Tidy Workspace
Organize browser tabs into workspaces
This past week I went utterly heads down and built the MVP of Tidy Workspace. I'm not sure if this was 100% the best course of action because I neglected almost all social sharing and other tasks while I did this.
I decided to do it because I had hit the limit with my design skills on how well I could communicate the idea. Having an actual product people can install and use to talk about will bring more life to the conversation.
I committed to only building the MVP. So I only built the workspaces feature. It has a few bugs that I'm going to iron out while the initial review is happening.
I posted a blog post about this along with a video demo of what the MVP: https://tidyworkspace.com/blog/tidy-workspace-is-coming-soon
I hope it passes the initial review so I can get feedback from people this week and begin to iterate on it more. In the meantime, I will catch up on the marketing activities I fell behind on. I have lots of feedback and analytics that I need to incorporate and revamp the landing page again.
After four and half days of living in the chrome extension docs, fiddling with webpack, and doing a lot of manual testing, the workspaces feature is working in Tidy Workspace!
I posted a screen recording of it working to Twitter: https://twitter.com/i/status/1286347037466857475
I'm not quite ready to release it for Beta access yet, there are still a few loose ends to tie up and make sure everything is working as intended. But I would say the first 90% is done.
Now onto the last 90%.
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Congrats on your progress, looking good. I guess you meant onto the last "10%" :D
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Thank you!
I meant to write "the last 90%" lol
It's kind of a dig at how hard software estimation is. You get to where you think you're 90% done. Then as you're chipping away at the final 10%, more and more unexpected things keep popping up. Making that last 10% seem like the same amount of work as the first 90%. 😊
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Ah..ha.. that makes sense now though it's the first time I heard it haha.. that's true, never underestimate the final 10% 😁
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Over the course of the previous week of iterating on the landing page, I now have 5 people signed up for early access who have verified their email.
Is this enough to start working on the MVP? I'm honestly not sure. In a few weeks looking back I think I'll realize if I should have tried connecting with more people before starting to code.
Today also marks the day that I began writing actual code for Tidy Workspace. I'm new to browser extension development so I have a lot to learn. I'll be reading a lot of tutorials and StackOverflow questions.
This was an intense week. After doing screencasts of landing page reviews for 70+ makers, I made quite a few connections offering to review my landing page in return. This could not have been better timed.
I had just published the first version of the landing page the previous week. Thanks to Vercel, I have a history of this.
Here's a link to the early version of the landing page: https://tidy-workspace-pclxjxcus.vercel.app/
Here's what it looks like now: https://tidy-workspace-8fyhwjzkt.vercel.app/
I iterated on the design and content about three times getting great feedback after each one. Instead of blasting all of the people offering to give feedback after I made one update, I asked only a few at a time. This made it so I was able to make a few meaningful iterations and get quick feedback on the newly updated stuff.
I also added things like https://chaport.com instant chat to the landing page as well as hotjar analytics.
Now to find more interested people, get more feedback, and start building the MVP!
I've been using Adobe XD to create a design prototype to communicate the idea of Tidy Workspace. I've been resisting the urge to write code and am working on finding interested customers before I build the app.
I'm already up to five before this redesign and have a goal of ten before I start coding.
Here's a link for the video I made that will go on the landing page: https://www.loom.com/share/7c447f138cd5426a965c5ed0c2154c44
After taking a break from working on another project, I decided to explore this idea. I've been a user of https://tryshift.com for a while and the email switching feature is really good. I didn't like how they were trying to become the only browser you use.
After learning this type of thing was possible to be built as a browser extension, I wanted to try building it.
Instead of going heads down and writing a ton of code first, I'm validating the idea. I've set up a landing page at https://tidyworkspace.com with design mockups and an email drop. I'm going to various communities to get design feedback and asking a lot of connections for feedback.
I already have three other people who are excited about the product. I'm gonna try to get to ten before building anything.
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