I’ve had so much help by reading endless posts here and endless thanks to the Bubble team for changing the game.
I’ve spent the last 2 months building my new project and it’s been amazing as I have no technical background. I’ve only rebuilt the database structure 5 times so far:)
I’d love your thoughts and feedback. The more critical the better!
Here’s a brief summary and the website.
The real work has been done after signing up from the home page… but it’s only web right now.
I created this because Yelp and Trip Advisor don’t provide insights that are relevant to me… instead they are crowd sourced places that skew towards the touristy. Most people I know keep lists in google docs, emails, etc that get shared. There is no way to see an aggregation of the places people I trust recommend since all of their information lives offline and separate.
Atlist helps you do 3 things:
Centralize and replace all the documents, emails and notes that track where you have been and where you want to go.
Share your recommendations quickly from a single location.
Aggregate lists from friends to see which places have been most recommended.
Thanks for taking a look @gnelson. Should have mentioned this is Web only at the moment, so there isn’t a place to sign up on mobile.
Friends are anyone you identify to follow. This is a different circle than facebook, instagram, etc as there are only a subset of people with similar taste as you.
Love the idea. What most annoys me from Yelp, Tripadvisor and similar are paid reviews. Your product tackles with this problem by only allowing friends reviews, but eventually I think you will encounter this problem.
On the other side, congrats if you ever experience that problem
Now my review:slight_smile:
I would change the borders of the form fields. They are too subtle and looks like there is a CSS problem.
Landing page I would add a grey background group with transparency. It was confusing at the beginning. I moved my mouse all over the page to try to figure out what was clickable and what wasn’t. Even though I knew that the Get started button was the one others may feel lost.
Try using a heatmap plugin like hotjar so you can identify hotspots of mouse moves/clicks. You will probably see in the landing page a lot of red zones on the banner, user menu, left sidebar (Cities).
The UI of the list adding form is not consistent with the rest of the website. I would give it a thought.
Also, I don’t understand why I have to wait 24 hours to get a list added to my profile. Can you elaborate on this?
Hello there. First off I love the concept. It would be a really cool way to follow friends since they often have the same tastes as you. Having travelled quite extensively myself, with a particular fondness for alley bars with a good live band, I know how hard it is to find this perfect combination. As my friends know my affinity for this, they could recommend these as they find them.
Conceptually a great idea, however it does have a bit of a chicken and the egg problem. Before you can get users, they might want to be able to look at lists that already exists. Since it will take a while to get enough users to where they might actually know each other, you might want to set up some recommended list examples based on existing Yelp or other review sites.
Technically there are several small issues that need remedy.
The intro or help window should ideally be in the middle of the screen upon signup. It blends in too well with the map.
The add and discover additions need to have a consistent hand signal for both Add and Discover. Right now Discover looks clickable and Add doesn’t.
When I search for example Chicago on the upper left I am unable to click the user or places within the search box. This can be remedied by modifying the condition to show when hovered. So that way when the user brings down the mouse, it remains visible.
When I click Discover on the bottom right, I am unable to click the user or places?
When I try to add a place it doesn’t seem to allow me to press enter or give me an option for the next entry.
Well I have to go to work, but great concept. I do love the idea of a wall where friends can explore the world through your eyes. Hopefully they can add pictures, videos, and other people can comment on their locations as well.
Keep me updated about the progress. We are all learning from each other here!!!
Thank you so much for taking some time to review the app @JonL I truly appreciate it.
You are on point with the double edge sword comment regarding Yelp & Trip Advisor:)
Great point re the input fields and design overall is an area that needs overall improvement. My goal is to update the styles for each of the elements to create a consistent style and one that is unique to the app, but I will need help with this as I don’t have an eye for design. Let me know if you suggest anyone.
The onboarding definitely needs help and have implemented userflow for this purpose… what I’ve learned so far is there is no clear pattern as the page has no clear focus, it’s all bland. Any suggestions for the first intro screen?
A major premise from talking with people is that most people who like to travel keep a list of recommendations in a doc or email. The initial page to get started is meant to optimize getting the existing recommendations from different mediums into Atlist as easily as possible without friction. The 24 hour waiting period is because the copy and paste needs to be formatted before running through my script. It’s not a scalable strategy, but sometimes you need to do things that don’t scale to help get things going. That said, it’s not clear enough and probably shouldn’t be the default for everyone.
You can enter a recommendation one at a time that will populate immediately. Once you enter a recommendation and follow people the system starts to take that information to enable exploration.
I’d love your opinion about how the system works once you start adding recommendations too.
Hey @Bradluffy, thanks so much for jumping in to take a look and provide feedback! I definitely appreciate it.
I love this point about your taste regarding travel as this is where the big picture of this leads. For example, my definition of a great bar is different than your different definition, however there is no ability for any current systems to take into considerations the attributes of a great bar for each person to create your taste profile. This way, the more places you recommend the smarter the system can be at understanding the type of places you like.
I’m also sure people ask you for your recommendations about places you have been. This would replace the requirement to send a document or email in response to each request. Each user will have a vanity link that they will be able to share (if I can ever figure it out) or share directly from the app.
You are spot on with the chicken v egg here, which is why I have initially optimized for allowing users to add their existing lists without the requirement to re enter recommendations that already exist.
The next steps will be to integrate with Facebook and Instagram to import places where users have saved or checkin to build out a users list without additional work. I don’t see a scenario where something like this is used if users have to enter places manually for each item. This should help with having enough content to get started.
Agree, it needs help. Any ideas how?
Good find, I’ll update.
Do you mean when you click on a user or place the system does not load the place you clicked? I’ll investigate more too.
Is this the same issue as the search from the upper left?
Do you mean the button to submit is not clickable? Do you have a screenshot?
Would love it if you could add a few recommendations to see how the app works when viewing profiles and suggestions.
