A friend at work introduced me to UserVoice the other day because he thought it might be of use to Path of a Hero. This service is one of the coolest things I have seen in a while. It has such a slick interface and was such a breeze to setup.
It allows me to track suggestions and bugs from the users of Path of a Hero. Users are given 10 votes to use on any of the existing suggestions and bugs and they are also allowed to add new ones.
This system has a lot of advantages including stopping duplicate suggestions, stopping suggestions from being lost and allowing the popular suggestions to rise to the top and be noticed.
From my point of view, this system (which will hopefully be embraced by users) really takes the load off of my shoulders. I have built the core Path of a Hero site, it is functional and people can start using it. Sure there are a lot of other cool ideas out there that could improve it however I need to make sure that it does not become bloated or overcomplicated. My main goal at the moment is to get the word out there and get more people using Path of a Hero before Lich King is released. The aim after that is to come back and look at the UserVoice site and start implementing the most popular suggestions. I really want this site to evolve over time however I want it to morph to better suit the users and not just me.
In my career I have seen a lot of situations where development work continues to add to a product and bloat it before the user is even brought in on the process. This sort of product bloat can be readily observed when using a Microsoft product for example. This reminds me of the YouTube clip below, a spoof of what would happened if Microsoft designed the iPod packaging.
I have targeted Path of a Hero towards provided very defined services and as a result it has remained light weight and simple. Moving forward, I need your help to keep it that way.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
My first pieces of publicity
After releasing Path of a Hero almost a week ago, my efforts have of course been turned towards getting the word out there.
First thing I did was post on Hacker News. This provided some good initial feedback as well as around 300 hits :)
This was good for general web site feedback however the site does not really appeal to the majority of Hacker News readers. I moved on to my target market... WoW players.
I started to find some smaller forums and post an explanation of what Path of a Hero does. I am generally finding it difficult to convince people to check it out. That said, as soon as they actually check out the site, I get a lot of 'oh wow' and 'cool's. All of the feedback I have received has been positive or at least constructive.
I have avoided posting on the major forums because I want to try to get the site running with a reasonable amount of people before I open myself up to any sort of possible bombardment.
The conversion rate (amount of people who actually start using Path of a Hero vs how many are exposed to a link to it) seems to be quite low from forum posts and I am assuming this is because of a number of reasons:
At this point in time, I am proud to announce that Path of a Hero has been blogged about for the first time. WoW Blogger (a blog that I frequently read) liked the site and was kind enough to mention it in his most recent blog post. So it has begun....
Don't forget that if you like Path of a Hero, tell your friends about, because the site gets more interesting when your rivals use it as well :)
First thing I did was post on Hacker News. This provided some good initial feedback as well as around 300 hits :)
This was good for general web site feedback however the site does not really appeal to the majority of Hacker News readers. I moved on to my target market... WoW players.
I started to find some smaller forums and post an explanation of what Path of a Hero does. I am generally finding it difficult to convince people to check it out. That said, as soon as they actually check out the site, I get a lot of 'oh wow' and 'cool's. All of the feedback I have received has been positive or at least constructive.
I have avoided posting on the major forums because I want to try to get the site running with a reasonable amount of people before I open myself up to any sort of possible bombardment.
The conversion rate (amount of people who actually start using Path of a Hero vs how many are exposed to a link to it) seems to be quite low from forum posts and I am assuming this is because of a number of reasons:
- People are scared of visiting a site that they don't know much about (will my password be stolen? for example).
- People are too busy with all of the interesting things happening in WoW (Hallow's End and Lich King world event) at the moment to have time to check out new sites.
- Until all their friends are using Path of a Hero, they see no need to sign up.
- They are at the forum to read forum posts, not to visit external sites.
At this point in time, I am proud to announce that Path of a Hero has been blogged about for the first time. WoW Blogger (a blog that I frequently read) liked the site and was kind enough to mention it in his most recent blog post. So it has begun....
Don't forget that if you like Path of a Hero, tell your friends about, because the site gets more interesting when your rivals use it as well :)
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Releasing is hard for a perfectionist
It has been around 1 month since I first started working on Path of a Hero and made my first blog post. As you can imagine a lot of effort (and love) has been squeezed into that timeframe. All of the time spent has of course been on top of my normal 9-5 work requirements and I can assure you that World of Warcraft playtime has been at an all time minimum.
I will be the first to admit that I can be a real perfectionist when it comes to programming and design. This is quite often a great thing however it makes releasing something a difficult challenge. 37signals and other groups of people will tell you that in web 2.0 it is important to release early because it is relatively easy to constantly improve things dynamically. I have tried to force this into my head and forgo some of my more OCD tendencies.
I have come to the realization that being a perfectionist does not get you all the way to having a successful product. Sure it will give you something that has polish and few bugs but the problem is, it is not guaranteed to satisfy the needs of users. The only way to do this is to release an approximation of what you think users need and then iterate based on user feedback and demand.
At the end of the day the job of developers in general is to provide solutions to users who have a problem (which may not be well defined). It is analogous to mathematics and physics where it is sometimes better to use the power of rapid iteration to move from a rough approximation of a difficult problem to a likely solution rather than trying to solve it completely.
Anyways the moral of the story is that I am forcing myself to release Path of a Hero. I still have a lot of ideas of ways that it could be better but I am hoping that you do too. So enjoy the fruits of my labor and feel free to contact me.
Also be mindful that the rivalry part of Path of a Hero will only start to become interesting once there is a bit of a community. Therefore if you like the site and have some wow friends, get them to try it out.
I will be the first to admit that I can be a real perfectionist when it comes to programming and design. This is quite often a great thing however it makes releasing something a difficult challenge. 37signals and other groups of people will tell you that in web 2.0 it is important to release early because it is relatively easy to constantly improve things dynamically. I have tried to force this into my head and forgo some of my more OCD tendencies.
I have come to the realization that being a perfectionist does not get you all the way to having a successful product. Sure it will give you something that has polish and few bugs but the problem is, it is not guaranteed to satisfy the needs of users. The only way to do this is to release an approximation of what you think users need and then iterate based on user feedback and demand.
At the end of the day the job of developers in general is to provide solutions to users who have a problem (which may not be well defined). It is analogous to mathematics and physics where it is sometimes better to use the power of rapid iteration to move from a rough approximation of a difficult problem to a likely solution rather than trying to solve it completely.
Anyways the moral of the story is that I am forcing myself to release Path of a Hero. I still have a lot of ideas of ways that it could be better but I am hoping that you do too. So enjoy the fruits of my labor and feel free to contact me.
Also be mindful that the rivalry part of Path of a Hero will only start to become interesting once there is a bit of a community. Therefore if you like the site and have some wow friends, get them to try it out.
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