I've been in the "build->launch->move to next project" loop for some time.

My projects are mostly based on features that are missing or misimplemented in the existing products. Some of the finished projects gone live, tried to sell some, some are rotting in the attic.

I lack visual design skills, but yet trying to do my best to provide a usable UI for the products. One of my motives in building a product against my lack of visual skills is knowing that "they started as crap too". For example reddit was just a very simple listing full with porn links, stumbleupon was just a "what is this" page for a few years, twitter was and still is damn slow, broken and overbloated and there are many more.. Other than reddit, others was most probably the first at doing what they do. There were no similar products, but they got it up and running and people easily adopted.

When i ask about feedbacks about my products, mostly i get "i didn't understand which problem you are solving". I even deployed a localized copy of cnprog as a forum on women's issues, to see if it was me doing it wrong in designing. I got the following feedback several times: "it's too complicated, there's no order, no title in threads, other forums(phpbb style) are better ". WTF? These people are on facebook 24/7, uploading gazillions of photos, messaging their friends each second. They know what tagging is, and still a stackoverflow clone is too complicated?

Anyway, what i wonder is, what happened to people that got it the first time when they saw reddit, stumbleupon and said "yeah i'll use it". Were internet users back in late 90's , ealy 2000's much more sophisticated people? What has changed since then, and people became website gourmets to say that "you should tell what this site is about on the first page. i don't understand that your site is a listing site by just looking at the listing on the goddamn first page. that's why i decided that i won't use it at the very first second i stumbled onto your site"? Sigh..

Have "they" gone forever, and will never come back again?

Edit: Thanks for all the fantastic comments, i didn't expect to get many insightful ideas and suggestions. There are some points i guess i need to make myself clear:

- WTF -> these people can use the applications i can not even cope with, how can they find a 2-3 step forum complex ? details: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1838852

- I've tried opening jobs on amazon, asking communities for feedbacks, paying google ads, using stumbleupon ads, posting to startup listings. lastly using feedbackroulette :) by the way fr is just great.

- details about a few of the stuff i've done http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1838805

user:	siliconeagle
created:	October 27, 2010
karma:	1