Thanks for writing this, I learned a lot! Last weekend I started a peer-to-peer group video calling project. Seeing your whole approach made the entire system easier to understand.
The reason it clicked was because at the time, a colleague offered to mentor me. This helped since he would assign me cases related to my skill level, show me how to ask better questions, and explain how things worked in context to our tech stack.
In the forward of my copy of Design of Everyday Things, the author points out that he could have used computers and mobile devices as but the examples he provides gave me a much deeper understanding of design. That being said, i still plan on buying the new edition because of the new chapters, brand new examples and ideas on implementation that may be more helpful to a dev-signer like yourself.
It might depend heavily on what type of app you have made and who users are.
On one end of the spectrum of human behaviour, you have people who skip the manual entirely and go straight to trying to figure it out themselves. They will be pissed if you don't have a tutorial when they get stuck.
On the other end, you have the type of people who will carefully follow every instruction you provide them, and will be upset if you don't provide a guide or instructions upfront.
Regarding interactive messages, I recently used this plugin on a recent project. If a new user opted to take the tour, they could follow along down a series of options, interact with the form fields or UI that was being highlighted and close the tour at anytime. They could also opt out and start the tour later if they got stuck. One week in and we are already seeing an impact on the KPI for the project. http://usablica.github.io/intro.js/
there is definitely a difference between knowing how to make a prototype and being able to code at a production level. Again, without mentorship it's difficult to learn the difference.
Definitely had a similar experience When I was still working from home. Working for 30-45 minutes and then play video games, work out, and even just clean the apartment.
A tea timer by your desk is a great way to approach this at work, personally I find 15 - 20 minutes of work 5 minutes of procrastinating is good balance.
Personally I wouldn't charge during the closed beta because the insights you will gain from your first customers is worth more than money.
That being said, if you need to keep the roof over your head, let a few people try the product for a short amount of time, and ask them how much they would be willing to pay. You can fine tune the amount as you add more customers and get more feedback.
This is really great. I was going to use Ratchet for a Android prototype but having the native UI components sets better expectations of how the app will look and fell. Thanks for putting it together
I bet this would look pretty cool outside mixed in with some other light painting gear. Always a pain to get the background/environment the colours you want.
Had a two term multimedia class in high school. One half of the class was learning Flash timeline animation and the other was HTML / CSS. The professor had us start in notepad before jumping into FrontPage or Dreamweaver. My first major project was to redesign the schools website. After that, I kept tinkering with personal projects, picking apart bigger websites and eventually I pursued a CS degree.