REQUEST: I want some reviews/feedback on DigiGraph 3 please.

Having never heard of the software until this, I gave it a shot from an outsider's perspective.

First of all I like the concept. I've mocked things up in Illustrator before, but the grid snapping can get overwhelming, especially with guides being applied to layers. Something like AutoCad would be overkill for prototyping, so I see this as having some potential if a few points were possible to address.

Coming at it as an adobe user the first thing that tripped me up was the use of Right Click to initialize a shape. This seemed especially counter intuitive when right clicking again. I think the more expected click process based on other apps would be to intitialize and continue a shape/poly with Left Clicks, and terminate a shape/poly/line with right click when completed. Right clicking doesn't seem to be the most intuitive starting command for a drawing.

I think the biggest hurdle I see with the software is the inability to maintain closed shapes and move existing lines. I don't know what the target use is meant to be, but let's say I wanted to sketch out an arcade box or some other wood working project. I did this in AI a few months ago.

So I started drawing out my shapes and all was going well enough, but I realized the cabinet was a bit too deep. All I had to do was grab some anchor points and shift them an inch or 2. So while the grid and snapping was a hassle, the amount of flexibility to existing assets is pretty key to work flow.

Even something as simple as wanting to shift the drawing to make more room for another sketch on the same grid that is getting expanded proves problematic.

In summation I can see potential in the concept. I think a simplified graphed art package could have a market. I think the biggest issue is that the flexibility of true polys and bezier vector shapes is something people are fairly comfortable with and probably expect in 2014. Limiting the app to raster pixel drawings just seems a bit archaic with compared to other software on the market. The Adobe suite being $50/mo has changed the landscape dramatically, even for hobbyists.

I think shapes, limited layers, and the ability to drag and modify existing art without erasing/redrawing would be pretty good. Pen and paper will always feel better if the aim is to just sketch some things. The computer brings the power to manipulate and tweak endlessly. Try to add more tweak and object features perhaps.

Hi Paul,

I'm studying Media Design for a Master degree and am a little bit into interface design and usability. Maybe I can give you some hints.
All I'm talking about now is my personal opinion and experience and I don't want to "hurt" you I just try to be as honest as possible and help you and others here.

I was hesitating to answer on your post after I've seen your application. Because I think there are many small problems which are not easy to fix and I would have to talk about a lot of negative things. But I think you are a fine guy helping other people here on the forums since years. So I'll take my time to explain very detailed my point of view.

At first I want to say, I'm impressed by your drawing system with the full commands list. That's a really cool feature. And you're right, it looks powerful but only at first sight. Small tools like yours can't compete against the huge competition out there even if your price is very fair. So you should put as much as possible effort in your strength not your weakness. I think your strength against competitors is the commands list. The drawing tools in your tool are too complicated to use and too limited. But the technical side is just a small part of that what affects possible customers.

At first of all stands your website. And to be honest it looks very old and outdated. It looks like a amateur site from good old days but those days are gone. I would never buy anything from a website looking like yours. The main reason is that it looks not a bit professional. And that suggests customers several thoughts: It's just your hobby and your software could be not that reliable. Maybe you're about to shut down your work and don't provide updates or bugfixes anymore. Even if it's just your hobby, people have to feel you are burning for your software. And a lot of people (like me) just leaving websites looking too outdated even before they have seen what you offer there. The first impression is more important than ever, now in times where everything has a design and also internet crime rises from day to day. What do you think people should expect from a website looking like from the last 10 years? So your website has to be a very positive impression at first sight. You want to sell something. You want the attention of people. It's your time to act.

Of course we are not all professional web designers even if we would like to be or have fun to tinker around on a own website. I know what I'm talking about, I also liked it very much, built some websites years ago. I needed many years to accept that I'm not a web designer and the progress is going on and on every day. We have to decide with very high requirements these days, means: Can I really write a complex website to make a fantastic first impression? And won't I waste my valuable time for the next couple of month? I was very honest to myself and finally understood I'm not god, I can't do everything. I wish I could, of course. But if we focus on a specific point we can win so much more. Nowadays even this website problem is more easy to fix than ever before.
WordPress has made so huge progress in the last years, it's incredible. Everybody can have a professional looking website today! Two years ago I thought "WordPress... ahhh just a blogging website!" But with the enhanced features and theme support you can make everything out of WordPress - in a few days! Nowadays it's a really modern Content Management System (CMS) with endless possibilities. And as I had learned nothing I ran into another problem some time ago. I had choosen a default theme and "I can build my own theme!". Error. Don't waste your time, buy a theme from a professional theme autor. There are hundrets out there and customizeable of course. Those autors also support updates for new WordPress releases and bugfixes. And believe me, they can do it better than you if you're not a lucky web designer. Also look out for responsive Themes which will change their layout on mobile devices. It's getting more important every day especially if you sell iOS or Android apps. With WordPress or other "CMS" you have a new professional website in a couple of days.

With the website done the next step is to find a nice logo or use just a simple lettering. In your case, Paul, your KnightTrek logo really hurts the eyes. It is a negative example for designers because it's too much of everything. One desginer rule says "use only max. two fonts in one place (in one logo, in one documentation, etc.). Your logo has three very different fonts, three different colours, three different fill stiles, bright yellow and red on a deep blue background - it's a designers nightmare. A simple lettering KnightTrek Productions on top would be always better.

The same for the other graphics on your website. Less is more.

A small hint as I have seen Comic Sans in your manual for DigiGraph 3. It's maybe the most unprofessional font on the planet. Please all people out there forget that there was a font called Comic Sans. Designers are just joking about people who use this font and they are right because this font was a funny font decades ago. Now it's simply outworn and obsolete.
In addition in your manual you should give the left and right border more white space to increase the readability and use justify not left-aligned text blocks.
Just to name a few improvements. Good example documents to start are the Please login to see this link. posted by Danny.

I think we don't have to talk about your domain? You need Please login to see this link. or something like that.
Another point for a professional first impression and would be more remarkable for people.

The next step for your software marketing is a nice product video. You did one, that's great! But in the case of DigiGraph 3 the video makes more worse than good because it's very - sorry - crappy. You simply did everything wrong you just can do, I'm sorry. You filmed the monitor with a shaky hand-held camera. That's a sin. You need to capture the screen, even if you don't have the possibilities to do so, there is no other way to go. You got a comment from an user on YouTube "#confused" and that's the same I was thinking. A "promo" video should tell you in a few seconds what is this software about but I just had a big question mark over my head; shocked by a presentation of a hand-shaky filmed monitor video. That's absolutely counterproductive.
Until now I'm not sure what your intention is with DigiGraph 3. I think it could be some kind of animation tool because the graphs are drawn at runtime.

Okay, now I want to talk about DigiGraph 3. That's the main point, isn't it?

At the moment I'm on with my netbook on Win 7 with 64 Bit (DualCore 1,7 GHz, 4GB RAM). It's a bit slow over the years but okay. So I was surprised that I have to watch for 20 seconds how the tool builds the background grid before I can do anything. Is it that slow or isn't that your intention? As you can see I'm not sure because in your promo video everything is like a animation. But that's the first barrier for possible customers, they have to wait too long before they can do anything. Maybe it's just extreme on my old netbook but this tool should work faster I think.

The second thing I noticed is the old fashioned or outdated interface design. It looks like the designer wasn't sure what he wants. On the one hand there are window controls with 3D look/border on the other hand there are hand-drawn icons and a background pattern. Try to go in one direction, don't mix styles. Use just window elements (buttons with icons etc.) or build your own interface and don't use any window elements.

Draw actions should be confirmed with a left mouse click, that's how it all people know from their OS or even other products they've used before. It's a approved system, don't change it, it just annoys people. I wanted to draw text and change the position. I was not able to manage this simple task. The text was drawn in the left upper corner and I clicked on it to drag it to it's new place. That's a standard feature you should support. I couldn't find a way to move it. Oh... now I clicked again and I have to right click? That's weird, and because of the slow down on my computer the commands need more time to be recognized. If it would be a game it would be impossible to be played here but I can play 3D games, that's odd. I mean, I know that's maybe because of Fusions restrictions but "normal" users can't know that and of course they wouldn't care about that. But there must be big calculations going on in the background, maybe you can optimize that. Even the mouse pointer is very slow over the draw area.

Just a small thing is that the file popup is appearing at mouse position but the file button intends to be ... yeah, a menu button and it would look more professional if the popup would appear directly under the button always at the same place. Some people may think "what the... it doesn't matter!?" They are wrong. These are of course small tiny things but in sum it affects the user experience and quality impression directly or subliminal. And if someone says he doesn't care about such tiny useless things he should maybe do something else than interface design in my opinion. The interfaces of software is getting better and better and there will be no success if you don't follow the tiny things. This one is of course just an example.

You see, Paul, all points I'm talking about in this post, are forming the picture possible customers can have of your product.
And you can see if it's good or not.

Wow, I was writing for three hours now. I'm tired, it's late.
Paul, if you like we can talk about the drawing functions and maybe how to focus more on the strength of your project later.

Best regards,
Gustav

Quote from Paul_Boland

Fusion doesn't do vector shapes so drawing a shape and then dragging and dropping it somewhere else isn't what DigiGraph 3 is designed to do. Glad you liked what is there though.

Who says you can't write your own vector algorithms to draw vectors and have points on them you can drag around? It seems like people asking for very basic functionality and you rejecting it because there's no simple extension may be one of the reasons your software is lagging behind.

Have you seen how autocad draws vectors? It breaks them up into simplified lines and re-renders them as you zoom in to appear more detailed. For example, a circle is broken up into a kind of octogon shape when it's zoomed out to save processing power. No reason you can't do this with your program.

I'd mostly echo much of what Gustav said, the website is something that would turn potential customers off, it's like it was made in the 90's. The promo video should be screen captured, you could also have a 10 minute tutorial video (with voice over etc - something like this Please login to see this link. there are millions of examples on youtube to get inspiration) to really show what the software can do and how it will benefit potential users. The overall look of the software (GUI etc.) reminds me of a Windows 3.1/95 era software.

random thoughts -
- the right click to draw a box etc. is unintuitive
- the multi step process to entering text, clicking a button to enable moving, then having to right click the text to move it is odd
- when you press undo you have to wait for the entire image to be redrawn bit by bit every time, which sometimes to 10+ seconds
- it doesn't seem to have a select tool? to select what you've drawn and reposition it on the page
- there's no fast way to increase line thickness (in photoshop I can just press one key, square bracket (left or right) to increase/decrease the brush size)
- it seems there's no way to move the window around, just minimise.

I hope you don't get discouraged by all this feedback coming your way... we can never know in advance what will or won't be successful, even great works go unnoticed and unappreciated from time to time. I leave you with this image to remind you it's normal to make mistakes on the way to success!

Please login to see this picture.

Hi clickteam and all clickers, Hi Paul! How as say Gustav, you need a beautiful design for your site and software! First impressive == Fast buying remember this! Where you select girlfriend, you see to she face, body and foots, after this you see she intellect! No another, that like for software! Rework design into your web site and application, or give this job for design specialist, for example I professional designer ( no for ads )!

I think part of the reason people feel a bit bummed to be critical is because you feel the need to explain every critique and describe how surprised you are at the perception. I think a lot of us come from digital arts background, and have found Fusion as a way to assist us in making our creative dreams a reality. I for one am an Art School graduate, and a big part of our education and career revolves around target audiences, planned perception, and feedback cycles. Sometimes you think you have a lock on the target, and the client picks the design you hated most. It's a learned skill to not be either defensive or offended by critical feedback in this arena. We are all coming from different perspectives and are giving you pretty subjective critiques.

It's easier for artist types to focus on these user-interface issues and cast a lot of the reasoning toward them. All told, the graphics and layout weren't terrible, they just didn't look as though a team of designers and user experience focus groups collaborated for weeks on the interfacing. That isn't meant to be a shocker, it's real life. The biggest difference between GIMP and Photoshop? Decades of User Experience research and design. That's the difference between powerful free software, and powerful industry standard software. Don't dwell on the realities of your limits.

If I might ask, how long ago was version 2 released? Also I am curious to hear what the intended user group is and what tasks they can perform in your software better than that of a competitor. I think these answers would go a long way toward figuring out what happened to your user base. I don't have a clear picture in mind of who is meant to use it and under what circumstances in a larger creative workflow.

The breakdown may be between it being a powerful piece of art software, which it is, and there being myriad other tools that possibly do the same job and more in a similar price bracket.

Quote from Paul_Boland

I love the KnightTrek Productions logo and I've had it so long that it's become recognizable with me. I've never thought about changing it and now that you suggested it I'm not sure how eager I am to do so. But I do appreciate you feedback on it and will consider it, thank you.

There's a line in BraveHeart about compromise: "You admire this man. Uncompromising men are easy to admire. He has courage; so does a dog. But it is exactly the ability to *compromise* that makes a man noble."
You need to compromise to move forward. Forget how much you like your logo, forget how much time you spent on your website. You need to tear down the old world to build a new one. Sentimentality is fine if you're only making stuff to please yourself. Clearly you're looking to please others and you must balance their judgement along with your own.

Quote from Paul_Boland

I am long term unemployed and have very little income to play with.

This is going to be a thorn in your side for some time. 15 years ago you could make software without a budget and be on an even playing field with everyone else. These days there are minimum requirements to get the trust of your audience. 1. a domain+hosting ($60/year) 2. code signing ($99/year) 3. be a registered business (cost varies country-to-country).

It is still dirt cheap compared to opening a store or inventing a product, but it does require a small investment. It's frustrating that this is the way it is, but selling software is a business, not a charity.

I haven't tried the software yet, i'm not sure my opinion would be very valid on it as i have no experience in graph style drawing programs.
However, i completely agree that the website and logo is very dated (reminds me of the 90's geocities webpages).

You need to give off a professional vibe for people to download the software, and i'm afraid the website gives the opposite.
I'd completely start from scratch with the website and the logo, make something modern and professional, go on W3Schools and learn some CSS and HTML and avoid software like dreamweaver if you can (I highly reccomend Notepad++).
An updated website and logo will be the first step in enticing people to proceed to download your software. I also like the ideas mentioned earlier of doing some Youtube videos, a promo video, some basic lessons on using the software etc.
The promo video on your website is really shaky and is videoing the computer screen, again this looks really unprofessional. I'd redo the promo using a screen capture program.

I was going to make a fancy post but Ryan pretty much summed up exactly what I was going to say. If you are trying to sell something, it doesn't matter how much YOU like it unless you are your only customer. I spent like 14 years making my game knowing quite well that it was aimed at a niche market, and the results I got back reflect that perfectly. To be honest it probably would have done much better had I left the 'niche bits' out, but that's not the game I set out to make 14 years ago.

So you really need to decide: Are you making software for YOU, or are you starting a business that is aiming to make money?

Nice to hear so, Paul! That's the right decision.

About the slow down issue. Did you ever considered to use the Surface object instead? I think it's much faster.

Was DigiGraph 2 always Freeware or commercial too?

Is it so shocking that users of a free tool in 2008 didn't jump over to a tool that they have to pay for in 2014? a lot can happen to a customer base in a month let alone over several years.. the market is saturated with free drawing tools and consumers can be brutally fickle... that's business!

Personally I've always used Graphics Gale as my digital graph paper/grid substitute, it only takes a few seconds to set up a grid that looks just like graph paper. So maybe there's no other software designed specifically with digital graph paper in mind, but there are plenty of tools capable of re-creating digital graph paper that have many additional features.

I will be quite quick with my answer Paul. How long those people had to wait for features between Digiraph 2 release and Digigraph 3?

I would say way too long and they just move on to other applications, which already implemented same solutions or better/similar.