Nonsense's spare desk as seen from my Macbook's little camera (without bothering to unplug the lead, hence the rubbish angle).
Last week, the Nonsense team had a bit of a chat about how Flaming Desks will work. So here’s a kind of braindump about that. I’m going to be very interested in Dave’s comments here, because we’ve kind of worked on the assumption that White October can make absolutely anything. Here goes:
Homepage.
We identified this as a pretty key feature (we’re available for web consultancy at pretty reasonable rates!). We figured as simple as possible would be good. So we’re talking a nice picture/video of a desk on fire (might as well) and a nice logo. Then two titles “Share a desk” and “Find a desk”, with an accompanying graphic for each action, plus a little description of each.
Registration.
Whichever option is chosen, people are taken to a v. short form where they create an account with a username and password. Unless of course they’ve done that before, in which case they skip this bit thanks to lovely cookies. Manual sign in in the top-right corner etc. Do we need one of those email confirmation dooberries where you click a link? Bit annoying, but necessary perhaps??
Share page.
This bit of the user experience needs to be as simple as possible. So, we were thinking its just a form to create a simple listing for the desk(s) - a bit like eBay, or a Facebook profile page (see “Desk Page” later). We chatted for a long time about what happens if one company wants to list multiple desks - i.e. do they create a page for each desk? Or does the desk page contain “number available”?
We went for the latter, because once you think about how the search process works, its much better - more complicated database info required, but that’ll be no problem - right Dave?
So, there’ll be a nice headline like “Share a desk, meet someone useful.” or something. (Copywriting in a later post.) Then the form should capture the following info:
- name of company listing desk(s). Simple text field.
- industry sector(s) the company is in. Tick a box or two.
- address of office building. Ideally with that thing where you punch in a postcode and its spits address options back at you, and you choose one.
- upload photo. This one’s obvious. Re-size, crop etc a bonus here.
- date(s) desk(s) available. We decided our best move here was to allow people to specify a minimum of a single day, and a maximum of a month. Going too fine grained on the times a desk is available would make the process harder to understand for the lender, and not add any real value to the loanee. And, the max limit is there so we don’t get loads of desks on the system that are no longer available - a reminder email when its near expiry should sort this out (more on that later).
- no. of desks available. As I said, trickiest issues are around this, but the best way is going to be to allow people to list a block of desks - simply by typing a numeric value into a little box. Then, if someone requests a desk on a certain day, the no. available decreases by one on that day (more in the database bit later).
- desk description. A nice box for a paragraph about the facilities being offered. For example, Nonsense might say “We’re a bunch of nice digital comms ideas people looking to meet anyone who is also nice. Especially people in relevant roles like User Experience design, or account planners, or web developers, or whatever. We’ve got a decent wi-fi connection, an infinite supply of caramel digestives and a tendency to talk too loud when we get excited about something. Headphones recommended!”
(In fact, all of this form would be pre-populated with example text in grey that disappears when people click in the boxes. Just to give people an idea.)
Now that I’m typing this one up, it strikes me we could split this into “Looking for…” and “Facilities…” and maybe something along the lines of “If you’re feeling generous please bring….”. What d’you think guys?
Listing emails.
This would be a series of messages each carrying out a specific purpose, related to a desk listing; like the re-list reminder mentioned earlier, one to confirm a listing, and the ones generated when people make a request. Will do a post specifically about these later.
Find page.
We need a nice and intuitive search device here. Hardly any copy. Users will need to specify;
- the date (or date-range?) they want the desk for. Nice calendar interface like Google Analytics or TfL’s site.
- the ideal location of the desk. Either by typing in a postcode, or perhaps sticking a pin in a map. Maybe both - i.e. they type in a postcode, get shown a map to confirm / move the pin. It has to be “ideal” location, so we can match the nearest results. Would they need to specify “within X miles of…”?
- industry sector. This one’s optional, but they can check a few boxes next to their preferred industries (e.g. Media, Finance, etc.)
Then they click a “find desks” button…
Results page.
This would be like Gumtree / eBay really. Results returned in short-format with:
- thumbnail photo
- user generated star rating. (Although little flames would be cooler, obviously.)
- intro to description copy
- date range desk available
- industry tags. i.e. small copy underneath entry.
- location. Dream scenario, a Gmap is returned, centered on the ideal location, with numbered pins all over it. Then each result has a no. next to it. Failing that, just the address with the result would be good.
By default, the list would be ordered by location. However, users should be able to re-order by the following criteria:
- star rating.
- industry. More of a filter than a re-order thing, maybe tick boxes at the top; “All industries”, “Finance” etc. This could even mean that people don’t have to specify at the point of search.
After playing around with this, and maybe re-running a search query, people can click on a result, taking them to a…
Desk page. (Which is actually a “company page” really.)
Contains all the info provided by the person listing the desk, plus:
- average flame rating.
- comments from previous users.
- a “Request this desk” button. This takes people to the following page.
Request form.
This page should build a request to submit to the person who listed the desk. It may only require them to confirm the request details are correct, and type a personal message to the person loaning the desk. Then a button to submit the request. This generates an email to the lister (emails post coming soon), containing a link to what we’re calling the “response page”.
Response page.
Simple page where person loaning desk does to click “yes” or “no” in response to a request. They can also type an accompanying message to the requested - e.g. “Look forward to meeting you. Jammie dodgers please.”
Feedback.
After the date of an accepted request has expired, loanees are emailed with a link to a feedback form, where they set a rating out of 5, and type a comment. This feedback is appended to the Desk page, and the rating average updated accordingly.
?? - should we allow people lending desks to comment on loanees? Would require some kind of profile page for each person, which could get complicated. Perhaps an opportunity to comment on the loanees feedback - i.e. on the Desk page - would be easier and better. So, someone might say of Nonsense “This guys played their music too loud” and we might write back “Unfortunately this philistine does not appreciate Busta Rhymes!”
A bit about the database.
We’re imagining a database that holds the following info about each company that lists a desk / desks:
- name, location
- days desk(s) available for
- no. of desks available on each day. Number to be automatically updated as requests are accepted.
Extras / 2nd stage.
- we’re guessing all the maps stuff will have to wait.
- a set of buttons for companies to put on their website / blog / social space that link to their Desk page. i.e. shot of desk on fire with “We got desks” - or a funnier way of saying that, anyway - on it.
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