help us help you....

interestingly, my facebook assignment group's very first idea was very similar to getHelp. of course, looking at our final product, you can probably guess that we were not too favorable on it.

one thing i learnt from 2 of my best friends is.... 2 of the best people around don't necessarily make the best couple.  in some ways, i think this application tries to put together too many "greats", and possibly turned out not too great.  i don't like to fixate myself on 4 points, so i'll do a general sweep on various aspects of the app.

idea
on the first look, it seems like a great idea.  having a one stop location where you can get help and give help.  "i need help with ..." is so open-ended and it gives freedom. harnessing the power of the social network + great idea = success! right? wrong.

i think the biggest flaw with the idea is that its a little too open-ended.  there is no focus.  case-in-point, stack overflow was launched at the end of the year that this project was done.  it only focused on programming.  did it need the social network? no.  is it successful? probably yes.  with 135,000 users today, i'd say its pretty successful.  getHelp is essentially a bloated up version of this, where you can ask for help from everybody and anybody.

but don't get me wrong, i'm not against thinking big. i just think that its better to start small.  look at google, did they start by trying to conquer the whole world? sure, they probably had big dreams, but they focused on their search engine which we all can't live without today before branching out to compete with other big guns.

why do i talk about the idea even though we really are suppose to be talking about execution?  i think that a group's idea, or more accurately their mindset when they are coming up with this idea, affects their entire mindset during the whole project - including creation of user interface, features etc.

interface 1: looks

As I've mentioned several times, I'm a believer of simplicity.  It brings about a certain sense of elegance in design, and intuitiveness for users.  Eye tracking studies have shown that the average user doesnt read text thoroughly.  Thus, blocks of text to explain how to use interface is really not going to cut it.


I think the creaters of getHelp did have some sense of this idea, unfortunately, somehow or rather I think the final product still looks a little too cluttered.  or rather, important information can't really be differentiated from the rest.  this could be attributed to the the colour scheme.  grey should not be used for the text, its hard to see when compared with all the bright colours all around them.  the tabs are a little hard to see as well.  why use 2 types of tabs?  when you look at the project page, its a big case of TMI: too much information. 


theme

Although the theme of a fireman, fire starter is cute, but the red buttons contrast too starkly against the default facebook color theme.  Moreover, the theme of fire is hardly used in the application.  Fire breathers take away the "negative" connotation of someone requiring too much help

I think a theme is good to capture certain audience groups.  However, it is important to keep the theme and follow the theme, otherwise it feels a little lame.

Also, I think there is a lack of consistency between the images.  Some are cutesy while others are serious/professional.  It gives the feel of an identity crisis.

i think its a real big waste.  perhaps they ran out of time, or they had too many other issues to resolve, or they came up with this theme half-way through, either way, I think if they had used the theme properly, they would have made their app much more interactive and engaging, whether they wanted to take a professional OR cute approach (only can chose 1)

interface 2: feel

whats the point of looking good if everything is rotten inside?  the other (more) important part of interface is user interactions.  based on the screenshots, i think generally everything can be done easily, and these actions seem to be mostly self-explanatory.

need quick help? : is it a different version of help compared to the normal one we have? what's the difference between dateline and estimated time?

what will be posted to my SMS & twitter & feed? how is all these information going to work? will there be a preview screen?

 
for the purpose of the app, I think it lacks very important OVERALL figures that should be present throughout the whole app (requests answered, request unanswered etc etc).  The demand for a plug-in as simple as a G-Mail unread indicator should able to tell us how important most users find this feature.

feature set & implementation

the app has no short of features, it allows you to posts to other places, allow you to go for achievements, allow you to recommend.  however, i think more thought could have been put into these features.  the general feel i get is very "kiasu"-ish, where they just wanted to include everything.

firstly, the "karma system" ineeds a lot of thought in it.  how much reward to attract helpers? how to determine who are real "experts"?  one badge and a simple ranking board probably isn't enough.  one of the driving force in forums is your "rank".  hand in hand with ranks, is the karma system.  when you help others, you gain karma.  this is a cyclical process, and the alturistic nature of mankind will help drive the forums.  in many sense, this app is a forum.  you need a multi-tiered achievement system, to drive users to come back.

furthermore, some of the the categories are just not useful.  why is there a need to track the top firemakers?  how is "hottest" project important? (what is hottest project for that matter)  it just add most unnecessary clutter to the application.


the wide buffet of methods to "spam" simply turns me off.  not only will you spam on one platform, you will spam on multiple platforms.  i believe kiasu helpees will just check all options, and helpers will just get annoyed and leave the application.  its good that they thought of giving choice, but choice could possibly come back to bite them.  i would personally only choose to implement it on 1 at most 2 channels.

there also seems to be a gap in the "viral"-ness of the app.  recall that this app was created in a time where massively large amounts of apps were being added day after day.  people were already starting to ignore apps.  although getHelp is great for... well getting help, i don't think its the best way for giving help.  after all, once your status is set, I don't have to use the app to contact you on the necessary information.  i won't even find out about the great karma system behind the app.  i dont think a helpee has incentive to want to become the greatest firestarter....

then it brings out a final issue: why cant I just post what i want.... directly where i want it? 

my verdict? i think getHelp is a great spamming machine for helpees which is likely to get abused, preventing helpers to want to add the app.  i think they tried to do too many things, and with a bad idea to boot, they just slogged it through in the end.

social network is a great resource, but not necessarily a good resource for everything.  if however, they had (at that point in time) aimed for a primitive facebook connect, i think it would have been a much better idea.