In order to further improve our first time user experience, we're moving to an "Add-on Store" model of selectively hiding features. The Add-on Store will allow you to enhance or turn on features that aren't part of the core experience of the product.
Feature Creep vs. First Run User Experience
Now that the company is a little over a year old, we're starting to feel "feature-creep" monster is starting to rear its ugly head. A little feature here, an integration over there, some options sprinkled around for good measure...and your once simple webapp is starting to look like Salesforce. You'll feel like you're improving things, but you're going to be crying the next time you do usability testing with some brand new users. Even if you personally know exactly what every knob and button in your app does, you have to be conscious of the fact that every detail takes away importance from every other detail -- and first-time users can only process so much before getting overwhelmed and calling it quits.
Adding Value Without Overwhelming
We feel like having an Add-on Store is a great way to not overwhelm first-time users while still giving power users the advanced features and control they want. It's very important to us that our users actually enjoy using our product, and products with too many features and settings rarely are a joy to use.
How It Affects You
The add-on store is live as Friday, June 20th. If you created your account before that, all of the add-ons in the store are activated for you. Any accounts created after the deploy have a few add-ons activated for demo purposes, but the rest are inactive by default. You can find the add-on store by clicking the link in the top right when logged in.
