How makers stay productive

The visual design definitely needs an upgrade: now it looks like from the 00s and is difficult to comprehend due to the lack of visual hierarchy. UX-wise, I believe it's like Makerlog for reading, but a person who hasn't used Makerlog would have a hard time understanding how the site works and what they are supposed to do there.

Hi @bcye,

Here's your roast!

I think you need to spend a lot more time on making new users understand what they're looking at when they land on the homepage. I understand the high-level idea overall from the inverted colour box on top of the feed saying "Join the community" but I have no idea how it would work. Is it a Telegram bot like Makerlog? Is all the recording done via website? Does it sync with my ereader? Basically at this stage I don't know if (as a user) I am ready for this kind of commitment because I don't know what it is that I'd be doing.

When you sign up for an account, there is a page where you attempt to onboard a bit, but if I see this page I have already signed up, and to be honest not knowing anything about how it works or what it does creates too much friction for me to ever see this.

I cannot seem to be able to add books to my bookshelf. The "Save" button does not work from the search. (EDIT: it does work, but since it takes a second to update the app's state to have the button change to "Unsave", I don't know if it worked and I ended up re-clicking a couple times so it undid what I did. That element also lacks any sort of hover state or indication that it's clickable, so I don't know if there's a reason I can't add a given book or if it's supposed to be the text cursor)

I cannot seem to submit a post, it drops a bunch of "request failed" 500 error code errors in the console.

The gray line in the middle of the top of the page, right above the page's title is a bit confusing since it (to me, anyways) resembles a search field, but it is not. Also when I click "search" from the navbar, I am taken to the login page.

The on-hover nav buttons in the top right are also really annoying to use. Not only do they hide the function of those elements until your mouse is over them, but they can also throw off your click

A few elements on the page which are clickable do not have the correct mouse pointer. Such as the "Load More" button, search button in the nav and the logo text.

Good luck! I think it's an intriguing idea but this is what I saw.

Some quick things you can do without many code changes:

• change the "Join the community!" to something like "Form a reading habit" - that's the first text I read, and 'join the community' didn't tell me much

• remove the bit at the top that says 'Home' - until you have more navigation, no point having it on its own

• add a max width to the main content - on large screen the feed becomes really wide

Other things:

• I don't know what leaderboard is, what are they leading? Maybe change that Leaderboard to 'Top Reading Streaks'

Lastly, I don't know what the feed is - are they book reviews?

I love the color choices, but I think you need more separation of the content. Maybe add a white background to each card, and ditch the border. I would remove some of the

The icons in the navbar could be larger, and don't hide the text behind the hover state (bad accessibility)

• By giving the cards a white background you add emphasis to the content rather than it bleeding into the background.
• The navigation is a crucial way users navigate your website so it needs to be prominent.