Show HN: A web app for creating interactive people plots and family trees

Re:Show HN: A web app for creating interactive people plots ... by dclaysmith on Wednesday February 15, 2012 @11:38AM (#3594909)

Congrats on the launch. A few thoughts... After registering, why not skip the "Create Your First Plot" step and throw the user straight to their plot. Just make up a name "Your First Plot" and let them know how to edit it.

Honestly, I don't know why I would use this (beyond maybe creating a family tree). I'm not saying there aren't loads more uses--I just don't know them. On your landing page, maybe you could show some of the use cases (show one embedded on a web page or used in a school project, etc).

My main recommendation would be to remove any functionality that really isn't necessary. I found the edit interface a little overwhelming with all the settings you can change (colors, images, etc).

Good luck!

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Re:Show HN: A web app for creating interactive people plots ... by alexkearns on Wednesday February 15, 2012 @11:51AM (#3594974)

Taking people straight to a new peopleplot when they sign up is a good idea that we had not considered, and would remove one more form for them to fill in.

With regards use cases, we are not entirely sure what people will want to use it for yet. Family trees are the obvious choice but it is a crowded market. We have outlined some possible use cases on the home page, though have not got any hard examples to back that up yet.

We'll just see what our users (assuming we get any!) have to say.

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Re:Show HN: A web app for creating interactive people plots ... by chris_dcosta on Wednesday February 15, 2012 @12:15PM (#3595093)

I think your app looks great, and behaves well even in IE8.

The problem you rightly point out is that family trees space is crowded (although there are posts here which argue that that doesn't really matter) I think your idea doesn't yet know what it wants to be. Is ist a family tree machine or an organisational plotr?

Perhaps to distinguish yourself you need to make a choice at first, at least to clarify the message.

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Re:Show HN: A web app for creating interactive people plots ... by alexkearns on Wednesday February 15, 2012 @12:29PM (#3595151)

Or create two sites - one for family trees, other for organisational charts. Identical except for the branding. See which takes off and focus on that.

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