Comment by mclifton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mclifton | Hacker News Reader

I created Invotes to simplify casual hang outs with friends. Being the central decision maker has always been a point of stress for me - my primary goal is to get together with people, whenever it's convenient and wherever they want to go. I always felt there could be a better way to maximize the number of people that could be included.

When you send an invitation with Invotes, it becomes the organizer. It allows guests to suggest and vote on the time and location, then relays updates to every member in your party.

I worked hard to make the invitation process open to everyone. It doesn't matter if they have the app or not, you can contact anyone via SMS, email or in app notification. You can also send a public invitation link after the invitation has been created.

Anyway, I'm happy to have this project off the ground and I'd be excited to hear any feedback or questions. Thanks for checking it out! Any mentions on Facebook/Twitter would be incredible, marketing is not my strong suit.

Nice application :) I appreciate the effort to make it inclusive to every platform.

I've tried the web-app version from desktop and I feel that the UI is suited for mobile-view. UI-wise some icons are probably better accompanied with what it meant (e.g. the "lock" icon) and some hint whether it is clickable or not (only when I accidentally click it, I realized it is clickable).

And the slogan "make plans, without a plan" seemed off for me, someone still need to make a plan, at least a partial plan.

And by the way, why should I "register" to the app by providing an e-mail address, if I could share the link myself?

Thanks, and have a nice day :)

Thanks so much for the feedback!

Agreed on pretty much all fronts, although you bring up some points I didn't think about.

The icons definitely could use some more explanation. The app does a better job of describing the buttons, and I'd like to eventually update the web to match the same look and feel. A help section and some annotations on the buttons would make things much clearer.

You're right about the slogan, I've changed that several times and can't really decide how to explain it in one catchy sentence. It currently kind of captures the feeling, but it's not really accurate since someone has to make the initial suggestions.

Another good point on providing an email address. To be honest, you previously had to provide everything in the sign up form (first, last and password), so providing only an email address was a more recent improvement. It's nice to have an email address mainly because you could easily lose your administrative link with no way to recover it, plus you receive updates to the event in your inbox. But your point still stands, there's no particular reason why it absolutely has to be required.

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