This is an age of over-sharing.
Uploading pictures and videos can be addictive, especially when comments instantly flow in, but we all have at least a friend or two showing some alarming signs of OCD with their uploads.
Without getting into the philosophical question of who should we “add as friend” on Facebook (just close friends? +family? +co-workers? +sexy possible dates?),
you can clearly identify a problem when the words “sexy”, and “family” are included in the same list.
Enter rrripple.com: promising to ease the control over your media in the wild.
You simply upload, create albums, and micro manage who can watch what.
I have decided to test-drive the service in three basic areas:
- Account setup
- Albums display & management
- Sharing
How did it go? I’m sorry to report that more than a few things went wrong
(or in the case of rrripple, wrrrong).
Minimize friction for new users:
This part went smoothly, with quick instant login (and no annoying email verification).
so far so good.
From this point on, some very basic rules of usability (as well as common sense) have been neglected:
Keep captions clear and helpful at all times:
Looking at an album’s view, I reduced the thumbnail size to small. This also had the unfortunate side effect of shrinking picture captions and actions to a completely unreadable size.
If certain action is disabled, provide a hint why, or guide the user how to access it:
I have uploaded some pictures, and went on to sharing. I decided to go wild, and invite all my contacts. I clicked “My friends” > “Import contacts”, but surprisingly it appeared to be disabled.
Why? is this feature still under development? am I doing something wrong? hmmm… the mystery…
Help users keep track of their actions (history) where needed:
Since I couldn’t import my friends, I decided to go manual and send personal invitations.
After adding a few addresses, It became clear I’m not sure who did I invite already.
A simple list of contacts pending for approval would be nice, but no such luck here. Even the number of pending contacts (as appears in previous image) did not update correctly.
I started to get some serious doubts if I even want to intive anyone here.
Account settings are the users’ volt. Help them feel safe:
At this point I decided to give up, and end my brief flirt with rrripple.
I went to “settings” > “account”, and found out you can’t leave the family…
You can only change your name, username and email.
But wait, let’s say I wasn’t anxious to leave just yet:
- There is no “cancel” or “close” button, in case you don’t want to update settings,
- The only button in the neighborhood (”change”, see below), isn’t really working, and the window stays open. Ha!
OK…
This was one big disappointment.
If this was a date, I would be so happy I didn’t order anything to eat.
Releasing such half-baked “proof of concept” to the public is legitimate only if you clearly mark it as such. I didn’t see such warnings on the box (the index page, that is). Not even a cautious “beta” flag.
Users’ trust and enthusiasm are not easy to build, and even harder to reverse.
It’s all about flirting with your users, and the same “no second chance to make a first impression” rule applies here just as well.
Dear rrripple, I think we should start seeing other people now.
Since this is their first launch, I’m sure they will be working on a lot of these issues. Seems like yourfeedback expects the product to be mature. A simple way for rrripple (agreed, not crazy about the name) to have avoided that would have been to put ‘Beta’ somewhere on the site. I think that would make me as a user more comfortable with neglecting some of these ‘basic’ points.
It’s totally acceptable if one of your uber-cool features is misbehaving, or having a few rough edges, and the occasional layout glitch here and there. But if you take your service and visitors seriously, there is only this much a “beta” statement can cover for (and it’s not even there…)
Yanay, These are super helpful comments. We will put a big fat “WARNING THIS IS A BETA” on the homepage today. Thank you for taking the time to share such helpful information. Thank you for validating the philosophy, we know we have lots of work to do to make this idea a reality. Would you be willing to give us more feedback over time?
Truly,
Heather
Co-Founder, rrripple
Heather,
It’s encouraging you truly care about the product, and I do believe it has a great potential.
I would be happy to see it grow into a mature service, and contribute my 2 cents.
Hope you’ll turn this one into a winner. Best of luck!