n!Fuze Review

John Ellsworth, a SolidWorks employee, commented on this blog requesting more feedback from potential customers of the n!Fuze product.

I made my account on the DS store this past weekend. So I went back to log in. Naturally, I didn’t use my main email address, or my real name, so I had forgotten all the details and had to click on the help link. I did this twice, and the email took at least 30 minutes to arrive. By that time I had lost interest and moved on to other things.

Eventually the email did arrive, and allowed me to reset my password. This worked ok. The link to the DS store was in smaller type than the rest of the links in the header, and off to one side. I couldn’t figure out exactly why I was where I was, but it may be explained by the fact that DS has made the DS Store part of a community – the SwYm (see what you mean) community. So it seems a community is a pre-requisite for a store. You can’t get to the store without signing in to the community. My personal belief is that a store should be more inclusive. If you put a store behind a log in, it seems that you would get fewer customers. I don’t know of other stores behind logins. Certainly none that I go to or buy stuff from.

Then the list of apps showed up. I knew I wanted n!Fuze, and that there was a free trial. So, I had to go through the motions and fill out all the invalid address (or replace one invalid address with another that actually existed) to “buy” the software trial for $0.00. Luckily they didn’t require a credit card for this transaction. And now comes the download, right? Wrong. It’s a cloud application, silly. Check the “apps” link to see if it is listed in your available applications. Nope.

Ok, this is a game of hide and seek. What did they do with the link to the trial? “My Orders” tells me it “might” be in the History section, but doesn’t provide a link. Eventually I find the History link. Indeed I find an order listed in the History, but the status is “Pending”. Clicking the “Order Details” link tells me I have a month for the trial. But it’s still “Pending”. Again I have lost interest because I’m not in control of the situation, and don’t know how long it will be “Pending”.

Ok, so the first feedback for a company that wants to do business on-line is: Make it look like you know what you’re doing. Links are all over the place, and not well organized. The whole community before store concept is not one that people get intuitively, so maybe make an effort to explain the special philosophy behind what you’re doing here. Either that or make it more intuitive. Also, realize that on-line business is all about immediate delivery.

Alright. So eventually, maybe 15-20 minutes later, the Pending is removed, and now I have to figure out how to start it. I go to the App link, and then the closest thing to a command is “create workspace”. I have to say that the interface does not define the workflow very well. I try to click the Upload Files button, but it won’t accept SolidWorks files. Hmmm. Fortunatly, I have some eDrawings, and it accepts those. But I can’t view the file or see any thumbnail. By now I’m annoyed. I can’t figure out if the software is truly crap or if the lack of instructions or intuitive interface is causing me to miss out. I don’t know what it can do. The only thing that comforts me is that I can remove data from the workspace.

I understand this is supposed to be for multiple people to look at data, but if I’m going to use this with someone, it’s going to be with someone less technically savvy than myself. So if I can’t get any useful benefit out of it in a few minutes of poking around, I’m certainly not going to get a customer to spend money (or spend money on their behalf) for something like this. If it worked, it would be worth $10/mo for access for 2 users to me. Plus, my projects don’t all last in increments of 3 months. I might just need someone to use a license for a couple of days and that’s it. I think it needs more granular pricing.  As it is, I regret the time I’ve got into it so far.

As I start to exit, I see the n!Fuze Community button. I just click it. Now it wants to know why I want to go there, what I expect to find, and how I plan to contribute. Cancel. Software that claims to be a solution but keeps asking me to define it is lame. Don’t you need to start with a marketing study to define the problem you’re trying to solve before you start writing software?