listing them in some what the order i encountered them (not order of importance), and much from the pov of a new user:
STUCK IN CREATION: i’m a new user. i hit “Create”, then “Save Now”, “Sign up with FB” (or “Sign Up” then “Sign up with FB”).
once logged in, tho, it still says “Sign Up” and “Login” on up-right, w/ no “Back to Profile” or User links. so i’m stuck, no way to get to my settings, profile, logout. see screenshot, the story was saved, so i’m logged in, but the top button still wants me to “Login ”
DRAFTS: once you’ve signed up and come back to the site, the first thing a user might want to do is work on Draft(s). but via site pages have no obvious link to the users stories. the top-right User select-menu lists has “Settings”, “Subscriptions”, etc. but not “Profile”. that’s b/c the menu itself (the username/gravatar) is the link to “Profile”.
generally, tho, while a select menu can have links, it isn’t itself a link. so it’s a discoverability issue. and your Edit screen User select-menu is just the opposite: the username is NOT hot and the options DO list a Profile link.
PROFILE: in fact the user “profile” page is not named “profile” anywhere. there is no link on the text “Profile” anywhere (except Edit). the Settings page has “Settings” heading text and a “/settings” URL, but a user’s profile has no indication “profile” is the term for that page.
a side terminology note, in the Feedback section, you often refer to Settings->Profile. this implies a relationship that doesn’t exist, ie, the “Settings” page does not have a subset/child Settings->”Profile” page.
PREVIEW: another discoverability issue- it’s great that “/preview” gives to a nice preview of your draft, and that the Draft thumbnail links to prevu, but there’s no way for users to know that. prevu is a damn important part of the process: seems like you above the thumb links could add a word: “Delete | Preview | Edit”. (you have 2 links to edit up there, but none to prevu.)
TITLE = URL: there’s no indication that by titling the Story you’re also setting the URL. and once set, the title can be changed by the URL stays the same. new users should n=know this early, so that can title for the URL they want, then later change the title. otherwise user’s get unwieldy, truncated, bad-for-SEO urls like:
http://storify.com/jcstearns/tracking-journalist-arrests-during-the-occupy-prot
THUMBNAIL: it appears the thumbnail is generated from the first image in a story, then re-sized to a width of 286px and using the top 120px (height) of that resized image. that’s my best guess anyway. users should know this.
IMAGE IS LINK: another thing users should know is the image they post are references (hot links) to off-site images, not images uploaded to Storify. if that image is moved, renamed or deleted the entry (and link, now a 404) remain, but the image is gone.
if that image is the thumbnail, the thumb goes blank, ie. doesn’t get the Storify default thumb, as in this top-left “test”:
TITLE-1: if you title a new Story the same as another one you have that’s identically titled, you get a “-1” added to your URL. new users should know that, because of the hard-to-find Drafts list, they might try twice to start the same story.
then when they look at their Drafts, the thumbnails for the same title look the same, and there’s no way to tell which is which, esp. since mousing over the thumb does not show an URL in the status bar. the only way to tell is mousing over the Edit link and noticing the “-1”.
(also that URL slug can’t be reclaimed by deleting the original, you still get the “-1”.)
TIPS: the “Tips” are few in number, none contextual, but very persistant. even after a story is created and published, the “Create a Story” continues to pop up:
i think once you hit a “hide” link on any of the Tips, they no longer plague you. but not sure. “Dismiss” is the more common term for that behavior.
also the tip modal window covers the login screen:
MEDIA- YOUTUBE- LINK: the Edit screen’s right Media search panel is quite versatile. but there’s a couple probs w/ the YouTube tab. first it delivers improperly formed youtube URLs, so when you click, you don’t go to the vid but to another but to YouTube’s main page. the URL in the Media for a YouTube search result is:
http://youtube.com/?v=7dXi-w09WHc
it should be:
once you move the vid into the left Story col and publish it, the vid gets the right link. but not while it’s in the Media search results.
MEDIA- YOUTUBE- SEARCH: are you scrapping the YouTube search results? b/c it’s not behaving as well as it could. eg, enter this in Media in either Google or Embed URL tab and you find the vid in the URL above:
TEDxCairo – Hany Adel & Amir Eid – Sout El Horreya (Acoustic)
if you go to YouTube site itself and enter that as search, you also find it. but if you enter it in you=r Media- You Tube search, you get nada. “TEDxCairo – Hany Adel” also gets no results. when you enter just “TEDxCairo” it finally appears a little way down the list.
TAGS: how does a Story get tags and hashtags added? i added neither to my story, but it lists in your topic:
http://storify.com/topics/arab-spring
but not in hashtag:
http://storify.com/hashtags/arabspring
COMMENT LINK: in a long story it’s hard to get to the comment form as that load-more data js keeps pushing the bottom of the page outta reach as you scroll down. maybe a Comment link at the top is in order. (or better yet a “Load More” link option).
that auto-load js is also a prob is your trying to get to the footer on a topic page. you never get there.
MALWARE: speaking of topic and maybe other pages, might you be able to trap for malware links if folk’s Storify pages have mal-content. after about the third auto-load of more stories on this page:
http://storify.com/topics/arab-spring
i got:
EDIT- BLANK: about 1/4 of the time i get a data-less screen when i click to edit a published story:
don’t know what would happen is i hit Save or Publish, would is save a data-less vers and lose the story data.
FOOTER: half the links on your footer all go to the same short single page: ie, “About Team Jobs… Contact” are all really About page.
btw, the About Team list sez Xavier is CEO, while Feedback insists your fearless leader is “Burt Herman (Co-founder and CEO, Storify)”… dueling CEOs?
FEEDBACK: i have numerous comments about the Feedback section but i’m guessing that functionality is outta your control: ie. looks like you use a service called UserVoice. so i won’t send Feedback concerns for now.
———————————————
SAVE/PUB CHANGES
IMAGE WIDTH MAX/RATIO?
Media- Storify (icon) tab: expected behavior would be to search published Storifys (what word). click story symbol
SOUND: .mp3 player, NPR?
???by Date,
???img link is site front (hearingvoices.com)
Videos will, audio won’t
floating share box
Allow items to be deleted from the Storypad – Customer Feedback for Storify
Add a “search” tool – Customer Feedback for Storify
FEEDBACK: click right-side floating link, get UserVoice modal window. I’;ve already indictated i wanna go to feedback, why aren’t i there
tag, tags, hashtag, hashtags, hash, hash tags
(“hash” 2, “hash tag” 3, “hash tags” 6)
“ideas”
feedback, help, faq, how-to
“Guided tour” is barely a tour, and certainly not a guide nor guided. It’s a brief overview of features.
UserVoice (NOT Storify)
HELP:
http://feedback.storify.com/knowledgebase
2 “articles”, barely the beginnning of an FAQ.
2 articles
Helpdesk – Customer Feedback for Storify
Planned: Allow grouping of items and text in a story. – Customer Feedback for Storify
General: Top (276 ideas) – Customer Feedback for Storify
http://feedback.storify.com/forums/66927-general/suggestions/1366105-more-export-options
404
http://storify.com/hearvox/voices-from-tahrir/html
we do have an HTML version of stories, just take your story URL and place /html at the end to see it
http://storify.com/hearvox/voices-from-tahrir.html
#story .s-header h1.s-title { color: green; }
BLOG: use WP “more” feature for a jump. takes too long to skim titles.
http://blog.storify.com/
“Social storytelling” tweets and FB wall posts are barely useful when there published and become rapidly less useful.