experiment/feedback

This is an openly accessible and editable repo for user feedback for Microryza.

feedback's Issues

all or nothing model is not clear to donors

does microryza work like other crowdsourcing platforms?

in that... if i pledge $... does it always get processed? or, only if they hit their fundraising goal? (that isn't clear in the confirmation mail... so made me wonder... and others may have the same question)

gift cards

duh

export e-mails of backers with one click

Is there a way for project leaders to download/export emails of their backers with one click? The reason is to ask each backer to identify other potential backers. Without a one-click option, one has to copy and paste each email, etc.

resizing images

when researchers are creating new projects, the banner should be automagically resized to 1400x600 this goes for the small image for the main projects page, and the bio photo

unregistered users should receive an e-mail to sign-up

currently, unregistered users that reset their password do not get an e-mail at all

Use Google Fusion Tables to store raw data

Publish raw data and analysis to the world.

Finding projects that are under construction

"I created a project a few minutes ago. I saved it, logged out and now want to go back to resume working on that project. Can you tell me how to do that because I can't seem to find a resume tab and when I click on launch project, it's an empty project sheet."

email notification for new donation and new comment

send e-mail to researcher for every new donation and every new comment

allowing users to choose their link before launching a project

1. Link to Project: project pages begin with the "prefix" www.microryza.com/projects/, with a string of words after that. When preparing ads such as videos, etc. it would be helpful to know what the project page URL will be before the project is published. Also, a shorter URL is generally better.

Suggestions. On the Basics Page: 1) A URL is automatically generated and supplied when a new project is created. 2) you supply a URL and make that known to the user after the project is created (but before it's published). 3) the user gets to supply their preferred name after "projects/".

Question: Can you tell me what the URL for my page will be after it's published? That way I can include it in the video and use the same video for you and youtube. If not no worries, I'll finish stuff up on July 2.

differentiating between active and expired campaigns

I was noticing, though, that the main site appears to feature expired campaigns alongside active campaigns
on the "Discover" page, that seems to be the case
There's no clear way to differentiate active campaigns from expired ones
Is there a way (on my end or yours) to make that division apparent?

user wants to see link to project and amount paid after donating

After I fund a project, there should be huge call-to-action for sharing said-funding on social networks (e.g., twitter, facebook etc.)
7:47 w/ link to project & amount paid

*link should be bit.ly link

site visitors think the olark chat box is a chat box with the researcher

if we allowed the researchers to chat with visitors on the site, could we increase conversions?

this is probably too expensive to implement, as we would have to build olark....

Thanks Mike. We've had this happen multiple times. Would being able to chat with visitors be something valuable during the Microryza campaign?

Cindy

On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 12:01 PM, Mike Ferro [email protected] wrote:
Many thanks for the info. I've had a couple people think that the "Chat with Microryza" was actually a chat with me.

Cheers,

Mike

On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 1:44 PM, Cindy Wu [email protected] wrote:
Hey Mike,

Someone found your project through ENTOMOL_L! I'm not sure if he/shet donated, but the outreach you're doing is bringing more traffic to your page.

Just wanted to let you know!

Cindy

On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 11:38 AM, USA #8916 [email protected] wrote:

USA (Gainesville, FL) #8916: I was looking for the poster you mentioned in your recent e-mail to ENTOMOL_L, but I cannot find it. 11:29
oscar: Hi! Let me check right now 11:30
Page: https://www.microryza.com/projects/staphsubfamilies/updates
oscar: Oh, did you mean to speak with Dr. Ferro? 11:30
oscar: This chat is to talk with Microryza staff if you need help. 11:31
oscar: https://www.microryza.com/projects/staphsubfamilies/updates 11:31
USA (Gainesville, FL) #8916: I found it - it was in the lab notes tab, that i finally located. 11:31
oscar: Oh excellent. 11:31
oscar: Let me know if you need anymore help, or if you're thinking of starting a project as well! 11:32

Education Field Should be Standardized

E.g. When a researcher submits his/her education, it comes up in many formats making the site inconsistent.

SOLUTION:
Implement a standardized education form with auto formatting.

show amounts in USD for international projects

And for the exchange rates, apologies there as well as they were converted to USD dollar amounts. Thank you for bringing this up, as we'll be sure to message on the checkout screen that all amounts will be in USD. Because yours is one of the first international projects we've ever hosted, we had not yet taken this into account. We'll be sure to improve this for all future international projects!

world map

we are getting researchers from all over the world, we should have a map to shows where our researchers are located all across the globe

e-mail friends immediately after setting up a page

This feature on FB is smart... let's try to get all projects to have 50 followers before launch!

Email is the best way!

post posting an update

immediately after posting an update, i'd like to share it on twitter, fb, etc.

strange thing, is i didn't think of emailing it to my backers...

project owners should be able to delete projects

that function doesn't exist

I noticed that you are a mission driven for profit. What is your mission?

if we are going to be a mission driven for profit, we need to explicitly state our mission.

this was a question asked by someone on olark

researcher dashboard is broken

there needs to be a way to follow projects

for the time being i am allowing users to back projects with $1 to 'follow' them

i did this for the user nikhilsindhwani
https://www.microryza.com/users/nikhilsindhwani

disable 'fund this project' button, once a project is fully funded & time expired

YAY! UX Feedback: instead of displaying error when I hit "fund this project" after funding period, don't enable the button? ...

because I was really like "oh, cool, I can still help this out?" and then was bummed to get the error.

show the updates up front for funded projects [reddit]

Hi Denny,
Microryza is a great project. I'm a start up developer doing educational technology, and here is one thing that I think would really build trust with Microryza:
Show people the positive impact their donations are having by having researchers post blog updates as they work on their projects.
I think that it is great that you are not giving our plastic rewards for donations - I think those rewards are cheap and pointless. However, the underlying logic to the rewards system is that it builds trust - people donate because they know they are getting something tangible in return for the money. Now obviously in your case the tangible result is the successful research. However, you need to clearly communicate those success stories to new visitors to build trust in new projects.
Here is what I mean - I am a person who is on the fence about donating money. My hesitation about donating is due to the fact that I am not sure whether I am throwing money into a black hole or whether it will lead to something successful. For example, one campaign asks for $10,000 to treat childhood Alzheimers. I am skeptical about this because this seems like the type of project where $10,000 wouldn't even constitute a drop in the bucket. To assuage this skepticism it'd be really great to see how other similar projects in the past have made tangible progress. Seeing those successes would be the nudge that says this project is a worthwhile endeavor.
The biggest problem that I see in crowd funding right now is that there is still a disconnect between the aspirations of a project and the tangible product at the end of the road. If you want to bridge that disconnect you need to show people past success stories on your homepage to build trust. Your site shouldn't stop telling the story of a project once the donations have been raised. Instead, you should cover the progress of each project. I think one really good way of doing this would be having researchers post blog updates during the course of the research, each blog post detailing a specific part about the research project.
Here is an example - this is a cool project - https://www.microryza.com/projects/urban-pollination-sustain-native-bees-urban-crops/updates
The project is posting updates through its own website and twitter feed. However, I want to see this updates on the Microryza site. If I was looking through this project, and I saw, hey look, this research got $3500 and she did X, Y, Z, and this really cool, I'd be willing to donate money to another campaign. However, right now, since I don't see the tangible success of the funded projects, I am reluctant to donate. I think that communicating the successes of your projects will encourage more people to give money, and thus create a positive feedback loop for funding research.
Best of luck, Peter Gault

backers are too far down and there are duplicates in facepile

the other backers (social proof) was pushed too far down and it looked like there were duplicates in the facepile

character limit for project discovery

system for contacting users

I want to eventually start a project myself and I would like to fund other projects. However, sometimes I would like to email some users regarding about a detail regarding their project and I may like to receive some feedback or questions regarding mine. However, there does not currently seem to be a convenient way of doing so. Would it be possible to instate a "contact" section (consisting of an email or phone number for example) in a user's profile or project page to make the personal contacting process a bit easier.

Earth Science, chemistry, and physics should be categories

Why are the Earth Science, chemistry, and physics field left out of your categories? There are hundreds of researchers in these fields that would love to use this website, but you don't have categories for these fields of science!

kirill backed my project and i didn't get a notification!

when there is a new backer, the researcher should get a notification in the nav bar and also in an email... quora does this well

allowing researchers to share their project with friends for feedback before launching

1. I'm a terrible speller and my English mechanics aren't very good. I usually have 2-3 people look over any formal thing I write or submit. It would be very nice to be able to share the project with others for review before it's published. Perhaps there could be a pre-publish option where it's "published" but not "visible" on the front page or by looking under a Category, but still available if you have the URL? It might also be a programming nightmare… so it's just a suggestion.

cross post updates from wordpress/fb/etc.

Sam is continuing to update her donors using her wordpress blog, is there a way to set up a IFTTT for wordpress/fb/etc.?

https://www.microryza.com/projects/how-does-mount-rainer-help-maintain-traditional-tribal-plant-harvesting/updates

Hello All!

Thank you again to all those of you who felt my research project was worth making a donation. There are only three days left and any donations made above a beyond my goal will be greatly appreciated! If any would like to continue to follow my research and time in Washington State, feel free to follow my blog at http://symbolicmountrainier.wordpress.com/.

Thank you again!

Sam

back directly button

Back directly button:

I would like to simply click a button, enter my credit card details, then back the project. I don't need no signup, updates or other things. Just click and done.
Good luck to you all!

preauth CC

I also noticed that Microryza doesn't appear to preauth a CC when a pledge is made. Is there a reason for that? Does Kickstarter do that (I've never used them)? It would be convenient to have a preauth on there so I remember that I might have a donation outstanding. Basically, I'm curious if preauthing is possible or if there is some reason why it isn't done (or possibly not allowed). If you have a spare moment (yeah, right), let me know. Thanks!

discover by university

Hello! I'm not sure if this is the right place to make a suggestion, but I'll give it a go.

It would be nice if there was a way to separate projects by university. (Or is he goal of the Discover page to just sort by field?)

SEO

FYI the best idea in here is this:

Strongly encourage (if not require) your scientists to link back to microryza from their .edu pages. Create badges they can publish throughout the web for “Fund Me on Microryza” -- this will generate amazing link equity from high powered .edu domains

Donations not registering as backers (See picture)

There's a $20 donation but it says 0 backers.

allow users to connect, linkedin, facebook, twitter, academia, researchgate

the profiles for researchers need to be more robust, to give users more data on who they are backing

FB "like to donate" push/reminder

When project leaders post a link to their donation page, it receives likes. However, when you check to see how many of these likers actually donate to the campaign within 72 hours of posting, only a few convert.

If there were a way to increase the conversion rate of likes to donations without the project leader having to individually followup with each liker by FB message, that would great!

project page module

The project page module is getting a little crowded and disorganized as we've been adding/removing elements, so I tried refining it with the new components. Keith thought the open access and tax receipt badges are less important and should go somewhere else on the page.

Also, I think I made it much more difficult on us by having 2 types of badges. In this version, we could just use the darker badge for both sections.

Asking Researchers the Wrong Questions when Submitting a Project

When A Researcher Writes A Proposal S/he sees:

When A Donor is Viewing a Project Page:

"What are the goals of this project?" Is followed by a series of more questions by the researchers. Their answers are not congruent with the questions.

SOLUTION:
Ask a single question and/or give an example text of how questions should be answered.

impossible to get back to project page from update

it should be easy to get back to the project page from an update... right now it is nearly impossible

UX Idea

Hey guys, when you hover over the "what you get", it would be bad ass if they items spread out to show you a clearer picture of each offering, kinda like the Polaroids on stripe jobs spread out on .hover.

user requested feat: add payment in bitcoin!

Just to let you know - I'd like to see bitcoin as a mean of payment. I'm a regular backer ($10 every month) and I'm willing to pay that in bitcoins if it would be possible.

download bulk emails instead of copying from the table

yup

formally displaying stretch goals

1. Stretch Goals: At other sites when people become fully funded they informally create new funding and project goals ("stretch goals"). It would be nice to have a "formal" way to display stretch goals.

Suggestion. Under Fundraising Target let users enter three numbers and have three corresponding Goals, but only Goal 1 has to be reached to get funded. Goal 2 could be hidden until it's unlocked by fulfilling Goal 1, then an automatic email goes out saying Goal 2 is revealed. Same for Goal 3. Or, all Goals could be visible the whole time. I would use this if it were available, but I bet it would take a lot of time to code, so even if you like the idea, don't worry about it now.

Send contributors T-shirts, badges on your own web site, etc.

new buttons

Are you planning on adding 'Almost Funded' and 'Close to Deadline' buttons? I'd imagine you are, being that it's a kickstarter-like thing, but never hurts to ask.

users are unable to get to their profile page

I wasn’t sure how to get to that page. Just noticed the teeny photo in the top right corner. I think you should add a link on the footer – “My profile / My microryza” etc.

have a UI dashboard for researchers to send emails

Have a dashboard that lists new project backers, you can checkmark all of them, and then click email button.

email button gives you simple wysiwyg or markdown editor, and some preformatted templates that you can click and use

show which projects have video

It would be a nice if I could tell which projects have videos before clicking. Came here from reddit.

project hub

It would really be good if there were a central place I could see what projects I've backed, what state they're in, how much I contributes, etc., and if project pages would show me how much I've given to the project. I want to be able to keep tabs on my projects, and see when new projects come up meeting my criteria that I haven't contributed to yet. And I want to be able to advertise the projects I'm contributing to, but not one-tweet-at-a-time -- I want to write a blog post about the projects I'm contributing to, but there doesn't seem to be a good way to get a list (aside from keeping all the tabs open afterwards, which is what I've done.)

Thanks,
Glenn Willen