Following that flawless 2.0 human radar that is Rik, I’m now trying Trusted Places, a new rounded-cornered web community site focusing on places (very London centric for the moment).
I’m jotting down these notes as I’m approaching the site, and the first impression I have is that the sign-up process makes use of some clever tricks: for example when it comes to inviting your friends over (often difficult since it clashes with people sense of privacy and etiquette) they provide a “real life story” explaining in a simple comic strip how fantastic and rewarding is to spread the word. Then the wizard takes you to a page that is a game about pinpointing your tastes: you’re given a list of food types (from African to English to Italian and so on) where you can declare wether if you like it or not.
From the interface point of view, there is an interesting use of the buttons here: the more you click on the positive or negative button, the more you go in that direction, on a scale from can’t stand it to love it!. A global “food score” chart is always available on the sidebar too.
Same concept applies then to Music, People, Places, Drinks, Cities. Very cool concept in all, the problem being that no explanation is given beyond the picture, so it can be difficult to differentiate the various genres especially if you come from abroad.
The rest of the site is the usual ajaxy website. And still little buggy (was not able to change my picture at first for instance). Nice forms, I wonder if they will turn out usable.
The application itself is a glorified google maps mashup, where you can review places and search for suggestion. I’ll probably post more as I’ll find out how addictive it is. So far the featured review was ironically a sushi place I’ve been on sunday night, so I was amused and quickly typed in my own review… we’ll see.
Oh one last thing: I totally love the idea of using tag clouds above London skyline as a banner…
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