This was incredibly useful experience and we are looking forward to doing more like this after we catch up from all the suggestions and ideas we came up from this video. You can follow along and see what a new user experience is like during this 90 minute live video. Also you may have a ton of questions answered as well.
Try watching in double speed.
0:00 Introduction 0:00
3:07 How to say PeakD
3:35 Why are there are 4 options for login?
[SOLUTION: NEW TEXT]
We should do a better job of explaining why there are 3 options and that one of the options is divided into two.
- "3 methods to login to PeakD.com. Login software like these help keep your access safe, decentralized and make it so no one has access but you. Read more."
- "Keychain: This is a browser extension you can install that is the safest and easiest long term to use. Longer setup and not for mobile."
- "PeakLock and Hivesigner do not require software install and can be used on mobile but will require you to have more frequent access to your active key."
3:57 We don't actually have the name Keychain if user doesn't have it installed
[SOLUTION: NEW TEXT]
Basically we just need to give both sections a title to better explain more about the expectations for login:
Titles for both sections:
- "Keychain Browser Extension"
- "Web based Logins"
5:00 Create Hive Account popup
5:28 What is Blockchain?
We talk for a few minutes about this section and I realize a total re-write will answer this question and many others she has and probably many other new users may have.
[SOLUTION: NEW TEXT]
Create a new Hive account for PeakD.com
PeakD uses Hive Blockchain accounts. Let us help you get a free Hive account quickly and easily. (Basically Hive Blockchain is a safe database where all your data is stored which no company owns.)
With a code delivered by Text/SMS our friends at Hiveonboard will create your account for free.
They will give you Keys (more secure passwords) YOU MUST save your keys and keep them safe.Not just PeakD.com... this account (and keys) can be used on dozens of decentralized applications/websites (dApps).
11:15 End of account creation experience
11:33 Why can't you just email me my passwords?
Technically if we sent an email then we would have a record of your keys.
I understand the need for some sort of email function where we could send users an email that would at least link to a place they could get their keys but would make sure we nor any other 3rd party but that person could get the keys
[SOLUTION: Future feature]
Some day it would be nice to have a system where the user could access their keys. Maybe a website they could go to and they would be the only ones able to access their keys there. Even if it's only a temporary solution and not meant to be a long term storage of their keys. Something for new users. Would be specially nice for users to create accounts for their friends but only their friend would have access to those keys because it would get sent by email to that friend but the email wouldn't have the keys but would give the user a unique way to login to get access.
13:00 More discussion about the login page and the wording being lacking. Already covered above.
14:00 Text on PeakLock... is it helpful?
The text is way too much and "i assume you are making this product safe for us"
Some of the text we have there is really advanced stuff not needed by a normal user nor is it teaching them things that we want them to know.
[SOLUTION: TEXT CHANGES]
- PeakLock safely saves your LOGIN info in the browser you are using. Set it up and remember a PIN CODE instead of your long hive posting key. A pin code for each account used on your device.
- "Advanced Details about PeakLock"
- Above should be a clickable title that expands to show all the information we presently have... we don't have to change the text of what we have but we do not need to show it by default... only for those who want to know more.
16:58 Why do I have to type the pin again?
The user was confused why she typed her pin and then immediately had to type it again.
[SOLUTION: Text or change feature]
- We need to change the first screen to say "Create a PeakLock Pin" instead of "login to PeakD" because they think they're logging in... but it is the second screen where they are actually doing the login.
- Would be really nice if the second screen was aware that they just created a login and had text that notified them "PeakLock PIN successfully saved. Now use the PIN to login"
18:15 Her first actions as a new user
19:05 How do I add something?
The test: "Looks like there is nothing here yet" is not helpful to a new user specially when they are on a page they can impact like their own blog. Also user as we find out later 20:25 had trouble finding the create a post button for the first time.
[SOLTION: Text with link / new button-link]
- We should be aware that they are a new user and they are on their own page and so we should add a big button that says [Create a New Blog Post] ... on ALL POSTS [Create a New Post] It could say
"Nothing here yet... Create a New Post" and make it look like a button that will do an action. - The question then becomes if you are logged in and viewing your own blog why not have a create post button on your blog at all times... a duplicate way to get to an important function
21:15 A bit confused about drafts/templates.
A new user does not know about drafts... makes sense as most social media they are used to don't have templates or drafts.
[SOLUTION]
- We should not show user the View Draft/Template option unless they actually have some. So we should see if they have any before displaying that.
- Or we could have generic drafts and templates available for them when they go to that page.
24:50 User adding topics used uppercase
topics don't like uppercase letters and there would be errors if they used them we tell them not to but why not just convert their uppercase to lowercase
[SOLUTION: Feature]
- Would be nice if we just added software that let them write their topic and then when we added it as a topic we converted the uppercase to lowercase for them so it wouldn't matter if they did uppercase or lowercase and then we could get rid of the warning.
- As a side feature it would be nice if we gave them an error if they used a number or we didn't let them use numbers.
25:30 Exploring Snippets
As she went to the snippets menu i realized we could do a better of explaining this menu.
[SOLUTION: Text]
- "Snippets: Frequently used Text" ... meaning i think the whole title of the menu should have a subtitle.
- Then i think the short description text should change to the following
PeakD will store text you will use frequently.
Copy paste text here and have it always at your disposal.
26:05 Emoji Button doesn't work
[Solution: Look into it]
27:00 Not confused by the image system
27:50 User didn't have a title and wondered why they couldn't publish.
[Solution: Text addition]
- Would be very helpful if the PUBLISH button let them know why it was not an option. Two biggest things are Title and a Topic so we should tell them what is missing or wrong. Or any errors.
- Also i think in the future if it's the user's first post we should go through a check list of things they should check before publishing.
**29:13 **First time going to a notification.
User didn't really know how to interact with the notification screen very well as shown by them clicking and it going to the user because they happened to click on the part of the notification that was the user name from the notification.
[SOLUTION: Graphical Change]
- The notification should primarily link to the POST where the action took place. Maybe the entire area of the notification should go to the LINK not just the blue link.
- The only portion of the entire notification that should go to the user themselves should be the blue name of the user.
30:15 How to get rid of the notification
user didn't get rid of the notification at first but when they went back they figured it out.
Maybe it's self evident to most but not certain that it is to all.
51:10 you will see the user already forgot how to "mark as viewed"
[SOLUTION: Graphical change]
- Probably just change the check notifications button graphic or add some text "Mark as Read" is the common phrase.
31:00 Searching for content
The basic idea is that the user doesn't really seem to know where to go and what to do to find content she likes. In general there are not great options for typing in the subject name of the type of topics she's interested in.
We see that communities has a search in-bedded into the page at 32:56
We talk more later about lack of good search
[Solution: Add search box]
- The simple solution is to add a search box in topics similar to what is there for communities.
33:30 She likes the grid community and didn't know how to get that view style
Coming from using it on mobile to now using it on desktop she is pleasantly surprised by the grid view style and liked it the best. Had to show her where to go to see the view style.
Probably doesn't help that view style icons are right next to the word "recent" or whatever sort option and there is no division between sort and view style. Once a person finds it then they'll understand but maybe not until then.
[SOLUTION: More text or new user setup]
- We could perhaps put text next to the 3 icons "View" or "View style"
- Another cool idea is when a first time user signs into peakd.com we could ask them about preference. "Which view style do you prefer the most? And show all three in use as screenshots. Then show that view style in light or dark. Then show comments all expanded... or semi collapsed."
- However a first time user setup dialogue system would probably take some time to build. It could go through how they prefer their viewing experience and maybe could include "calibrate peakd with a speedtest that will match you to the fastest servers for you" and at that point also do a node benchmark that will rank the speeds of the nodes for them. That way they're also introduced to that idea as well. The idea is to do these or skip them as well. And perhaps we add in the system that will also ask them about their favorite themes.
- Do you like this view or this view... next... do you like this or this... easy stuff... then they try to figure out which nodes are best for them or they can "skip for now" ... then they pick their favorite topics. It's all kind of like tuning up their airplane getting ready for take off.
36:27 How would she know what communities are truly of interest?
The info about communities aren't enough to actually give her a good idea of if the community is a good fit.
[IDEAS]
- Honestly i don't know the solution for helping users know if a community is a good fit.
- The communities could have topics associated with them.
- There could be reviews of the community
38:00 Searching in Communities
She's finding communities that have barely any interaction and like 22 subscribers and doesn't understand there isn't much going on there so do we want to direct attention of new users to those communities knowing that not much is going to happen there? If not what's the solution to help a new user in this community search experience?
[IDEAS]
- Would a classification help? "New Community" "Top 100 community" "Rising Community" "Empty community" "Ghost town" "Popular Sports community" "#1 Politics community"
- Would a score system help? Lots of places give a score to help give base line differentiation between items or services or sources of information. The question then becomes what items will determine the score and that's a ton of information to go through and hard if not impossible to know on the fly we'd have to have some sort of consistently updating database. Lovely if a 3rd party (or two) did a project going through and making a score system.
- What we really need is for hivemind to share a couple more stats about communities. Helpful to know all time posts in that community (not comments... just main posts) and then posts in the last 7 or 30 days. Then peakd.com could be much more visual about that information. A viewer doesn't care how many posts+comments ... they care about content posts. The creator maybe cares about comments because maybe they want to post in a more active community but the viewer wants to see content.
- Probably the best help that's easiest is to identify a few community labels we can easily add to communities specially when people do a search. "New Community" "Not recently active"
- What else is helpful to a new user is that when they go into a community seeing top hits would be better than best of last 7 days and there is simply NO OPTION for seeing top all time posts of a community. Therefore trying to solve that issue is a big deal. (We have some ideas on that end but more thought should be put into that)
39:50 User has no idea how to find a new topic
There really is no good method to searching for topics
[SOLUTION]
- There could be a search on every topic page ... including "All Topics" to find other topics and go directly to the topic page of whatever they typed in... meaning I don't think it's a search that brings up multiple results but goes directly to the page. Maybe when it goes to the page it gives options of other related pages with quick links.
- The Explore menu drop-down could have an option to ADD A TOPIC... a little + field.
41:20 Password manager confused search menu for a place to put a username
[INVESTIGATE] We should see if that's a consistent problem for other users that password manager mistakes that field. Then fix it so that doesn't happen.
41:45 Search Interface has a long way to go
I told the user to not worry too much about search because it's such a poor experience right now that it didn't warrant needing to go over it.
[SOLUTION: Redesign search]
- There are multiple things to search and we need to be able to handle all those types of searches and allow for those who want to search a specific style of thing. (Posts, Users, Topics, Communities, Badges... or all of those)
- The solution lays quite a bit in the UI of search and letting a user decide what they want to search quickly and easily and also know what to do if they choose to search all those things and then have a nice page layout for if they search it all.
42:10 Following someone inactive
However the user didn't realize the person they followed hadn't posted in about 2 years.
Is it helpful for us to help a new user recognize this?
[SOLUTION: Some context text]
- How much benefit would it even be to help new users understand that someone maybe is not around anymore and hasn't been active in years?
- If so would a visual indicator of some type be helpful? Something that isn't negative but is purely factual. Maybe up top next to creator name when they're on their page we say "Last Blog Post 14 months ago" Maybe it's RED if a long time ago and green if not that long ago. And orange in between. 0-2 months green 2-6 months orange 6+ months red
- Maybe this would help motivate content creators to stay more current but what about those who are mostly viewers we want to help/celebrate them as well and not make them feel bad about posting. So should their last comment also be shown so that people quickly know they may not create but they interact.
43:35 The user actions menu
User understood a few of the actions did the favorite but then expressed that some of the actions were way too complicated and didn't understand them.
[SOLUTION: Text and organization]
- The simple solution is that we should simply subdivide with a sub-title that some of these actions are "ADVANCED ACTIONS" letting the user know that makes them feel better about knowing what they mean. We already have a line between easy and advanced but we need to give it word context and just say these following ones are ADVANCED.
- We also have some other ideas on how to change the user actions menu and some other wording that we should be using in these menus but the simple change is to add "Advanced Actions" for now
44:45 Upcoming feature interviewing new users
Just a little preview of some of our ideas of what we want to do to help connect a new users to interests.
46:30 What are badges?
Wasn't immediately understandable to the user what a badge is.
[SOLUTION: Text]
- I think it should be 3 lines a quick text, an example to make them go ohhh... and then a little extra to help them know badges are created by other users and maybe even give them a clue that they could even make a badge some day
- A curated list of users that have something in common.
For example: a location or a topical interest.
Badges are created by users like you and help you find creators that are likely to create content about that subject."
52:35 Doesn't know what HP and Vote value is
Basically user at some point realize the site can make money and then they are probably lost for a bit wondering why and how.
There are many places the money aspect comes up... in connections is where she found it, but wallet and in the reward value on each post.
[QUESTIONS]
So how do we introduce this concept or move them along to where they can go learn if they do want to know more.
Also why does connections focus so heavily on money aspects with 2 columns for that and only 1 other column which is for last post. What else could we put in connections to make it not sway so heavily financial and perhaps be more about CONTENT or detail a bit about their CONNECTION.
53:40 Introducing Post Rewards
How does rewards work
[SOLUTION: Link]
- The quick solution which may solve part of the problem from above is to add a small link in the reward details "How do voting rewards work"
- Also we could simplify info in that pox to identify how much the author is making and leave out the duplicate information where we say the "hive rewards" which is identical to the main number of the post. We can say just the amount of the "Author Rewards" if they are interested why the number on the post is different than the author rewards then they'll likely click on "How do voting rewards work"
- Obviously the coolest thing to do is the holy grail of being able to identify the "REAL REWARDS" the user is likely going to make and then also on old posts the actual amount they made when it was paid out. But there are some problems with this that make it hard namely do we show them the usd value based on when it was paid out or the present value of that hive? If historical then we have to know historical values for the moment it was paid out. Also this is all very database specific and they are not giving the data we actually need some of the times.
55:10 Always 50/50?
Yeah it doesn't really make sense to state 50/50 on every post if it's always 50/50 it made sense back in the day when we showed tribe payouts.
56:30 About #introduceyourself
57:30 Confused about GMT time
I'm confused as well.
58:40 Bookmarks
I identify that we will likely change and upgrade the bookmark system and possibly rename it so we won't go too much into it.
1:00:13 How do you get Awards?
We should have a statement on the awards section about how users get awards.
[SOLUTION]
- Awards are given by our friends at @hivebuzz for doing different actions.
Click here to see all the possible awards/achievements.
1:04:10 What is this number? (reputation)
[SOLUTION]
We could have the popup have a text link "What is reputation?" Could go to a FAQ post about what that number is.
1:08:00 Sending a tip
Realize there is no notification when you are sent money ... seems important
1:09:20 Powering up
1:11:00 Earnings in other countries
1:12:00 Where does the money come from?
1:13:35 What can i do with the tokens?
1:17:00 If you watch this video we will reward you
Watch this part for a bit of instruction or challenge and a reward
1:18:15 Follow @jjsienna
Presently she hasn't created a new post
1:19:30 Finding the TIP button and vote button
Was hard to find the tip button
Didn't understand that a vote was a two click process.
1:21:40 HBD was an option even though user didn't have any
[SOLUTION] Doesn't make sense to show HBD if the user doesn't have any. Similar to not showing BTC or LTC or DOGE unless the user has some.
1:23:30 Why would you downvote?
1:27:00 Do i need to know what a blockchain is?
1:28:00 revisiting communities
1:29:45 How Community moderation works presently
1:31:00 Write what you learned
Also not guaranteeing that @jjsienna would give tips... but we certainly will.