Wow - another milestone and about time too eh About an hour ago, the US site went live at www.crowdstorm.com
Now of course we have to check for bugs, keep bringing in more of our expert review feeds, and tidying up all the loose ends for the next 48hrs. Still - it’s a great feeling to be operating fully in two countries now (UK and US) and evolving our site and platform from there.
Both Oli and I will be at the Future of Web Apps on wednesday and thursday this week - so feel free to come and meet us for a coffee or two if you get a chance. Always interested in potential team members or just to talk generally about the business.
So following up from my last post on reducing complexity, I’ve been doing a bit of brainstorming. In the initial feedback, people are saying that the first time they start using the site can be initially confusing as a lot is presented on the screen. We’ve attempted to get round this with in-context help such as a lightbox appearing when you first hit the site post-home page (click it to get the full size in our nice new lightbox effect):
So this image was too big and no way near as clear as it should be, so we’re re-doing this to make it smaller and simpler. Often people were saying “this weird big page kept appearing”. I actually see this being a nice touch going forward as you’ll be able to click a “help - show me the quick guide” on every page of the site which will show a contextually relevant help screenshot.
So next up, I’ve been playing with an idea for our new blue bar (this isn’t a professional design or even live yet) which follows up from all the scenario work we did into how people research products:
From here, different areas of the site can open up catering for the need of the user at that point in time, rather than make them work it out for themselves. Also - note the little box at the bottom left for more experienced users to shut it off. It actually requires some pretty complex css and javascript to get this right which is actually the funny thing - the simpler you want your site to be, the more complex the code!!
We’re getting some great feedback coming in from a select group of about 15-20 users right now, on the whole interface and product layout, which is really helpful. It’s a good step before gradually opening up the beta to more people (of which we have received over 5000 invite requests so far!)
At the 2nd chance tuesday event last night, I bumped into a friend Yann Motte from Webjam and we got talking about product design and interfaces, which Yann knows about pretty well from his days heading up Product at Yahoo Europe. What we agreed on is that the easy bit about developing a product is coming out with lots of new and swanky features, but that the hardest bit is then reducing and refining them to make it as simple and usable as possible. You are constantly in a battle to want to show everyone all your cool and advanced features, where as a user is actually asking “what the hell do I do now..”. It’s this tug-of-war game between the two extremes which holds up products.
So back to the Crowdstorm product, what is taking us a lot of time right now is making sure our interface is good enough to launch the concept to a wider audience. Even though we’ve cut the features down right now (still on the roadmap), there is still a lot to take in and educate people about. Every single element, such as the refine box below, is being analysed.
I’m a great fan of rapid, iterative design and prototyping but it does take up resource that we don’t really have right now. First thing we’ll do post beta launch is hire a full time CSS and front end coder so that we can experiment with usability changes and tweaks to really get on top of the real challenge in product design “simplying things for the user”.
Hurrah! Finally we can come out and start talking openly about what we’re doing and Techcrunch is the first to have posted about the new site, and you can see it here in all it’s glory.
It’s actually strange to be showing the screens now and actually explaining in more detail over the coming weeks about the principles behind it and how each feature works. In fact, if you’re impatient - have a look at our tour / overview page where you can also sign up for a beta invite.
The Techcrunch post wasn’t entirely right - we’re not in beta just yet but getting closer. It was spot on about us being a review-style content hub. In a nutshell, we aggregate lots of product style sources, add value to them with our trust and knowledge algorithm, then export them again. The site is just one window on the world, as it were.
We want crowdstorm to be a one-stop research place where you make better informed purchase decisions based on the crowd’s advice and recommendations. Your crowd includes the most trusted and knowledgeable people on the web - giving you advice on what to buy.
As loyal Crowdstorm readers, we’d really appreciate it if you could show your support and either digg the story using the link below or posting this blog link to your facebook status stream. Ta muchly!
We’ve moved Crowdstorm into a ultra closed alpha test phase which basically means it has more bugs than my aunts back garden, but at least it gets us out there and allows us to get some family and close friends to give us feedback. Nothing big, just 15-20 peeps.
It’s pretty stressful especially as Oli is fixing some major stability and speed issues on the site, implementing our new CSS templates and linking them up with our PHP feature set.
So now we’re balancing about 12 different things at once (PR preparation, beta trial, finances, bug fixing….). We’ll survive - don’t you worry!
We’ve spent most of the morning and lunch at our hosting providers Rackspace being shown round the data centre where our servers are hosted, and also getting to know the team and discussing future plans.
It was actually more interesting than I thought it would be - seeing the extent to which the servers are looked after in terms of environment but also by the number of people in technical and client support. Oli of course was in his element!
One of the main challenges I always saw for a company moving from 30 to 300 employees was how to keep the customer service at a premium level, and they’ve really factored that into their plans and created a massive open plan space where the support team are in the majority and get all the best seats! The biz dev / sales guys were stuck in a little corner away from any of the action - the opposite of the normal way of things.
We spent quite a bit of time discussing our user projections and server load with our team (Nick, Lauren, and Dillan) and I must admit to having a greater understanding of how it all works now and how to cost it all up. Of course, our approaches are slightly different where Oli wants to run about 10 different liquid nitrogen cooled super computers networked together with Raid 5 db servers, and I want everything to run on a toaster, or at the very least two toasters networked together.
Anyway - thanks for the time guys. I know we’re not the biggest client in the world right now - but thanks for believing in us and helping us grow to the next stage!
We’ve gone and created ourselves a facebook group for Crowdstorm (bet you thought it was a facebook app there for a minute..!).
It’s an ideal platform for helping to get feedback on the new design and launch features as we start putting them up live. We’ll be using the blog as well so you’ll get a choice of the two, just that Facebook is more interactive and easier to get people to comment.
So please click on the above link or logo and get yourself into our group. You never know we might just announce a small party too
With new designs coming in and functionality of the new site progressing quite nicely, it’s quite a good time to use a real-life example of what’s it like to research products right now (and if you look very closely you might just get an idea of part of what Crowdstorm Evolved is really about).
So, let’s take a video game I’m thinking of buying for my xbox 360 called overlord
Right - so you’re coming along with me on this research journey in real-time, as I’m actually writing the blog at the same time. Let’s see how we get on..
Google It! - might as well, I do it for everything else, so I type overlord xbox 360 into google.co.uk. .
So there is a couple of decent links I can see here as I manually scan through, in particular: a review from trustedreview.com & eurogamer, and an amazon uk listing. Might as well start with some reviews I guess:
has a quite nice review of about 3 pages on the game and with some nice big in-game screenshots. It ends with a final verdict of “A joyous mix of childish bad-boy attitude and ‘borrowed’ ideas, fashioned into one of the most stupidly entertaining games this year. Overlord may be slight, but it’s wickedly enjoyable all the same.” and gives it 8/10
has a couple of pages and not many in-game images to be honest, the ads are getting a bit annoying, and it doesn’t really have a summary. Saying that, the writing style is pretty good and it’s given me a good impression of the game. They rated it at 8/10 also.
as always, Amazon has the manufacturer’s description which I always find quite useful in seeing what the games marketing department comes up with. Below this are six customer reviews where about 4 are generally pretty positive giving it 4 or 5 stars, and two trashed it, giving 2 stars each saying things like the game is too linear and hard to control. Overall, 4 out of 5 stars from them all.
Now, at this stage I don’t normally go beyond the first page of Google as it gets less relevant, and I definitely don’t click the rubbish paid-for ads. So, next step: Let me think of some gaming / review sites I know from past experience and search for the game there…
The first item I’ve actually seen some quick good and bad points and in that case it is saying pretty much what the other sites have said - good for watching minions do their stuff but with complicated control system and you’re not actually that evil. 7.5 out of 10
Suggests that it is a mix between Gauntlet and Pikmin, and suggests that it had great potential but looks rushed and buggy. Again the problem solving element is mentioned as needing to be improved and the control system of the minions not always being great. Summarises by saying it is innovative and will last a long time, yet let down by some bad bugs and poor graphic glitches in parts. They gave it 6.9
This reviewer likes the use or a horde of goblins you can control and direct but complains at the lack of puzzles and problem solving. They like the graphics and sound, say that loading times can be a bit slow, and the co-op mode isn’t that good and has lots of lag online. Also the game is still buggy and the control system is awkward. 6/10
Phew! Right - what’s next… Well, I want to see the product and in this case it means seeing some in-game footage. I can look at the screenshots during each review but I want some video - after all we’re in the YouTube age are we not…
While I was reading the gamespot review, I did come across a really nice video game review of Overlord, but it was let down by not having the option to embed the video anywhere…
and so over to YouTube… there’s quite a bit of content here ranging from a trailers, to in screen demo’s:
Oh - and someone had sucked the gamespot review out and placed it on the YouTube site - nice one!
Last step - I want to ask a few friends I know to see if they have got the game and what they think….
a day later…
Finally got a couple of comments back although most people were taking ages, or just didn’t own the game. At this stage, it would have been nice to ask some over people generally but I don’t really know where to start… In any case, here’s what I got:
Taz
“Bought it last week and to be honest, I’ve got quite addicted to it. Nice and ifferent and lasts ages as I still haven’t finished it. I think you might quite like it Phil.”
TurtleMan
“Only played the demo so far in xbox marketplace. Seems ok but was a bit fiddly and I’m not that excited by it to be honest. I’ll rent it I reckon but not buy it.”
Summary - overlord xbox 360
Well that took bl**dy ages (about 2.5 hours in total) and a bit of varied opinion to say the least. I’ve got trustedreviews and Eurogame giving it 8/10, and amazon reviewers having an average score of 4 stars. In contrast, team xbox and IGN gave it about 6.5-7 / 10 and gamespot gave it 7.5.
I get the feeling that it’s quite a cool touch to be able to control minions around the screen, that the game lasts a decent amount of time, and it’s a lot of fun. On the flip side, it sounds like there are some bugs and the control system can be a bit awkward. In my mind, it sounds like a 7/10 game and I’m not entirely sure which review was the most accurate.
The video’s really bring it to life to let me make my own decision and I’ll play the demo on Xbox marketplace to get a real good feel. Also, my friends have come back with a mixed review each although Taz seems to indicate I might quite like it as she does. Turtleman and I don’t really have the same taste in games anyway so I’m not too bothered about what he said.
What next?
I’m going to go out, buy the game (this is a whole other blog post), and play it. After that, I’m curious to see which of the above reviews and opinions were most closely related to my own experiences - as this will influence me in which review sites I use again in the future… I’ll blog that too so we can see together - aaww.
I (Phil Wilkinson) explain where Crowdstorm is right now, why we’ve been quiet, why Chris has left, and what the plans are for the new Crowdstorm going forward.. Exciting times….
About an hour ago, the US site went live at www.crowdstorm.com
We’ve spent most of the morning and lunch at our hosting providers 
.
Taz
TurtleMan