Kindling

Kindling is a web application that allows people in your organization to brainstorm and collaborate on ideas. Basically, it a Digg for ideas: people submit ideas and everyone can vote on their favorite ones so they “bubble up” to the surface and hopefully to the attention of someone who can turn that idea into a reality.

Homepage

Whenever I’m reviewing a site, I always time myself to see how long it takes to determine what the site is actually about. If I can’t answer “what does this site do?” within 5 seconds, there is a problem.

Five-second test

When I come to Kindling’s homepage, I focus on the logo because of its dramatic contrast with the white background. My eye then goes to the animated flash banner. It is a nice touch, but mostly unnecessary: it doesn’t help me understand what Kindling is. The headline to the right of the video is exactly what I’m looking for. I come across it in the first few seconds of coming to the site, but it should be given more visual weight. Make it bigger and bolder.

I see a screenshot in the top half of the page and I’m immediately intrigued. I soon realize it is a video, too. Oh goody! I click the play button and a lightbox takes over my screen. I patiently wait for the video to load, but it never begins to play. I have to click the play button again. That’s a lot of things that happen just to play a video.

How it should be

1. I click on the play button
2. The video begins playing immediately in the same place, similar to how it is on the features page.

If the video was bigger, it would make sense to use a lightbox, but in this case why waste the user’s time with the fancy lightbox.

Signing up for the free trial

The homepage provides a clear next action by having a large button directing me to “Sign up for a free trial.” I’ll pretend I run a small online retailer that:

• has 35 employees in different locations
• has many different categories of products

Based on my company, I have two choices of accounts: the Standard or the Pro. The biggest difference I see is the number of users and the number of rooms. I could give access to all of my employees with both plans, so I move onto considering the number of rooms. I soon realize I have no idea what a room is. I thought this was an app about sharing ideas, not some sort of chat room.

The mouseover text doesn’t help me either, it just puts the “10 rooms” into sentence form. It doesn’t tell me their use.

Since I don’t know what a room is, I decided to go with the “Standard” plan. The signup form is pretty standard (no pun intended).

Real time validation (using JavaScript) prevents errors and helps me get through the signup process as quickly as possible, which will get your customers right into your app.

I am concerned about giving my credit card information. I thought this was a free trial…

Kindling wants to have your credit card info on hand so they can charge you as soon as your free trial is up. This practice is understandable from a business perspective, but it can have consequences from users who sign up and accidentally forget to cancel their account.

Blank Slate

After I log in on my customized login page, I get to a page that tells me how to get started.

This page is pretty helpful, but it could use a little work to make my experience better as a first time user.

Suggestions

• Make the next action links bigger.
• Make it clear exactly where I’m going from the link text. “Take me there now!” doesn’t tell me much.
• Have more instructional videos displayed on the page, like the ones on the features page.

Adding an Idea

The process to post an idea is very simple, which encourages users to post more often. They don’t need to assign to-dos, permissions, or tags when they first submit it. The entire form is concentrated on the idea itself, obviously the central part of this app.

Voting for Ideas

The “Vote on Ideas” tab is an excellent way to get your employees involved in the decision making process. This is where the real magic of this app happens. Your employees can see every idea that’s been posted and vote for their favorites. Popular ones gradually rise to the top and to the attention of the decision makers in the company.

The colorful badges that show the number of votes make this app engaging and fun to use. I also like having a certain number of votes because it makes me think about what I want to happen.

Viewing an Idea

When I view an idea, I see all the information I could ever need, and even probably a little bit too much. I’m presented with 8 options on the left side. I’m still getting familiar with the app, so I’m not sure what each one does.

I like the comment forum. It encourages discussion about the idea and also informs users of changes in the status of the idea.

Suggestions

• Blend the eight options better with the design. Possibly integrate them into the idea information itself or consolidate them into a single dropdown button menu.
• Use tooltips for the options to help explain what they do. Expert users who know exactly what they do will never have to see them because they will click them too quickly. All it takes is adding a title attribute to each link.
• Put a video on the page for first time users explaining how to use the page and what each option means.
• Make the status changes look different than regular comments.
• Highlight the comments and changes made by the decision makers (CEO, COO, President, Marketing Manager, whatever it may be for your company). This will help let employees know that their voice is being heard by the people upstairs and encourage them to come back.

Making an Idea Happen

Once an idea is approved, it appears on the “Make it Happen” page. Here, an employee can volunteer to implement an idea and view ideas that other people have taken responsibility for. Once I click the “I’ll do it” button, I can click on the title of the idea and get to the idea page again.

It is mostly the same as before, but I see a green notice at the top letting me know. This is a nice touch to the design and also prevents any confusion for a person viewing this idea from any other page.

I then click the “Complete” button on the idea page (once I’ve actually done it, of course). I can head on over to the “Greatness Achieved” page to admire my hard work.

Suggestion

• Make a tooltip for each viewing option on this page. I have an idea of where the “Greatness Achieved” tab will go, but I want to be sure. Again, it’s just a simple title attribute for your link anchor.

Account Management

What I really love about this page is its simplicity. It doesn’t have the option to add your phone number, website, or title. This isn’t a contact management app, this is simply an idea sharing app. This eliminates unnecessary complexity.

Suggestion

• Make the default email notification “Comment” rather than “Always.” Getting an email for each status change, comment, and posting for every single idea can overwhelm your inbox pretty quickly.

Administration

For the final section of this review, I’ll take a look at the administration panel. It is accessed through a tiny link at the top of each page.

This panel probably won’t need to be accessed that often, so the text link provides plenty of accessibility.

Kindling offers some ability to customize your company’s page. The app does a great job of displaying a lot of options in a way that it easy to understand.

You have top level navigation on the left and individual options taking up most of the screen on the right.

I have the option to customize the default email notification (remember how I was hating on that before). I will give Kindling credit for letting administrators choose, but they should still default the entire thing to “Commented On.”

I retract my preview criticism.

If you want to cancel your account, you can easily do so from the “Payment Information” page. It is a bit confusing to find at first, but at least you can cancel your account without sending a request to Kindling’s support.

I’m kindly reminded that I will lose all my data if I cancel my account. I expected that, but what I didn’t expect was to be given instructions on how to export my data right on the cancellation page. Kindling is a helpful app, even if I’m on my way out.

This leaves me with a good impression of Kindling and even though I’m canceling, I might recommend it to a friend. Had it been a pain to cancel and no warning about my precious ideas (the future of my company) was displayed, I would’ve remembered Kindling as a horrible application, even if it was just my last moments that were sour.

Overall

Kindling is an excellent idea and it is well executed. I was confused at certain parts (mostly with what exactly a “Room” is), but that could be fixed with a better blank slate for first time users. For a small company, it might be a bit pricey at $49 a month, but it is definitely worth it to get feedback and ideas from your employees. Their the ones on the front lines so they know what is really going on.

# Usability Review tags: blank slate, collaboration, ideas, web app on Aug 26, 2009