04-28-2007

Springnote Release Notes - April 28, 2007 - "Usability Improvement"

Hey everyone.

As with our release two weeks ago, this is our second release of our periodical two week release notes plan. =)

This week we have been working on improving Springnote usability.

First, to improve usability we had 6 participants go through a usability test for three days from April 25 to 27.

We received a lot of feedback through this usability test from first time users of Springnote on confusing features, UI problems, hard to find functions/features among many other issues that these users were experiencing. 4 of the 6 participants were not users of Springnote, while 2 of the participants were Springnote users. We had wrote some instructions and had them look over and try out many features including changing a calendar, creating links, moving pages, getting out of a shared page among many other tasks.

Although we put a lot of effort in creating functions and features in Springnote, we have realized that we need to pay more attention to usability in the future.

Specifically, we have discovered the following problems (listed below)

• There is no indication or guide on where items/features/functions are located. (i.e., renaming page names)
• Realization of confusion during page sharing or setting page permission process.
• Lack of reasons and indications on why certain functions/features cannot be used.
• Lack of explanation on difference between text effects and paragraph. Also the lack of instructions on what paragraph means and does.
• Lack of consideration in terms of habitual expectations while using Springnote.

Using the opinions from test participants as a basis on restructuring the UI, we will start to reform the UI this week. We would like to thank all 6 participants for their time and efforts! =)

We will be showing our reformed UI that our users have continually suggested and proposed from the user community. We are now starting to work on user suggestions and proposals chosen during the second week of April.

Let's now take some time to look at issues and topics from the past two weeks.

Hot Issues

• We've recently have seen a lot of users using Springnote to plan their wedding. Also, the amount of users creating wedding invitations on Springnote is also increasing. We want to congratulate all those who are getting married. =)

  • http://khan007.springnote.com/pages/166189
  • http://benelog.springnote.com/pages/17596

• We have recently found a user that is using Springnote to create a dictionary! The enthusiam and partipation level is amazing. Take a look below~

  • http://libterm.springnote.com/

• As promised, we have sent all beta test participants a gift for their participation. We're pleased to see that everyone is enjoying their gifts. =)

  • goodfeel님 http://www.springnote.com/post/2238?page=1
  • Ed http://www.springnote.com/post/2276?page=1
  • Yebit http://www.springnote.com/post/2252?page=1

• We have had some problems with our search feature where page searching would momentarily not function correctly. Currently, we have discovered the source of the problem and restored our service to its normal state. We want to thank everyone that sent in reports on this issue. We ask everyone to continue leaving comments and reports on Springnote problems (link shown below). 

  • http://www.springnote.com/board/comm_bug
• The number of Springnote users has gone up to 20,000. We are pleased that the number of Springnote users are increasing along with people using Springnote for diverse purposes. =)
• We have revised Springnote's terms and conditions. We have received problems and concerns related to our terms and conditions, and our Springnote team agrees that these problems do exist.
  After much discussion with our judicial team, we have finally revised Springnote's terms and conditions so that users can comfortably use Springnote under more comfortable terms and conditions. Revisions made to the terms and conditions can be seen at http://www.springnote.com/post/2200.=)

Changes made to Springnote in the last two weeks (2007/04/30)

Improvement on Usability

• [Improvement] Clarificaiton on public/private status.

  • We want to thank Nam-moo for the suggestion.
  • We have received a lot of comments and complaints on the way we originally had public/private settings mixed in with sharing settings. We have now put page public/private settings through a lock icon right next to the page title. Now setting your page to public/private can be easily toggled by clicking the icon.
     
       
    
  • For more detailed information see : http://springnote.com/post/2331

• [Improvement] UI for status notifcation during auto-save 

  • We want to thank Kaisyu and charlz for this suggestion.

  • There were a lot of users worried on whether their page has been successfully saved or not. We wanted to take away all worries on this issue by having an on-screen notification displaying the status during auto-save.

    
    Clicking the disk icon will show you the last time the page has been saved. =)

    

  • For more detailed information see : http://www.springnote.com/post/2199

• [Improvement] Modification to clarify page confliction when creating a new page with a name that matches a preexisting page.

  • Originally, we had numbers inserted to the end of page names (_2, _3, etc.), However, we have realized that it wasn't easily distinguishable, so we have added 'copy' to the back of name conflicting page names.
  • For more detailed information see : http://www.springnote.com/post/2054

• [Performance Improvement] Improved usability on 'All Pages'(left plane) and Bug Fixes

  • Fixed problems when collapsing and expanding pages that contain sub-pages and the appearance of blank spaces when hovering the mouse over the root page.
  • For more detailed information see : http://www.springnote.com/post/2085

New Features

• Added feature that let's you find your login ID.
  

  • Added feature that let's you find your ID by using your email address.
  • You can find this feature on our homepage right above the field where you would input your login name.
     
    
  • For more detailed information see  http://www.springnote.com/post/2087

• Added ODF support
  

• • Thanks to CN for this suggestion.
  • ODF is an OASIS (Open Document Format for Office Applications) based on XML Open Office 1.0. You can now freely exchange documents without dependency on platforms and software.
  • ODF  is currently supported by Open Office, StarOffice, and KOffice using supporting all types of desktop search programs. Currently governments of different nations along with many large corporations are promoting this file format to be the standard for administrative documents.
  • When clicking the 'Upload' button from the toolbar, you can import ODF file contents into a page in Springnote.
  • For more detailed information see : http://www.springnote.com/post/2056
  • We are planning to support ODF and PDF exporting in the near future. =)   Please refer to : http://woc.openmaru.com/blog/50

What we are currently working on...

• The following features are from user ideas that have been selected and added in our "Vote for new features" section during late April. We have been working on these features right after they were selected and we are currently finishing up. Development is taking up a lot of time, but you can expect the following features in our third release.

• Table Editing Feature (Suggested by : Digilog, No. of Votes : 122)

  A suggestion to add table editing features in Springnote. We've decided to first provide light and basic table editing tools, and we will gradually be adding more features to it. We are also concentrating on increasing stability on this feature.

• Export to blog feature (Suggested by : freesoul, No. of Votes : 16)
• We are working on supporting a blog exporting feature to other blogs that support Open API. We are preparing and structuring this feature so that it will be easy to use. =)
• Write on Springnote through SMS (Cell Phone Text Messaging)
• A lot of people have been waiting for this feature. We are currently working on this feature

Preview for our next release

The following new feature has been picked as the number 1 requested feature for the first week of May by users. =)

1. Internal linking feature (suggestion by barrios, Requested by 56 users)

You can look at the following link to see the upcoming added features during the first week of May. http://www.springnote.com/post/2320

To listen to the opinions of our users on what you guys think about Springnote, we are planning to meet with a few Springnote users sometime this week. Of course, we'll provide dining costs. We invite all of you to Toz at Kang-Nam station on May 4th (Friday) from 7pm. Please look here fore more information http://www.springnote.com/post/2300 . =)

As time goes by, we are gradually seeing Springnote growing thanks to everyone's help and support.

We hope that you will continue to support us into creating a better Springnote.

Springnote Team