After using Easel and the Projects section I though I’d kick in a bit of feedback
Things I liked, even loved
- The ability to go straight from Easel into creating a project, good stuff
- Free image/file hosting for project files. Absolutely brilliant and useful
- Project links display include the project title. so nice
Minor issues
- Inability to turn off the auto cycle of the header images
** when images are a different size it jumps the page around, making it hard to read any instructions - Image display dimensions should be listed up front (aspect ratio is already so it helps)
- Public should not be the default (and should be selectable on the creation page, in line with other info)
- Subtitle (in the Overview section) appears to do nothing and isn’t visible anywhere I could see
- Materials adding is a bit over complex… you have to know the exact store page title, and the exact part number
- Materials not available via Inventables should be listable in this section
- Tools section appears to be non-functional, and should allow listing other tools (for instance there’s nothing as simple as a hammer in there)
- Not sure if there are any specific reasons for using the old version unported CC lisenses… the (current) new ones are generally considered to have better international support
** Might be nice to include the logo images with the license
** Would probably be good to allow other licenses, or an optional waiver space, since technically products made with the instructions also inherit the license terms (which I don’t think is an intended consequence, or even common understanding in this use case) - in the Instructions section, selecting multiple, or deselecting all images to include in a section is non-obvious (ctrl+click) and could use a small note after the “Choose Photos” label
Potential Improvements
- BBCode instead of Textile for formatting in instructions section
** more familiar to most users, easier to maintain and control (but probably a PITA to setup) - User Selectable Categories (either preset options, or #tags) for automatic sorting… potentially required for making it public?
** reduces the need for staff to categorize projects, allows cross categorization, automates user collections - Report Function for public projects
** automates spam control - Number coded URL’s with optional title extensions
** Prevents unopenable projects if the title parser fails on unicode characters, allows identical project names eliminating title parser checks and unique identifier additions
** ex: www.inventables.com/projects/GY47X3/Random-Project-Name/ but only requires www.inventables.com/projects/GY47X3/ to open - Ability to delete project
** copied projects can’t be removed, and can generate a fair amount of cruft. perhaps limit it to private projects or time frame? - private projects probably shouldn’t be visible via the the userpage to other users
Overall I really love the projects functionality and appreciate it’s availability. All the listed items are just minor nit-picking, but if it never gets said, it never makes it to the next iteration right? = )