Over the last week we have been user testing NestWell pretty extensively only to find that our application UX/UI style was a little confusing and perhaps even off-putting (yikes). :)
So, with a lot of hard work, we have completely changed the work flow. It is now a much more fun and straight forward user experience.
As a software developer I find it amazing how I can think something is completely usable only to find it isn’t at all. I guess that is the fun of what we do though. We get to release, receive feedback and iterate on that feedback.
Check it out and let us know if you think it’s fun.
Mashable.com is having a lunchtime pole today (yeah, yeah I know…I love the site) asking readers what their favorite iPhone applications are…
As I’m reading I notice that within the first 20 comments there are two people pimping their own app.
First was Jason Wong:
zing! but I built it. Is that so wrong? After that’s Birdfeed, Byline, Facebook & Defender Chronicles.
Jason’s comment didn’t bother me. I love the name of his app and at least he participated in the pole by listing off some nice other apps on the iPhone he likes.
The comment that got me thinking about this was one by Tom Sprows:
I have to say QpixL. I love asking questions with pictures and posting it to my FB and Twitter accounts. http://www.QpixL.com
I guess what bothered me is that Tom’s comment screamed “Hey everyone I created this and it’s awesome” without any disclosure at all. How do I know Tom is the founder? I didn’t. I went to the site and sure enough on the front page there was the quote “This app with change the way you ask questions - Tom Sprows, Founder” (see screenshot).
I guess it’s just interesting to me that one commenter now has me interested in his application (Jason and Zing!) and another couldn’t have turned me off more.
I think it’s perfectly alright to be proud of something you’ve created and I also don’t doubt that Mr Sprows loves his QpixL so much that it might be his favorite app…but there are undoubtedly other apps he loves and next time he should share them too.
So, like I wrote yesterday, we have been struggling as software engineers on how to market our new start up. We think we have a nice and very useable product but how on earth do we show it to the people who would use it?
There are a lot of different avenues to take and one avenue approached me via email this morning.
The email I received was from Adam at Mashable.com (I emailed them yesterday seeing if they would be interested in profiling us) giving me a link to submit NestWell.com to the Microsoft BizSpark program.
Microsoft BizSpark is a unique program for start-ups like ours to join, get mentorship, support, visibility, and have full use of the Microsoft development suite for free for three years.
What’s in it for Microsoft you ask? Well my guess is the answer is in the software. Getting Microsofts development stack for free would enable you to build your application completely on Microsoft Server 8 running IIS with .NET/Silverlight/Whateverelse as the cherry on top. After three years start-ups in the program will have to start paying for those products and that gets pricey.
NestWell.com is running on a Linux server, running Apache, built with PHP (using the Cake framework if you care) with other automated python processes running via CRON.
And that my friends is a completely different paradigm.
I would really like to sign up for the program but I am going to need to think about it a little more. The companies involved with BizSpark are great and I respect Microsoft but unfortunately we don’t use their development tools and have no intention to in the future.
After reading through the user agreement there is no requirement as far as I can tell to completely use Microsoft products but since we don’t use one (nothing, not even IE other than testing) I’m not sure where that leaves us.
I am going to have to chew on this tonight and think it over. Great program for sure…but are we a fit? I don’t know.
If anyone with personal experience with BizSpark has advice I would love to hear it! Drop me a line at “info [at] nestwell [dot] [com]”.
NestWell.com is my first start up. Well, let me rephrase that, my first start up that I actually feel has value and hasn’t lost my interest in while building it.
In the past my start up ideas have been almost laughable. Perhaps this was due to youth or perhaps due to me constantly overcomplicating the idea. I have a feeling however it might have been due to my ideas not carrying any long term value for a potential group of users.
For the first time I feel differently about this idea; I feel differently about NestWell.
NestWell is a unique idea and one of the more complex and interesting uses of the Twitter API I have seen to date.
My favorite thing about NestWell though is that it simply works. It does exactly what we set out for it to do. So long as you are a Twitter user NestWell can really help you find the home of your dreams.
Even with how good I feel about NestWell, the following questions continue to swirl around my head:
Will anyone find it? How will they find it? Will they use it? If they find it, will they understand it?
The soft launch of NestWell was last Friday and so far we haven’t marketed it at all. I know that makes it a little hard for people to find NestWell but believe me, it is on purpose. We need a couple of weeks to make sure our automated CRON processes are working correctly and that there are no serious bugs in our live environment. So far so good but what happens after that time?
The only little bit of marketing we have done so far was sending two emails today to TechCrunch and Mashable to see if they might have any interest in profiling NestWell. I can only imagine how many emails they get daily just like the ones I sent. I don’t see how we can possibly stand out in just a few words but you never know…We’ll just have to wait and see.
Written communication is an interesting problem for a couple of software engineers. If asked to write a few methods or classes then no problem, but asking to emotionally communicate a product is a completely different and something we will have to work at.
We’re proud of NestWell and hope that if you try it out you will enjoy it.
Since our launch we have discovered something…a lot of the listings we send don’t have images!
Why? Because the listings we send are so new on market a lot of times an image has not been loaded into the MLS for it yet.
So, we’ve added a to-do item: Add ability to track no photos and re-sweep them. This will be happening sooner than later.
Just warning you…I am writing this on my iPhone which means my writing may be worse than normal. :)
The first 24 hours of nestwell.com is officially over and I have to say things are going great! As of this morning we’re shipping off new real estate listings to Twitter users in San Francisco, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Boise and more!
The incredible thing to me is we’ve barely had to alter the initial settings to our automated cron processes. Things are just running incredibly smooth.
I’m gonna get away from the computer now and actually do a little construction around the house!
Excited about where nestwell is headed and can’t wait for tomorrow.
Hi, If you’re reading this there is a chance you have found our brand new product, NestWell.com. There is also a chance you have no idea what I’m talking about.
What is NestWell? Simply put it’s an online real estate application focused on delivering new listings to potential buyers via Twitter.
Now, I know a lot of non Twitter users might not see the value in this but to us Twitter truly is the next generation of web syndication. Think of it as RSS 2.0 with an insane amount of great mobile phone applications supporting it and it’s features.
As of right now, our product is in “soft launch” phase. We’re not really trying to promoting it yet because we are fine tuning all of our automated processes to effectively deliver listings via the Twitter paradigm.
This blog is going to be used to discuss NestWell and real estate, write about new features and ideas, and document our start up.
If you’re reading this feel free to give NestWell a try. You might find the odd issue here and there but all in all our service is running pretty solid considering our beta launch. If you try it please give us feedback or let us know of any issues you encounter. Thanks! :)