By far our most requested feature on Staction has been an iPhone optimized version. I think a lot of users may have just considered us obstinate for not having one sooner. It seems like such a small thing to do… Shrink the interface, and call it good.

Unfortunately, we had a big problem. The Staction website is designed to be used with a keyboard. The whole application is built around using the mouse as little as possible. But on the iPhone the keyboard is, well, small. Using a tiny keyboard to bang out tags, and a clunky half-visible auto-completer just wasn’t the experience we wanted to give our users. It wasn’t the experience we wanted for ourselves… It just wasn’t great, – believe us, we tried it.

After lots of experimenting, eventually we realized we had to rely on touching and scrolling for tag input. Like with lots of ideas, -it seems quite obvious looking back.

As of Today

As of today, all of our paid accounts have access to the Staction web app. Simply visit your normal account URL, and you’ll be directed to the optimized site. (You can still access the regular site if you like.)

Once logged in, you’ll have access to all the most commonly used features of Staction. Creating todos, logging time, and keeping up with your teammates.

Make sure to tap “+” and add Staction to your home screen, – it works really well that way.

If you want to see the web app, but don’t have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad you can visit your normal account URL and add a /m at the end like this:

http://accountname.staction.com/m

We think you’re really going to like the web app experience. In some ways it’s the best Staction experience yet.

Why Not the Free Account?

We’re going to be honest in a way that I don’t think most companies would. We really hope that the web app drives upgrades for us. By far the biggest portion of Staction users are on the free account. It seems that when we created our plans for Staction, we gave away too much on the low end.

It’s no problem, -we’re happy to have our users, on any account that fits their needs. But we do have to make money to keep our jobs!

Talking over the problem, we came up with a plan that we hope will make sense to you. As we add new features to our apps, you’ll probably see most of them added only to the paid accounts at first. As we recoup the cost of our development time through the upgrades that the features drive, we hope to trickle the features down to the free accounts as well.

We’re hoping this is a sustainable system that can keep everyone happy. Paid accounts just get the features a bit sooner than everyone else. We hope you’ll think it makes as much sense as we do.

In life, there is usually piss on the seat.

But every now and then, you get lucky and things go your way.

In line at Starbucks yesterday, it actually happened to me. (Not the nasty thing, the lucky thing.)

Someone ahead of me paid for my drink. I’ve heard of this happening to other people, but I never thought it would actually happen to me, you know? Keep Reading

Jumpchart, Staction and Paprika are all geared toward simplicity. But with simplicity comes a lot of feature requests, and proclamations that “if it just had this one feature, it would be absolutely perfect!”

We continue to make updates as the internet, and our users evolve, but we’re stubborn in a big way: we’re sticking with simplicity. We feel this mentality is what makes our apps useful to the majority of our users in the first place. Keep Reading

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. The goal is not to do business with anybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.” – Simon Sinek via Bobulate

This is so true. I think it’s especially true for someone who really loves your app, and doesn’t know how they ever did without it. For example, lovers of Jumpchart have to appreciate simplicity, and organization. Lovers of Staction have to understand the importance of communication with a minimal amount of clicks, and want the ability to do things quickly. We create apps as extensions of ourselves, knowing (hoping?) that others like us will get a kick out of them, and find them really useful.

“Block off the first hour of every Monday to organize your todo list. Turn off instant messenger, close e-mail and silence your phone. You need absolute silence so you can focus.” – Ryan Carson, Think Vitamin.

A lot of conversation about modal editing recently brought our studio to a very simple conclusion- one that seemed undeniable the second we arrived at it.

For example, when I’m in “Preview”, and I want to make a simple edit to an image, I click “Annotate”, but I don’t immediately see the result. That’s because it happened away from where I clicked, which is not what I expected. I have to search for it, which is frustrating.

Instead of popping up somewhere near the annotate button, a tool bar drops down from the bottom of the preview screen, which depending on how big your Preview window is, isn’t always readily visible.

This threw me off just enough to make me realize that other people probably have the same frustration/hesitation. It’s something many people take for granted and expect out of the apps they use- usability based on expectations.

It seems too simple to have to put into words, but I’m going to do it anyway. For every action, there should be a nearby reaction.

Don’t be a quitter is ingrained in us from very early on in our lives. Quitters are lazy. Quitters are something to be pitied or even despised.

I quit lots of stuff. There. I said it here in public, and not because I need pity. I’m proud of quitting- and I think more people need to give themselves the permission to guiltlessly quit things.

It used to be that every time I quit something, I felt like I failed a little. Like I left some incomplete portion of my brain behind. I became reluctant to start new things because I worried I wouldn’t finish them. Keep Reading

There are lots of ways to go about pricing your web application, and there may not be a single right answer for any single app. When considering pricing, it’s important to evaluate all the options. Here are a few less traditional methods we’ve been discussing.

Charge once.
Great for building momentum. Great for quick revenue. Maybe not so great for long term earnings.

Advertise within your app.
We’ll see more and more advertising fueled apps. It can work if done well.

More customers = higher pricing.
The more customers you get, the more you charge. Have to start really low… Pinboard does it. Keep Reading

As an exercise in creativity, I usually imagine all sorts of scenarios when we’re working on a new web app. Things like:

• What would happen if we solved the opposite problem we’re trying to solve?

• What would Apple do?

• What would it look like if it was made in the 80’s? 90’s? 00’s? Ten years from now?

• If this app could only have one button, what would it be?

Recently I hit on another thought provoking question to ask myself: Keep Reading

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” – Charles Mingus.