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8 Comments

UX feedback

I've got a spreadsheet-turned-sideproject called https://goodworkcafes.com/

It's a crowd-sourced dataset of cafes around the world with info on Wifi speed, whether there are outlets, how good the tables are, etc.

But, the current UX still isn't there for me. Design is not my core-competency, so polling the Indie Hacker crowd. What are the main things I could do to improve the product?

The goal of the product is to make it easy for someone to find a good spot to sit down and work on their laptop.

  1. 4

    Hey Anthony,

    I have this problem time and time again in London, so great to see the product.

    I'd say three things:

    • You're not optimising for the first task most users are going to do, which is - I assume - refine that huge subset of data by location. So make this front and centre. (You can see this principle on a site like https://www.airbnb.co.uk/?_set_bev_on_new_domain=1581616643_decxsJ5acEyp69jY)
    • This should also solve problem #2 - there's huge visual/cognitive load when you first load the page (i.e. too much to look at).
    • Finally I'd work on the designs for the 'cards' you have that represent each cafe. It might not harm to make them a little larger (e.g. two or three per row), so it's a little less overwhelming. Again, look at other listing sites for inspiration.

    And a final point. If design isn't your specialism, see if you can do a skill swap with someone. A good designer should be able to make this look great (and make the UX better) without too much effort.

    1. 1

      Thank you Rob! You've made three very good points :D I'm going to start with your first bullet point.

      Also, what do you think of our London dataset, any glaring omissions?

      https://goodworkcafes.com/cafe-list/cafes-in-london

  2. 2

    From a Cafe regular myself, I think this would be really helpful, but disappointed at the same time because no cafe listed in KL lol.
    I really like the plain and simple design, but there are too many icons and everything is too clumps up making it really hard to read and confusing. You may want to make it more readable and make more space.

    1. 2

      Also, too many numbers and colors, make me likes I am reading stock analysis chart.

      1. 1

        Both good points!

        Getting the same feedback from many users, going to have to reconsider how we're displaying all this data.

        Also, if you know any good cafes in KL you can add them directly to our database (Google spreadsheet)

        https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fjU6sutEcdVvbQzZbNNk4h5xQXZ4R0GqG0dV_QOmGhI/edit#gid=0

  3. 2

    Great idea! Here are a few tips that might help:

    1. A legend for the icons. Not all are obvious.

    2. Number’s taken out of context don’t mean much (i.,e. A score of 4 is good if the metrics are 1-5; a score of 4 isn’t so hot if the metrics are 1-10). Maybe get some sort of contextual framework in there before throwing the end users in the deep end of data.

    P.S. Don’t sell yourself short on design. Looks good on mobile!

    1. 1

      Thank you Ben, good feedback :) If you hover over the icons you get an alt-text popup on desktop with a little explanation, but this really isn't obvious at all and only really helps screen readers.

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