Week 2 - Refining and tidying up

Usable, if not totally useful... yet.

What a week it’s been! Our house recovered nicely from illness to allow a somewhat normal groove of building.

Where last week was largely just getting things functional and into place, this week was about iterating, adding design, and improving the user experience. For example, we added a little bit more information to the marketing site:

And fleshed out user profiles a bit:

We also got a public changelog published that tracks all the updates that get pushed every day:

Really proud to have gotten the first round of invites sent out to our early access members, who have already helped provide some high-quality feedback and improvements. It’s been super energizing getting to see people start to flesh out their profiles.

A big focus going forward is going to be on more structured planning. Establishing a more well-defined roadmap might slow things down initially, but will help speed things up in the long run.

Aside from that, next week will most likely focus on one of the following areas:

• Fleshing out individual project pages. These could be used to talk about and showcase a project or just use as a place to collect notes (publicly or privately).

• Separation of projects and ideas. Projects should be showcased. Ideas should be disinfected and validated. This potentially relates to the need for a public roadmap and allowing people to provide feedback on those items.

If you have thoughts and feelings about which you’d like to see first, let me know.

Week in tweets:

Day 7:

Zack Gilbert @zackgilbert

Day 7 of @projectgardenco was mostly a childcare day. But finally got around to some updates once the family was in bed. Decided that I should probably put up a bit more info than just an email form.

Day 8:

Zack Gilbert @zackgilbert

Day 8 of @projectgardenco (kiddo is back at child care... yay!) - It's been a week and the lack of any sort of design was really bothering me. I wanted to at least get something beyond the drab for sharing.

Day 9:

Zack Gilbert @zackgilbert

Day 9 of @projectgardenco - No meetings or errands, so was able to get a decent amount done. A lot of cleanup and UX improvements. Planning to start sending invites out to early access signups either today or tomorrow.

Day 10:

Zack Gilbert @zackgilbert

Day 10 of @projectgardenco - Cleaned things up to the point that I was able to start sharing access with early access members. Been super helpful to find edge cases that need cleaning. Getting over the fact that it's still so simple and not quite what I want it to be... yet.

Day 11:

Zack Gilbert @zackgilbert

Day 11 of @projectgardenco - Started onboarding some users and getting feedback and fixing edge cases. Have started playing with having an accessible changelog. Hoping to start putting together a more thoroughly planned roadmap for people to follow and provide feedback for.

Day 12:

Zack Gilbert @zackgilbert

Day 12 of @projectgardenco - largely a rest and family hang day. But made some minor adjustments thanks to some great feedback from early users and wanted to get the automated changelog page working during the kiddo's nap.

Day 13:

Zack Gilbert @zackgilbert

Day 13 of @projectgardenco was largely a family day. When the boy was napping, I did some writing and planning. Sending out the weekly update newsletter shortly.

How you can help:

This week has largely been about refining and getting past the initial embarrassment of the earliest versions and getting to the point where I’m able to start gathering feedback from people that’s more than just “here’s my idea”.

If you’d like to get the latest and greatest updates as they happen, you can follow along on Twitter: @zackgilbert and @projectgardenco. Please feel free to send along your thoughts, high fives, recommendations, or any and all feedback.

And if you’re feeling really adventurous, you can always support this project by grabbing one of the 8 remaining Early Access Lifetime Membership spots.

Until next week, keep growing!