[Retric]

No offence, but that seems like an ultra niche product which may be part of the problem. Clearly some people like the idea but home automation + wood seems iffy to me. Worse only 4 buttons seems like a poor fit for home automation. One button suggest getting as many as you need, 4 is kind of an odd compromise.

[conesus]

Ah-ha, we hit my area of expertise which is talking about how four buttons is all you need. It's a 16 button remote. Hold a button down to switch to that button's app, and each app has its own four buttons.

Buttons can also perform multiple actions at once. So you step into your home and press a button and everything welcomes you home: the lights fade up (hue, lifx), the music fades in (sonos, iTunes, spotify), the heater/fan kicks on (wemo), temp gets set (nest), etc. So you have lots of control but only have to change the battery once a year, so you can leave the remote out on the coffee table and feel like its part of your home.

But we're talking more than an order of magnitude difference raised here between campaigns, which is what I'm trying to get to the bottom of.

[Retric]

You could do unlimited selections with 1 button using Morse code, but that's terrible UI. Anyway, it's not that I think 4 buttons can't work it simply seems like a poor compromise like setting a clock on your VCR.

Can X work? Sure, but this is not the conversation you want to have with someone buying your product.

[conesus]

That morse code product is called Knocki and it raised $1.1M on Kickstarter a few months ago.

I don't think it's only the UX of four buttons. You can use them as only four buttons as well without having to remember that each button has its own app. I'm going to try again with a less expensive product (minus the wood most likely) and a better marketing strategy of signing up interest for months beforehand. But I still worry that the conversion rate will still remain low, even with the additional traffic.

[Retric]

Whoa, that Morse code idea was meant as a joke. Edit: ahh ok that's not how Knocki works.

Anyway, conversion is all about what percentage of people seeing an advertisement want your product. Having a great pitch only goes so far.

[ralfd]

> Whoa, that Morse code idea was meant as a joke. Edit: ahh ok that's not how Knocki works.

It sort of does. Look at this advertisement:

https://knocki.com/images/3dhouse.jpg

I don't know if the idea of using patterns as control is genius or stupid.

That said: Compared to this Knocki thing a wooden house remote with four buttons looks a bit boring. My guess is that people who have home automation (and are surfing kickstarter) are more on the tinkerer-side and they want something complicated. (Ultimately I think speech recognition will win)

[dsacco]

That...that looks like a usability nightmare...

[daveguy]

You never really explain how you can set that up easily and use it efficiently.

It looks like it would be tedious to set up and annoying to use if you have to keep different mappings in your head without any visual feedback. Was the feedback auditory?

So the primary issue is not showing how this thing is pleasant to use.

The second issue is you claim to be able to use it without any smart devices. Anyone with any home automation knows that's a bunch of bull. You control all kinds of things with like special outlets, hue, etc. Why would I buy something like this if I don't have any multi hundred dollar home automation equipment? That is a severe audience limiter.

Saying you don't need any special devices while explaining how it controls special devices just comes off as insincere.

[conesus]

That's fascinating. I had heard feedback around the setup before, but I didn't realize it would be beneficial to show how quick it is to pair smart devices to the remote. I easily could have done that in an animated GIF.

Secondly, the remote actually controls much more software than it does hardware. I use it while watching videos, playing music, reading my news reader, as my alarm clock, and to handle my iMac (turn off screen when I go to bed). But I could have done a much more narrative way of explaining that instead of heaping it in a list. I just thought the software side wasn't as interesting as the hardware side. When the devices ship and people learn how it works, that may work out well after all.

Good fodder for the next campaign!

[feral]

>You never really explain how you can set that up easily and use it efficiently.

Conesus, apologies if I'm wrong, but I suspect you might not have understood the core issue Daveguy is raising here. I don't think its about pairing devices.

When I watched the video, there was this huge awkward tension I felt: "How can all this functionality work with just 4 buttons?" which made me think "This product is probably a waste of time, I should close the video."

This is just one guy's gut reaction - although I see a couple of posters here saying something similar - but I really suspect this is a big part of why your campaign didn't work.

The value proposition is unclear:

You are selling a beautiful remote to control my home. But while it is clearly beautiful, it is not clear how it works as a remote. It looks complicated and like it probably won't work, because its not clear and never explained in the video how four buttons will suffice.

I did eventually scroll down far enough to read "Are four buttons really enough?" where I finally realized it was designed to be programmable but even this wasn't convincing (do I have to re-program it between doing all those things showed in the first video? reprogram it each day?), and I'd have bounced long before then if I hadn't come across this in a HN comment. It wasn't until I read that section multiple times I realized the bit about 4 different app profiles, where you hold the corresponding button to activate, and I was long gone by then. The fact that there seems to be a dedicated go-to-bed and wake-up button only confuses things more.

Strongly would advise you to go deeper on this, e.g. show people the video and afterwards ask them to describe how it actually works etc, ask them whether they think it has enough buttons, probe for confusion on that point that would have made them bounce etc.

You even seem to acknowledge in your comment that this is a stumbling block for folks:

>Ah-ha, we hit my area of expertise which is talking about how four buttons is all you need.

(I.e. you know this is something that is unusual/surprising and hence requires explanation)

But the video doesn't explain this at all, and I think that might be causing you to lose a lot of folks early on.

[conesus]

I'm glad I put myself out there for feedback because it was your comment that caused me to see my campaign in a new perspective.

I actually shot two videos. The founder interview at the end cost $4k because it was originally a longer video where I explained how the remote worked. But it didn't have any of the action shots, so I re-shot it, eschewing an explanation in favor of demonstrating its use, relying on people to be intrigued and then read on to see how it actually worked. It seems that didn't work, as I repeated this technique later on in the campaign itself.

Here is the original video (1:20) if you're interested to see what I rejected in favor of committing $18k to another video: https://dl.dropbox.com/s/nsvfn7n3l8phbi3/TurnTouch_CC.mp4?dl...

[daveguy]

Feral nailed it. It is not a pairing issue. It's a question of whether it will be a pain even after it's all set up.

This 1:20 video is definitely better. For the sole reason that you include the fact that four buttons are mapped to four buttons. One press for the app and one for the function. Personally I think you should simplify the operation or only explain how it works for 4 apps. Let people who are intrigued find out you can program it to do a special sequence of functions across apps with a single special touch.

Those 1M+ campaigns all had a very simple functions and operation and with knocki you easily know what the 2-3 different knock types do because your knocki is in a very specific context (kitchen table, bedside, bathroom, etc).

[yabatopia]

> relying on people to be intrigued and then read on

People have an extremely short attention span these days . You have to grab their attention right away and strongly guide them through the buying process. Intriguing doesn't work. It's a sales pitch, not an artistic short film.

You can't expect that people figure it out for themselves why they should buy the product, how it works, why it's something that they need. You have to communicate that very clearly and right away.

And honestly, whoever produced the video should have told you that.

[comboy]

The video you posted below[1] is so much better. Your target is pretty technical, they buy some home automation stuff, so it seems fair to explain exactly the flow (button talks to my phone, my phone talks with all the stuff you can control from your phone), how far can it be from the phone for it to work, and so on.

Also, I know it's great to hear it all from the founder perspective, but I think you are not doing great job as an actor and narrator. It's probably more of a video guys failure not to give you more hints. At the end of the kickstarter video it's visible how you smile and look with kind of a proud at the button just as the video cuts off. But during the video there's not much smile, more something like "I came up with this really smart thing". Clearly you put a lot of thought into this product, but when looking at example of using it, I probably would have more positive emotions looking at some random relaxed dude with smile on his face that may look like he's completely clueless about the whole thing. You know, typical ad stuff, it's cheesy but it works.

And nice one with the fast response and gathering so much feedback here. I wrote mine because it seems that you make use of this constructive criticism. So I'm pretty sure your next campaign will be a blast.

1. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/nsvfn7n3l8phbi3/TurnTouc...