Thanks for taking my feedback so well. I agree that a complex application like Flowx will naturally have a learning curve.
I was trying to write something that didn’t stray too far from the “average-new-person-experience” so I didn’t mention much about Help except the short-term memory challenge. That’s also why I used those emotional words. I really did feel overwhelmed and stressed out.
In reality, I had read “What is Flowx” and “Tips” under “General” very early on. After reading those pages, I was convinced that the program had the features I wanted so I went back to the main screen.
Now that it’s been a little while (and you’ve replied)…
The Using Flowx → Basics page could be really helpful but due to limited screen real estate, the screenshot that ties everything together gets pushed below the fold. Since there’s no visible logic to the #s besides the first thing being #1 and the second thing being #2, my brain assumes that the #s aren’t that meaningful. Then, when I scroll down, my brain has recall 13 sentences from memory. (Potential solution: break the screenshot into little chunks so that the #1 section of the image right above the #1 text, a picture of the temperature bar and graphs is right above #2 and #3 text, etc.)
After reading Using Flowx → Graphs, I see that you’ve thought very hard about the graphs. If those same explanations were available from the Select Graph screen (not necessarily displayed by default), that would’ve gone a long way towards making me less confused (aka the usability principle of showing information where it is most relevant to the user’s actions).
I hope everyone can empathize with people who are encountering Flowx for the first time. There’s research that shows “[the] average [web]page visit lasts a little less than a minute” from the Nielsen Norman Group. If we assume an Android app gets 10 times more time, then the app has about 2 minutes to make a first impression.
For people who aren’t already familiar with the research on users & reading:
- How Little Do Users Read by Jakob Nielsen (no link; “new users can only post 2 links”)
- Designing for People Who Have Better Things To Do With Their Lives by Joel Spolsky
- Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug (a book that talks at length about users doing the bare minimum)