On Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:47:54, Jeff Howard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Pankaj wrote: > > Unless Dave wont have recommended it I would have > > given this website a pass... > > But he _did_ recommend it. That's why you were there. It's clear > they expect you to be sold on the value proposition before you visit > buzzword.com. They're optimizing for existing users. >
Existing users is fine and I never said dont have a SignUp screen, all I said was give a sizeable space to the "Whats the product" also. If you notice there was not even a hidden gate to enter without signing up. Check gmail, yahoomail etc etc, they all need User Sign In but the left side of the page is all information and the less important right side is the login/SignUp information (Left to right eye movement). > A bit of context would certainly help, but on the other hand this is > an application. To a commoner its still a website, anything that opens in IE and has a http://www. attached to it is a website (think mental model vs designer model vs implementation model). Implementation model and designer model may have an application in mind but the mental model of a user still thinks it as a website. Maybe when we have lot of web applications this will change but as of now my mental model takes them as websites and they should behave like websites - provide navigation around for exploration. > When I fire up Excel or Omnigraffle, I don't expect > them to justify themselves to me. I expect the marketing process to > happen elsewhere--on Microsoft's or Omni's website. In the absence > of that context a seamless tryout flow becomes a lot more critical to > draw people in. The application is the marketing. All desktop applications need to be installed and hence you would have already made the decisions. Also the desktop applications come with a de-facto mental/designer model of having a Help menu and hence they are always open to navigation and exploration. > > Things could be a little discombobulated because of the recent > acquisition by Adobe. Originally you would have learned about the app > on Virtual Ubiquity's website, or at Adobe Labs. Or a writeup on > Techcrunch. Those venues would have linked you to the application. > > http://about.buzzword.com/ > I understand the problems faced by Buzzword and infact when I emailed my feedback to them the response was exactly the same. So I am willing to wait and give time to buzzword but as I wrote in my original post, this is not a one of case and I saw a similar website posted here just 4 days back. So I just wanted to check if this is a new mental model that came out of some user research and everybody is following to which my obsolete mind is not tuned to yet. My question really was "whether I should be blamed or the website"? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Pankaj - Thanks for sending a link to your feedback on the Buzzword sign-in/sign-up page. Your comments are useful, and we're working on a solution. In the meantime, you can find more information at http://about.buzzword.com – which is the original Virtual Ubiquity web site. A word on the history – Virtual Ubiquity/Buzzword was acquired by Adobe in December 2007. As the team and product integrate with the larger Adobe systems and web presence, there are many changes that are still in progress. The issue you raise is one of them – that is, providing information on Buzzword within the larger scheme of Adobe products on Adobe's web site, and links from existing sources. If you do give Buzzword a spin, we'd like to hear what you think about the product. Regards, <Name removed> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > They could probably solve the problem simply by swapping the > subdomains around. Make the www the marketing site and put the app on > a subdomain. > > // jeff > Yes, this is all I asked for, infact I would have been happy if they just put a link to about.buzzword.com on the main page. As a user I was never demanding :-) Thanks Pankaj ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
