I took the plunge and made an account to try it out. Here's my feedback:
1.Don't require an account, period. There's no reason to require it. If someone wants to sync their data, let them opt-in.
2.I sent a friend invite to an alternate email of mine. After creating another account, I hade to verify my email. This shouldn't be necessary, since the invite was sent to my email in the first place.
3.I got the two accounts to be friends, but there wasn't much benefit to it IMO. All it tells you is their streak, not the specific tasks they want to complete. I think there's a lot of room for improvement here. A. Let people see other's tasks. B. Let people add little emoji reactions. I think that would be fun.
4.When you check off a task, it takes somewhere between 230-342ms to show that it's visually checked off, since it waits for the network request to complete. I would recommend updating the UI beforehand.
5.I spent the time to write all this out because I think the principle of the idea is really cool. I have a rudimentary version of this with my siblings using a google sheet. We check the sheet once in a while to see how we're all doing with our stress-inducing tasks. Having a more polished and social version of this could be a lot of fun.
Requiring account creation to view the program, even see any screenshots or view a description of how it works, will stop most people from proceeding. It immediately triggered my "user-hostile" alarm.
Also without a demo the TOS has lots of words such as: “You must not access or use for any commercial purposes any part of the website or any services or materials available through the Website.”
Fairly sure my work todos could be considered commercial purposes, so I don’t even want to risk trying it.
I feel like I’ve been seeing more and more of this lately.
Most recently somebody talked to me about a genAI video firm, which doesn’t need to be mentioned by name but which had an elaborately produced brochureware kind of landing page—aspirational quotes, scroll-hijacking, the whole shebang. Now mind you, when I went to check it out I was motivated, since it was prompted by an IRL relationship.
Not only did they require a signup to view anything about the product, but they required that you upgrade and pay before you were allowed go view any examples of what they have generated for themselves or other users. I still don’t know if the product is any good or not, and I probably never will.
Is this a generational thing? Or is it some kind of wisdom getting passed around the “growth hacking” kinds of circles?
I'm guessing it's "growth-hacking" wisdumb. Presumably the logic is that it means that you have the emails of people who are interested in your product, both for metrics reasons and to be able to send them emails to keep them engaged. Maybe also with a dash of "if a user has created an account, they're more likely to feel invested and use the product"?
I could be mistaken. Heck, it's even possible that it's good advice, but I doubt it. I'm guessing that this kind of thing prevents more new users than it hooks.
Your app will be held back by requiring to create an account with email and password.
Most of the users just use "Login with Google" or other well known OAuth providers and also want to try the product before creating an account.
When I switched from user / password to OAuth I couldn't believe how many users choose it. I could deactivate traditional user & password login and nobody would notice it.
That's fascinating! I mostly don't use "sign in with X" anymore since my password manager flow is pretty fluid at this point (so making a password is easy and secure). I guess for the many people who are less comfortable with password managers, a 1-click sign up/in is very useful.
Having a password manager plug-in thing installed on every web browser that I might use seems pretty arduous to me (not to mention I also then have to trust the plug-in). The fact that LastPass for example had a major breach doesn't help either.
To each their own I guess… I find it insanely easy to install the bitwarden plugin. All the plugins sync through my Mozilla account anyway. Definitely do not use Lastpass.
So it seems to be based on their own experience. The parent comment says this:
"When I switched from user / password to OAuth I couldn't believe how many users choose it. I could deactivate traditional user & password login and nobody would notice it."
I deal with ADHD and procrastination and to-do lists are already pretty psychologically rough. Sure, it feels good to complete things, especially if I remember to mark them complete, but when I have a lot of tasks I don't want to start, they all look gigantic and I start ignoring it.
I can't imagine how awful that would be for social connections to be watching, maybe commenting on it. "Hey buddy, aren't you going to fix the scanner? It's been weeks".
Gamification makes things worse for me. Maybe it feels good to have a streak and level up. But then something comes up and you lose your streak and that's like 10x worse. The app is basically saying you suck. That was my Duolingo experience, which is probably why they now make it very hard to lose a streak, but then it just feels dumb.
I stopped playing Wordle after missing a couple days, losing the streak.
Other ADHD/executive function disorder people might have another opinion. We're all wired differently.
I say all this without trying it out because the pitch turns me off. If there's something unique that makes it better than social accountability and gamification, maybe put that in the pitch.
1.Don't require an account, period. There's no reason to require it. If someone wants to sync their data, let them opt-in.
2.I sent a friend invite to an alternate email of mine. After creating another account, I hade to verify my email. This shouldn't be necessary, since the invite was sent to my email in the first place.
3.I got the two accounts to be friends, but there wasn't much benefit to it IMO. All it tells you is their streak, not the specific tasks they want to complete. I think there's a lot of room for improvement here. A. Let people see other's tasks. B. Let people add little emoji reactions. I think that would be fun.
4.When you check off a task, it takes somewhere between 230-342ms to show that it's visually checked off, since it waits for the network request to complete. I would recommend updating the UI beforehand.
5.I spent the time to write all this out because I think the principle of the idea is really cool. I have a rudimentary version of this with my siblings using a google sheet. We check the sheet once in a while to see how we're all doing with our stress-inducing tasks. Having a more polished and social version of this could be a lot of fun.
Keep up the good work :)
Fairly sure my work todos could be considered commercial purposes, so I don’t even want to risk trying it.
Great idea, could benefit from more upfront info.
Most recently somebody talked to me about a genAI video firm, which doesn’t need to be mentioned by name but which had an elaborately produced brochureware kind of landing page—aspirational quotes, scroll-hijacking, the whole shebang. Now mind you, when I went to check it out I was motivated, since it was prompted by an IRL relationship.
Not only did they require a signup to view anything about the product, but they required that you upgrade and pay before you were allowed go view any examples of what they have generated for themselves or other users. I still don’t know if the product is any good or not, and I probably never will.
Is this a generational thing? Or is it some kind of wisdom getting passed around the “growth hacking” kinds of circles?
I could be mistaken. Heck, it's even possible that it's good advice, but I doubt it. I'm guessing that this kind of thing prevents more new users than it hooks.
Most of the users just use "Login with Google" or other well known OAuth providers and also want to try the product before creating an account.
When I switched from user / password to OAuth I couldn't believe how many users choose it. I could deactivate traditional user & password login and nobody would notice it.
Thanks for sharing!
"When I switched from user / password to OAuth I couldn't believe how many users choose it. I could deactivate traditional user & password login and nobody would notice it."
I can't imagine how awful that would be for social connections to be watching, maybe commenting on it. "Hey buddy, aren't you going to fix the scanner? It's been weeks".
Gamification makes things worse for me. Maybe it feels good to have a streak and level up. But then something comes up and you lose your streak and that's like 10x worse. The app is basically saying you suck. That was my Duolingo experience, which is probably why they now make it very hard to lose a streak, but then it just feels dumb.
I stopped playing Wordle after missing a couple days, losing the streak.
Other ADHD/executive function disorder people might have another opinion. We're all wired differently.
I say all this without trying it out because the pitch turns me off. If there's something unique that makes it better than social accountability and gamification, maybe put that in the pitch.
But it sounds like a cool idea!