| First criticism, concerns, then praise in no particular order. Apologies for duplicates feedback. And I may have gotten carried away... Criticism: * We'll start with the offcolor comment: the name EventGel sounds like something KY or Trojan Condoms would sell. This may or may not be a plus depending on your audience and market. * I am not a fan of the timeline widget (third party?). It's difficult to use and not entirely intuitive. Click-and-drag is slow to respond and when I click on a location in the zoomed out timeline at the bottom it doesn't jump to that location in the main timeline. Why considerations made you choose a timeline widget instead of a calendar layout? * The design seems clunky and boxy. Maybe if you removed the horizontal bars at the top. In firebug I made all of the top 3 bars the same color as the 3rd bar and it already seemed more "together". * Blue text on black background is hard to read.
* It seems like the yellow help box should be at the top of the landing page, not the bottom. The description you currently have doesn't really pop out visually or promotionally. * Consider a multi-column layout or a sidebar for things like the twitter feed. You have a lot of different information to present and presenting it in a list makes it hard to find the information I'm looking for. * Your textareas do not resize when I resize the browser. * I agree with the comments on the map being too small. * On the front page, I click on an event and it doesn't tell me where it is. And the bubble that pops up says: "This is the schedule bar for your event." The purpose of the date range is obvious. This text is probably unnecessary or could at least be condensed. * I agree with the comments about dates. No military time or seconds. Also, please add timezone abbreviations. * Add the time of day to the activities list. Concerns: * Why should I be interested in the site, what is it this is providing that I can't get via a number of other tools like facebook or craigslist? * How is this going to scale by location? I'm in Boston, why should I care about events anywhere else, unless they are virtual? Will you add an event filter? * Do you have a plan to avoid spam? Already I see an activity for "Have sex" * Like spam, how are you going to handle signal to noise ratio on the front page? * You may want to consider having a proper logo. * Can you add a description field for the events? What is the event about? What do I need to bring? Etc. * You seem to have duplicated functionality between the discussion and twitter feed. What is the distinct purpose of each? * Do you have any plans on helping people promote their events? Praise: * I like the twitter feed on the events. Seems like a good marketing tool. * Big points for the easy signup. * This is cool. I like the openness of the concept. I agree that this has a lot of potential. Any thoughts on monetization? I could see this being very useful for event planners and caterers and the like to get new business. * You've covered the event details of when, where, who (but not what). * The activity feature is helpful for planning events with a lot going on. |
We've started the process of fully redesigning the site based on this feedback and the other great feedback from this thread. Hopefully we'll have something up in the next few days to reflect some of the great design feedback we've gotten here.
I think down the road we will probably remove some of the event focus from the front-page; our focus isn't as much event discovery as it is what happens when the event actually starts.
Thank you for taking the time to give us such in-depth feedback, it really gives us a lot to consider.