Show HN: Less Work, More Golf

http://www.scrambl.com

by mdoerneman • 15 years ago

14 16 15 years ago

scrambl.com

mdoerneman7• 15 years ago

I think we all need to spend less time working and more time golfing. Here's a start-up I created that can help.

I'd love to hear your feedback!

-Michael

agscala• 15 years ago

One thing I can think of is picking a date to golf on should probably be a calendar with a AM/PM toggle next to it. It's a bit hard to grok by glancing at it right now.

ChaseB• 15 years ago

I started www.niblink.com a couple years ago. Failed to get traction / pursued a new venture. The golf industry can be fun. Best of luck.

mdoerneman7• 15 years ago

I'm picking up on some sarcasm about the golf industry being fun. Would love to hear more.

sixtofour2• 15 years ago

Firefox 4.0.1. Ubuntu 10.04. I don't golf and I don't know anything about colors.

Pardon the following stream of consciousness.

I like the colors, the prominent Big Orange Button, the name and the uncluttered layout.

Is your font source so important that, among all the elements of all your pages, this is the one thing you can see at any screen size and scroll position? More important than Create Event and Login (see next para)?

None of your text or blocks re-flow if I have a small screen or if I simply resize my browser down, so you have to side-scroll. The Create Event and Login links at the top right disappear behind a scroll. There's nothing about your text that requires it be in lines that exact length, and there's nothing about your six flagged features (the bottom_feature divs) at the bottom that require them to be in two lines of three; they could re-flow.

Coming Soon, Auto Tee Times. "We make your tee times." Does that mean you actually secure the reservation at the course? You could charge money for that feature.

Create Event: I like that you can see most of what you can do without creating an account and logging in.

The Name and Email text fields extend way out of the Your Info column, into the Itinerary column.

Not sure I like one long column of blocks on the left on Create Event, and a column of just one block on the right.

The url for Create Event is /event/new. If you go to that url, and then manually to /event (by deleting "/new" in the address bar, or using the Uppity addon in Firefox), you display the root page and the formatting gets fubarred. If you're on the root/home page and then manually go to /event, you display the root page and the formatting is fine.

However: If you go to the Login page, /account/login_new, and then manually go up to /account, you get redirected to /account/login_new. Same if you manually go from / to /account, the same redirection. I think this is better behavior than /event/new in the previous paragraph.

Login page: On the scale of security, this is a minor issue, especially on a non-critical site like yours. I tried to reset my password with a fake, non-existent account, iamfake@example.com. After clicking, the page tells me there is no account with this email. What if I wasn't iamfake, but wanted to know whether iamfake had an account on this site or not? You just told me. Anyone else want to comment on this information leak? I see it a lot elsewhere. A better response would be to say something like "If this account exists, we have sent email ..." regardless of whether there is such an account.

I created an account. An entire 15 seconds has gone by, and I still haven't received the confirmation email! :) Seriously, I hate this. When I create an account (anywhere) it's because I'm so interested that I want to do stuff now. (still no email). I'm always curious, in general, why these things take so long. Is it by design, to fight spam bots, or do you (and others) outsource this and your service just takes its own sweet time? Or is it just an unavoidable condition of email?

In general I think this is an unfortunate hurdle in an otherwise smooth and inviting (inviting almost by definition, since I'm taking the time to sign up) site and process. I wonder how many potential customers/users are lost at this stage? (still no email ...)

We have email! I didn't time it, between five and ten minutes I think. I've abandoned potential new sites in less time.

Bear with me on this next one. When I created a new account, I was left on a logged in page while waiting for the activation email. It was the /account page. I know I'm logged in because I see "My Events", and "Logout" at the top. When I clicked on the activation link in the activation email, I was brought to a new page/tab on the /account/login_new page, not logged in. I reloaded and hard-reloaded, still not shown as logged in on that page.

Just a nit, but since I'm shown as logged in on the one page, and you've given me a cookie, shouldn't I be logged in on any page/tab? I like that you left me logged in on the /account page (remember, I've just created the account and I'm waiting for the activation email on that page), it gives me something to do while waiting for the activation email. But then I should be logged in no matter what other tab/pages I'm on, particularly the one that the email activation link brings me to. But, just a nit I'm picking.

My Friends: I added Friend1, Friend2 and Friend3. Deleted Friend2 with the red X on the right, that's pretty clear. What are the check boxes for, to the left of the friends, and the select all check box above them? Did you leave this feature on without any purpose? Did you intend to be able to create an event from here, by first selecting friends, and forgot to finish this feature?

Same comment for Courses.

Create Event: When I first created an event, I scrolled down to the Who block, far enough that Itinerary was not visible. I clicked on Friend1 and Friend3 repeatedly, and "nothing" happened. I wasn't able to see that those friends had been added to the Itinerary until I scrolled back up. And then I thought for half a second "how did those get in there? Oh, right."

Make those buttons in the Who block toggles, and highlight them when a friend is on the itinerary, unhighlight when you click again and toggle that friend off. It may be redundant, but I like the feedback to take place where I did the action.

Similar comment for the date buttons in the When block.

You have "clear all" in the three sections of the Itinerary block. In keeping with the suggestion in the preceding two paragraphs, add a clear all in the Who, When and Options block.

The names of the sections in the Itinerary block (Course Options, Date Options, Invites) should match the names of the corresponding blocks (Options, When, Who). Change one side or the other.

I like the idea of the Itinerary block. Maybe you could move it to span the top, and have it always visible regarless of scroll position (like your font source at the bottom :). You could then move the Who and Options block up to the top of the right column.

The order of the sections in the Itinerary block should match the displayed order of their corresponding blocks. If you were to re-arrange as above, with Itinerary across the top and the other blocks in a two by two grid, AND you re-designed so that the four blocks re-flowed into a single column of four when you re-size the page smaller, then the order of the sections in the Itinerary would be the top to bottom displayed order of the single column of four blocks. Extra fancy if you had the Itinerary sections arranged two by two to match the blocks' two by two grid when the screen is large, and rearranged the Itinerary sections to a single column when the blocks are a single column on a smaller screen/window.

I tried to add a non-existent golf course to my profile, but could not do it, I was limited to only what's in your drop down list. Do you really have all the courses in the country here? I suspect not, but maybe there's such a list.

As for that, you mis-spelled the Wellshire course in Denver as Weilshire. http://www.cityofdenvergolf.com/wellshire/

Please don't take any of the above as negative, I think you've made a great site. Whatever I said that's subjective is exactly that, subjective; you're the boss.

mdoerneman7• 15 years ago

Wow! Thank you very much for taking the time to provide such in-depth feedback. This is why I love this community so much.

sixtofour2• 15 years ago

Yer welcome.

I also just noticed that if I delete a friend from the Friends block on the My Profile page, that friend still is shown on the Itinerary on the event that I'm currently working on.

Also I forgot to mention on the Create Event page, Where should be listed on the Itinerary, to be consistent with listing the other three blocks in the Itinerary. You could also then make a Print view of the Itinerary. If you Print-Preview as it is, it doesn't look very good.

sabat• 15 years ago

Quick note: would be nice to see a tag line that explicitly states what you're offering. It's about setting up tee times with friends, correct? That should be stated more clearly and simply.

mdoerneman7• 15 years ago

I have thought about this tag line a lot but you're right, it could be more clear. I was trying to avoid using the phrase "make a tee time" as I didn't want to get lumped in to other tee time sites but I may want to rethink this. Thanks.

dmix2• 15 years ago

I've read everything on the page and I'm not exactly sure what it does.

I'm guessing its for planning golfing "events". But I doubt my father or the casual user would understand that.

mdoerneman7• 15 years ago

Scrambl sends out invites for golf and lets the group vote on the course and date.

How does that sound?

dmix2• 15 years ago

Much better.

I recommend putting that next to the getting started button. The top headline sells the benefit and next to the CTA explains what you're signing up for.

Yxven• 15 years ago

This seems like a cool idea. Have you considered expanding it to schedule anything? Trying to schedule boardgames with friends can be quite painful. You can play most of my collection with 4-5 people, but with 6 or 3, your options are quite limited (plus, I am typically trying to play my new 5 player game).

mdoerneman7• 15 years ago

Actually, I started down this path by creating a site that lets you schedule anything: www.DecideOnADate.com. You may want to try it out. With Scrambl we wanted to be different from other invitation sites and focus on a niche, which is golfers. The 2 apps may seem very similar at the moment but we have some cool features planned for Scrambl that are directly related to golf.

juddlyon• 15 years ago

Great idea and well-executed, congrats on the launch.

How'd you build it (get course info, tech stack, etc.)?

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