I’ve been hearing about HueCubed on twitter through the postings of my friend @derekhuether of The Critcal Path blog fame. The posts have been in the ‘I’m working ridiculous late night hours on this great concept’ genre. I have a lot of respect for Derek’s knowledge and expertise – he’s a great PM. So when he twitted he wanted people to review a pre-production version of HueCubed, I jumped at the chance and was given an exclusive, inside peek at the new HueCubed app. Here’s what I think.
Front Page of a Very Good App for Pre and Post PMPs
What I love about HueCubed
First of all, if Derek thinks this thing is just for people who are prepping for the PMP, he’s missing a huge potential market. As a seasoned PMP, I need something like this to keep me fresh, and I’m sure a lot of other PMPs do to. I love HueCubed because it’s a fantastic way for me to stay up on my theory, and here’s why.
It’s cheap $4.99 a month. I think I can swing that. No problem.
It’s easy to use I was able to navigate right to the cards and start answering questions pretty much immediately. The interface is big and clear, with a well placed ‘flip’ button, and side navigation links that enable me to move through various process specific areas as I desire.
I can take it in small chunks I don’t have a lot of time to re-read the PMBOK. And so I really like being able to just flip through a few cards when I have some down time, or maybe once every few hours. And it’s really nice that the cards all have a page reference back to the PMBOK, so if I want to dig deeper, I know exactly where to go. And I can easily see where I’m stumbling because of my favorite feature…..
The Progress Chart (angels singing) Love this! Every card becomes a block, grouped into process areas, and the block is either red (got it wrong) or green (got it right). So I can instantly see which areas I need to focus on. Better, when I click on the block, it leads me straight to that card, so I know re-review the question, and follow up in the PMBOK.
Nerd Girl Likes HueCubed
Where I think HueCubed can Develop
For all the areas I love, I have a few usability/functionality updates I’d personally like to see. The basic framework is there, so these ideas are just really about improving the user interface. Here are my suggestions
The Progress Chart When you dig into an area, say, ‘risk’ for example, and then click on Progress Chart, you only get the ‘risk’ section of the progress chart and it’s hard to figure out how to get all sections of the chart. So I would say, put breadcrumbs at the top of the chart like this:
- Progress Chart>Risk Integration
That way, the user can easily go back to the full chart.
Guide me to the right Account Type Right now, the user has to read a paragraph about the types of accounts and the various functionality available at each account level. Instead, turn this into a chart, something like this:
| Trail | Free | Full | |
| See all cards | X | X | |
| See progress | X | X |
Tell me to ‘Flip to Answer’ It took me a few minutes to realize that all the questions were True/False (incorrect/correct) and that I was to answer the question after I flipped. So I would say change the button from ‘flip’ to ‘flip to answer’.
Expand out to Really Hard Stuff Currently all the cards are true-false. In the future, it would be nice to have a super hard version that had multiple choice questions.
Direct me with Big Buttons, not words When the user first logs in, they are directed to a page that includes information about types of accounts, progress feedback and flash cards. And it’s all language. Instead, have that first page be more functionally directive with big buttons that have the user go somewhere. For example, have a button that says ‘Start Using Flashcards’, and another button that says ‘See Your Progress’ and then finally a third button that says ‘Subscribe’. I would say, less wording and more functional direction.
Conclusion
With its incredibly affordable price point and instantly usable interface, there’s not much to argue against HueCubed, it’s a win-win out of the box (so to speak). The upcoming integration with twitter should make it even more fun – maybe there could even be HueCubed knowledge contests where the top contestants could be twitted to the #PMOT group. Maybe we could even have #PMOT contests…hey, I’m going off on a tangent. Bottom line, this is a good app and a great way to stay up on your theory.
A refreshingly honest write up about this product. There are very few tools that are perfect, but this one looks like it has an opportunity to provide good value to a very broad audience. Very cool!
This kind of open feedback is great to see (and to get if you are the developer!).
Thanks for sharing.
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