Stacks
p/stacks-3
Every day, we use tools that help us work and play better.
James Adam
Stacks — Share your favourite tools and find new ones you’ll love
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Ryan Gilbert
Kind of reminds me of @kylebragger's Sets from awhile ago. Nice work. :)
Utku Can
Hello! Tom and I were the product leads on Stacks. It's the first product from Offset, the digital studio at MOO. Here's a short blog post: https://medium.com/offset-hq/int... Making Stacks is invite only at the moment. Want to try it out? Request one on the site, and ping me! I'll send one your way. Happy to answer any questions too.
Nikunj Kothari
@utku Would love an invite. Site looks fantastic.
Utku Can
With that change in tack, I wanted to look at the stack builder again. In this iteration, you can see the inline builder coming together: http://cl.ly/aLKa This is also the point tags switch from being on tools to being on Stacks. This made so much sense, and got rid of the repetitiveness of having to tag everything 'design' in a stack to do with design. We also built in an auto suggest for tags, inspired by the excellent Medium implementation.
Utku Can
Thanks @wanghq. I think it was Victor Hugo who said you can't fight an idea whose time has come. Perhaps this is one such idea. I think your collection is really interesting, mainly because the language is very much around hackers, startups and building things. In terms of where Stacks differs, I would like us to build a product that's more accessible to a wider audience. Our approach is to look a little further than just technology, and seek out people who can share expertise across many different slices of life.
Utku Can
You can see how the Stack formation was coming together in this third iteration. http://cl.ly/aKXS This is when I got into the idea of representing the tools you have stacked via a block of colour grid we generate. In the current version of Stacks, this a narrow bar to the left of the stack, but here, you can see me trying out a grid, and even a circular version!
Utku Can
This was followed by a second iteration. Here's another peek: http://cl.ly/aKVb http://cl.ly/aLb2 This cut feels like the first time it clicked, and the idea for the stack you build crystallised. This is also when we introduced tags, but you'll notice they are on the tools; and not on the Stacks. More on this in a bit.
Utku Can
And I think that takes us through to the current iteration! Stacks is only a few weeks old, so I'd love to hear what you think and to get your feedback. If you're curious about how we made Stacks, here's a stack on Stacks! https://www.stackshq.com/@utku/s...
Utku Can
I thought it might be interesting to show the first ever cut of Stacks. Here are the first three screens that I put together: http://cl.ly/aKgb The original idea was that everyone would have a single stack, and we'd ask everyone at least three default questions, such as who do you bank with, or which airline you travel with the most. We quickly realised however, that (i) it felt too restrictive and (ii) maybe you hate your bank, but we were forcing you to choose one, under the assumption that it was a recommendation!
Utku Can
This is a very early wire of a homepage idea, where the focus was on selling Stacks on how individuals we would have on rotation get stuff done: http://cl.ly/aKTy This wasn't really clicking for us, and actually brought on the shift in thinking that made Stacks into what it is today: A complete stack — not the individual tools in it — is our point of focus.
James Greig
Curious to know why there isn't a direct link out for each item in a stack? (I like to open a bunch of links from a page into new tabs and then flick through them)
Utku Can
@j_greig Hey James. We went back and forth on this decision, and in fact a bunch of the early designs have the links under item names: http://cl.ly/aLHF (As well as tags on them, but that's another story...) Ultimately, it was a decision based on wanting to keep the stacks as clean as possible, but just today, we were discussing whether we should bring the links back. I suppose we will!
hq
Interesting! Anyone has any idea about why there are so many similar tool collection services popping up recently? @utku, would you like to introduce what makes your service different to the related products? Anyway, I made a collection http://www.producthunt.com/wangh...