Okay… so this is scary and exciting all at the same time!Counter to received wisdom and established software development norms, we are about to throw open the doors on our very much in-progress development process … early … very early. We are calling it “open alpha”. In fact, it is more like open pre-alpha as we are not yet feature complete and certainly not bug-free. To begin with we will continue development on the user interface and core functionality. Invited users are free to work with the software as is and as new features come online and bugs are fixed - that’s where the scary part comes in - you, our valued future customers, get to see our software slightly broken and at times plain broken but always in flux, as we put the Fluid UI jigsaw together…We have decided to take this step for several very important reasons…
To avoid working on Fluid UI in a feedback vacuum or “reality-free zone”
To get your thoughts and feedback on the interface, working features and overall workflow
To hear your ideas and suggestions about how we can make Fluid UI a better fit for your needs
Basically we want to know what you think! While it’s always nice to get compliments, what we really want to hear is your honest feedback, the no-holds-barred stuff, what you like, what you hate, what works and what is totally broken. The kind of feedback that is very useful at this stage tends to be the critical kind - we will use it to learn and to make Fluid UI simpler and easier to use - if nothing else, it will be an exciting feedback-development-feedback loop. Those who sign up will receive the first round of invites. Feature-requests and feedback from that first group will take precedent in our future decision-making.
So, if you are interested in having your say during the development, register your interest on our signup page here … Get early access Invites will be sent out shortly so keep an eye on your inbox. We will then issue invites to a larger second group (including our followers on Twitter) and finally the wider community. If you have any questions please contact us or leave a comment. Are we completely crazy? Or do you agree with our approach? We always love to hear from you so please say what’s on your mind below!
