Show HN: I finally relased my first product

#1

Post by vColin » Thu, Aug 11, 2011, 9:41 AM UTC

So, after many years of kicking about little apps and not putting the full effort in, I decided to bite the bullet and get on with it.

Very much inspired by patio11 and Bingo Card Creator, I present Griddol (http://www.griddol.com) a tool to create and play word searches. Intended mainly for teachers, but encouraging those who like a word search too.

This been churning around in my head for over a year in various forms, and I used the concept to help learn CoffeeScript, CouchDB and node.js, so even if the product itself is a failure, the learning process has been valuable.

I'll be the first to admit that it's somewhat(!) unpolished and needs a lot of work and content, but it's out there now.

I appreciate any comments you might have.

Re: Show HN: I finally relased my first product

#2

Post by iambot » Thu, Aug 11, 2011, 10:00 AM UTC

clickable: http://www.griddol.com

Re: Show HN: I finally relased my first product

#3

Post by patio11 » Thu, Aug 11, 2011, 10:24 AM UTC

Congratulations. I strongly suggest a design which visually suggests what to click on. At the moment everything looks buttonesque and virtually nothing leads to you being happy if I click it.

Re: Show HN: I finally relased my first product

#4

Post by vColin » Thu, Aug 11, 2011, 10:34 AM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #3

Congratulations. I strongly suggest a design which visually suggests what to click on. At the moment everything looks buttonesque and virtually nothing leads to you being happy if I click it.

Noted. At the moment I am just happy if anyone even visits the page though. But I realise that there is no clear direction to the new visitor. Another thing to add to the never-ending list.

Re: Show HN: I finally relased my first product

#5

Post by gspyrou » Thu, Aug 11, 2011, 11:20 AM UTC

First of all congratulations ! Some feedback : on IE9 at the registration page the textboxes appear emtry (no username,password,confirm passwork text) , a visitor would probably hit the back button !

Re: Show HN: I finally relased my first product

#6

Post by vColin » Thu, Aug 11, 2011, 11:27 AM UTC

gspyrou wrote: post #5

First of all congratulations ! Some feedback : on IE9 at the registration page the textboxes appear emtry (no username,password,confirm passwork text) , a visitor would probably hit the back button !

Thanks for pointing that out - my IE testing has been sporadic at best! I'll definitely take a look at that.

Re: Show HN: I finally relased my first product

#7

Post by gspyrou » Thu, Aug 11, 2011, 11:43 AM UTC

vColin wrote: post #6

gspyrou wrote: post #5

First of all congratulations ! Some feedback : on IE9 at the registration page the textboxes appear emtry (no username,password,confirm passwork text) , a visitor would probably hit the back button !

Thanks for pointing that out - my IE testing has been sporadic at best! I'll definitely take a look at that.

Also , as patio11 mentioned a better visual design would be helpful for your site. You may find great templates for a low price at http://themeforest.net/

Re: Show HN: I finally relased my first product

#8

Post by petervandijck » Thu, Aug 11, 2011, 11:58 AM UTC

vColin wrote: post #4

patio11 wrote: post #3

Congratulations. I strongly suggest a design which visually suggests what to click on. At the moment everything looks buttonesque and virtually nothing leads to you being happy if I click it.

Noted. At the moment I am just happy if anyone even visits the page though. But I realise that there is no clear direction to the new visitor. Another thing to add to the never-ending list.

You need to prioritize that never-ending list. Visitors having a bad experience should be somewhere at the top of things to fix. Adding feature X and Y should probably be somewhere at the bottom.

Re: Show HN: I finally relased my first product

#9

Post by gobr » Thu, Aug 11, 2011, 1:04 PM UTC

It's cool, but needs a lot of design, it's very raw yet.

One other thing, the program should not allow me to click anywhere, like, if I start to make a word in horizontal and them click 4 columns on the vertical he shoul not compute that, or something like this... (I don't know if you can understand this without some screenshot)

polish, polish and polish more. :D

Re: Show HN: I finally relased my first product

#10

Post by vColin » Thu, Aug 11, 2011, 1:16 PM UTC

gobr wrote: post #9

It's cool, but needs a lot of design, it's very raw yet. One other thing, the program should not allow me to click anywhere, like, if I start to make a word in horizontal and them click 4 columns on the vertical he shoul not compute that, or something like this... (I don't know if you can understand this without some screenshot) polish, polish and polish more. :D

I think I know exactly what you mean - restrict the highlighted letters to be in a single direction.

Something I was considering was changing the selection mechanics so that you click at the first letter and then drag to the final letter before releasing. I think that would be more intuitive.

Yes, I agree it's raw, almost embarrassingly so. Still, release early and iterate!