+1. I've spent 5x the amount of time trying to understand this than I would for anyone else-- because I think Joshua is brilliant. But I'm still flummoxed. Is it like mechanical turk? Tasty Labs could really benefit from a designer, methinks. Not just to make it pretty, but to empathize with/advocate for their audience.
Agreed. We are circling in on better explanations.
(FWIW it took a few YEARS before I was able to explain tagging and group behavior on delicious cogently. This process is not surprising.)
So, yes, it's a bit like mechanical turk. Hopefully some of the usage will be driven by participatory urges rather than getting 5c per transaction (though we will probably empower that sort of payment, and more. Offers etc.)
Holy crap, storytelling is way harder than people think. I just did YC this summer and on rehearsal day, it was pretty breathtaking just how few of the companies made any sense to me after a 2min pitch. These are handpicked-geniusfolk-by-YC and they still can't explain their idea to a room full of strangers. It was similarly amazing to see PG whip these pitches into shape over a week or two.
So if I were to give advice, I would say to have coffee with PG and give him your pitch. He's magical. Regardless, grats on the launch!
"Human.io lets you to script with humans as easily as you would script with software. It does for the digital economy what the assembly line did for the industrial economy.
The software allows you to dynamically assemble ad hoc armies of virtual workers, who are then assigned to complete tasks in the real world using the sensors and input devices on their phones: GPS, camera, microphone, and so on.
Let's say you want to X. Human.io lets you..."
Still not perfect, but I think it's a little more clear than what you have.
I'd start by placing the ones that you do have more prominently on your site. Right now they're below the fold and are the very last thing on the page. However, to me they're far more descriptive of what the product is than a picture showing that you connect a mobile phone to a server. I also want to know why you're different. I can already connect a mobile phone to a server. Why are you better? Also, one thing that confuses the hell out of me is that the picture says "Create and instantly deploy mobile apps" and then later on you have text that says "The end-users (the humans in human.io) use our iOS and Android app". So which is it? Do I create a new app or do they use your app? I think what this may be is mechanical turk for mobile devices. That actually seems pretty cool. In any case, good luck!
Your target user is tech saavy, but this is a platform looking for problems. Describing examples with pictures should be good enough for now. When you have real examples from users, then you can screenshot and link them.
I'm imagining a headline like "Things that used to be really really hard, but are easy with Human.io" and then pictures and captions describing the use cases.
> Human.io lets you to script with humans as easily as you would script with software
That was our thinking when we first started working on human.io. If GMaps lets you invoke methods on a map, and Twilio on a phone, what would it mean to invoke methods on a person?
"That was our thinking when we first started working on human.io."
I think it's important to have that first, otherwise you are burying the lead. Although I can see why you wouldn't want to prematurely niche yourself, I don't think the pitch about engaging your users is especially compelling.
"what would it mean to invoke methods on a person?"
I mean ultimately you want to be selling the benefits and not the features, so I think being able to communicate the implications of that statement are much more important than being able to come up with a snappy analogy for the statement itself.
If you're really committed to staying neutral on usage though, we already have the term HCI for human-computer interaction. So maybe you could describe it as an HCI programming language or something.
