Project Case Study: GetHelp!

The concept of the application looks really attractive to me. The interface looks good also. The application should have been a success even now, let alone it was built 2 years ago. I am quite curious about the result of the app. By the way, was it for the final project?

Now coming to the important part, what is the problem with the app.

1. Homepage:

1). The homepage is not able to show the user the status of his current requests.

2). Some of the elements are not really needed

a). Estimated time:

this somewhat does not make sense and it is obvious the user would not understand what it means

b). Location:

This is a useless element

c). SMS:

No one would be interested to be spammed through SMS. Another problem is how to realize the function.

3). Some elements are quite confusing:

a). Who do you want to ask:

The selections seem contradictory with each other. The users will probably get confused when using it.

Recommendation: Now that there are a lot of space in this page, we could just put the list of friends here.

b). "need quick help? add more details...": These two sentences are the most confusing to me. After some thoughts I guess it might mean that if the user completes the optional fields, the others will be more willing to help him...

Recommendation: Change it to: "Details (optional)"

2. Project page:

1). It is better that if users could have more options when posting new messages such as "private".

2). I am not sure whether the user will get informed if someone has posted on his project page. This is essential, though.

3. Statistics page:

There seems no big problems with this page but the "Reward system" should better be integrated into the posts. Specifically, after the user gets a Nickname, all the posts he wrote will have something like: "Jack-The Greate Guru wrote: ".

I have a recommendation that the developer could add in some "reward system" that has its own currency. Users could set up award points and give the user with the best answer the points from his own account.

This is generally my review of the application: GetHelp!