I don’t want you to “like” MakeFive. I want you to LOVE it. All of us here feel that way. We’re convinced that this site is something that you’ll find increasingly useful, and as such, we scrutinize everything about it. Seriously, we obsess over how to make it better, more fun, and (of course) easier to use.

You guys have told us a lot about what you want to see change in the site in these topics like Things that frustrate you about MakeFive and Features that you’d like to see on MakeFive.

We’re working on the items you’ve noted, as well as a number of others. Today I thought I’d bring you into the design process a little. These are a few random things (some big and some small) that we’ve been working through. It’s far from a definitive list, but it does give you some insight into how it all works.

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Item #1
A lot of little things get circled in red

We don’t just work on the site, we use it. (We’re kind of addicted too.) As such, we catch a lot of the little things that likely frustrate you too. As such, we send a lot of emails to bugs@makefive.com with little images like the one above, and notes on the bug. (That little red pen in Photoshop gets used a lot.)

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Item #2
Who the heck is that anyway?

To make the registration process as fast as possible, we avoided including any fields that weren’t critical. The downside of this was that many users would then forget to fill in their profile information. This sucked, as it leaves a lot of us wondering, “Who the heck is this person?”

In the future, we’ll be adding the “Profile completeness” area which will remind users to fill-in these areas when they get a chance. Additionally, we’ll be giving out more points to those who tell the rest of the community a little about themselves.

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Item #3
More information about member activity

A number of MakeFive regulars have asked for more snapshot information about other members and their activity. The new Member Statistics tab will allow you to gain a quick understanding of what others have been doing, the nature of their activity, and their history on the site.

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Item #4
The warnings are getting some Botox and liposuction

Some things start with the best intentions but just don’t work out that well. When we first created the system warnings (i.e. “You entered the wrong password”) we wanted these messages to be bold and align with the MakeFive color system. Although the plan seemed sound, we failed on this one.

The actual result was a lot of pink that looked kind of ugly and was still hard to make out from all of the other content on the site. As such, warning messages are being tidied-up a little. (Probably not something you spend your nights thinking about, but still a nice little improvement we think.)

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Item #5
Video baby… video

Sometimes a photo and description just aren’t enough. As such, we’re readying the site to allow you to embed videos that you find interesting. In time we think this will result in whole topics that are dedicated to video-based content. (It gets you thinking about some interesting topics, doesn’t it?)

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Well, those are five little things that are going to change on the site soon. Needless to say, there’s a lot more, but I don’t want to overwhelm you with them all at once.

As always, we’re working hard on all of this, and hope you like the changes! :-)