced an error, and the 'flag' box rendered some of the text outside of the box. A tiny usability improvement for me would be if the buttons behaved more like Photoshop or Omnigraffle, where I can select the tool and then apply it on the canvas, rather than dragging the tool to the canvas. I'd also like to try out all the different tools before paying - the checklist box, for example.
Show HN: Ryeboard – Visual Workspace
21–30 of 79 posts
Re: Show HN: Ryeboard – Visual Workspace
#22I love it! I could see myself using it to document event storming sessions, impact maps, Wardley maps, etc. That said, I found it a little buggy at the moment. A couple of bugs I noticed were that scrolling too quickly to the right produced an error, and the 'flag' box rendered some of the text outside of the box. A tiny usability improvement for me would be if the buttons behaved more like Photoshop or Omnigraffle,…
Re: Show HN: Ryeboard – Visual Workspace
#23Re: Show HN: Ryeboard – Visual Workspace
#24Re: Show HN: Ryeboard – Visual Workspace
#25Re: Show HN: Ryeboard – Visual Workspace
#26I'll be taking into account some of your responses to other members.
A. So, home page:
Anything, Anyone, Everyone. You feed everyone, you nourish no one. You have a rough idea of who your target customers are, but are holding off... until numbers are more statistically significant.
At your stage, that could be a while, and frankly shows a: 1. Lack of direction 2. Lack of properly segmenting whatever groups you have looked at 3. Lack of clearly defining early adopters 4. Lack of positioning 5. Lack of relevant copy addressing pain points, motivations, objections, reservations 6. Lack of initiative 7. A few other things, which is somewhat worrying.
I am of course willing to update my initial thoughts upon more information. I don't ignore the fact it takes time, a lot of time, it's an organic evolving path, and I make the same mistakes many times. But for now, that is what I think. Instead of taking the long way round, why don't you take the shorter way, which is to clearly define:
B. 1. Who this is for 2. Early adopter disposition which makes it more relevant to them than the rest of the market 3. Reach out to them and find out what they think. If you are looking for signals, this is the quickest way. 4. Pain points addressed, benefits, goal, end-goal, etc, etc.
I am not actually saying you haven't done these things, what I am saying is based on information shared, and the website, that I don't see it. To be fair to you, points B. 1 -4 should really be questions. If you want to answer in private to me, by all means. To also be fair to you, due to the versatility of your product and the many use cases, you do have many markets you could target. However when time, money, resources, focus, etc, are severely limited you can't go after them all.
Furthermore, there may well be competitors known and unknown who can service some of the markets better than your solution, who have honed and refined their features to either be more suitable for them, or have segmented features based on various factors to do so. Which again leads me back to, pick a target, see if you can hit it or not, because at the moment, it is a case of we are waiting to see which target to aim for.
C. Ok, back to the home page. When you say Work with Anything, Share with Anyone, I read This Might Be For You, Maybe. That's no way to greet a newcomer. You either very blatantly let them know, This Isn't For You At All, or This Is Seriously For You.
Secondly, early stage startup (pre-seed pre-revenue), describe your product. You have nothing in the memory bank, no previous touch-points, don't create confusion and promote a lack a clarity in visitors. Very simply for now, what are you, what do you, how do you do it, what's in it for me, why should I care. All within tight positioning. You can't create a fire within anyone, but you can surely fan the flame. And your early adopters, their fires are burning.
D. I know this is the current trend with startups especially, inappropriate usage of customer logo's, as in way too soon. Trust, social proof, are important, but not at this stage. Just like in the funnel when it is further down, so it should be the same on the homepage. Instead of talking to your potential customers, instead of building bridges, creating resonance and relatability, usage of customer logo's is basically saying, let my customers speak for me. The onus is on you to speak to your customers, and not to shift that responsibility. I haven't made up my own mind yet at all, so what do I care what others think?
There are other issues further down the page, but I don't like to come across as too harsh, plus I need to get back to work.
Good luck, Ace.
Re: Show HN: Ryeboard – Visual Workspace
#27Re: Show HN: Ryeboard – Visual Workspace
#28I right now use Google sheets for the same usecase, what advantages does this have over a spreadsheet?
They are not quite engaging for creative users however.
I find the « messy infinite desktop » where documents and webpages are not only links but viewable widgets really attractive but rapidly limiting.
For ideation / brainstorming, I still prefer gathering people in a room and writing / sticking stuff on the walls.
Re: Show HN: Ryeboard – Visual Workspace
#29No screenshots on the main page. The embedded video isn't clickable on mobile (iOS Safari). Fluffy marketing speak throughout the page. What is this exactly?
Granted, I only skimmed the page, and the website made the experience painful, as it is full of fade—in animations, so I felt like I was scrolling an empty wwbsite (mobile Firefox). The experience was annoying, so I left.
I would likely have stopped scrolling had I encountered a screenshot or a relevant section title. I feel websites like this are super common nowadays, and generic enough to be applied to many different products.
Re: Show HN: Ryeboard – Visual Workspace
#30Is there a target set of customers for this product? It seems well developed (minus the bugs folks are reporting), but I'm not entirely sure why I would use this instead of a normal document. The ability to move things around in this format seems somewhat useful, but not particularly useful for any workflow I engage in. When I create docs for work, I want to tell a story that is quite linear. When I want to tell conc…
Call/email/meet with a wide sample of users and understand the exact value you're delivering for them. Then find people who aren't using it but are in the same market as them and see if they find it valuable. If you have a hit product, you'll find a market segment where you're delivering 10x value over their previous solution. Once you find that, focus and go all in.
One-size-fits-all is rarely a viable strategy for SaaS tools.