Why I Want to Like Coghead But Can’t

For awhile late last year I was an enthusiastic beta tester for Coghead. I received an invitation in early December, registered, read over the documentation, tried to create a few applications, posted some questions to the forum, but ended up abandoning the effort after a week or two. As much as I wanted to help their development team find and squash their bugs so the site could be a great one, it just seemed like it wasn’t quite ready for testing and that I was subsequently wasting their time and mine.

Even though I gave up back then, I did make a note to check back later and give Coghead another shot; I kept abreast of their evolution through blog posts, noting that in March they switched BPEL engines, and a couple months ago registered a new account.

Unfortunately this post finds me eight months later still thinking that Coghead is an underwhelming disappointment. In my humble (and fortunately for Coghead, not particularly esteemed) opinion their service is overrated, the application design suggests designers that are too clever by half, and the environment doesn’t seem to present any unique features to draw me away from other options, including my far-and-away favorite, Zoho Creator.

Expecting Too Much

My first and main gripe with the Coghead Application System is the fatigue I experience from too much reading and clicking to get where I need to be. I ran an unscientific experiment wherein I built an identical form with two fields in Coghead and Zoho Creator where Coghead seemed to require roughly 30% more user action to complete the task:

Site	Screencast
Coghead
Zoho Creator

Unless I missed something in watching myself click around those interfaces, these are the steps I saw myself performing in each case:

Coghead

1. CLICK Start from scratch
2. FILL OUT Application Name
3. FILL OUT Application Description
4. CLICK Ok
5. CLICK wrench icon
6. CLICK Add Tab
7. FILL OUT Tab Name
8. CLICK Tab Type
9. CLICK Ok
10. CLICK wrench icon
11. CLICK Edit Form
12. DRAG List
13. CLICK “(i)” icon
14. CLICK Display this field in the default Collection View
15. FILL OUT Label
16. FILL OUT Data Field
17. FILL OUT Custom Options
18. Click Add
19. Finish FILLING OUT Custom Options
20. FILL OUT Default Value
21. CLICK Required
22. CLICK Ok
23. DRAG Text Box
24. CLICK “(i)” icon
25. FILL OUT Label
26. FILL OUT Data Field
27. CLICK Required
28. CLICK Display this field in the default Collection View
29. CLICK Multiline
30. CLICK Ok
31. CLICK Save & Exit

Zoho Creator

1. CLICK Create New Application
2. FILL OUT Application Name
3. FILL OUT Form Name
4. CLICK Public or Private
5. CLICK Create Now
6. DRAG Dropdown
7. FILL OUT Label Name
8. CLICK Options
9. FILL OUT Enter Choices
10. CLICK Required Field
11. FILL OUT Initial Value
12. FILL OUT Field Name
13. CLICK Done
14. DRAG Multi Line
15. CLICK Options
16. FILL OUT Label Name
17. CLICK Required Field
18. FILL OUT Field Name
19. CLICK Done
20. CLICK Access this Application

So why did Coghead require me to perform 11 more steps to create those two fields? It seems like in several cases I was asked to click twice where really one click would have worked, and several times it seems I was asked to read about options I should have just been able to comprehend and use, had the icons been more intuitive or replaced by a text link. I’m no UI guru but I really don’t get why I have to click on a wrench icon to be subsequently presented with a single text link.

With Zoho Creator I feel like I’m being asked to do as little as necessary, with the option to dig in and do more when required. With Coghead I feel like I’m jumping through hoops to satisfy the misguided conceptions of a brilliant but misinformed team of user interface superstars. I understand that Coghead is targeting non-technical folks but “non-technical” shouldn’t imply the acceptance or enjoyment of extravagant reading and clicking.

Expecting Too Much, Redux

My second complaint about Coghead is the assumption that I will pay $50 a month so I and four peers can write and use applications with no more than “25,000 Data Records” and a 250 MB attachment limit. Dabble DB lets any user create public applications for free and charges paying customers $25 for 5 users while also offering SSL security and branding features. For $50 a month, Dabble DB gives you room for 15 users. If I read Coghead’s pricing model correctly, 15 users would cost me $250 (5-person plan + 10 extra users at $20 a pop) or $150 (three, 5 user accounts), depending on how application sharing across accounts can work.

When Hope is All You Have

Perhaps my two gripes are a bit unfair, they admittedly stem from my own unique expectations for the nascent market of online application development. Also I am clearly more experienced with Zoho Creator than I am Coghead and Dabble DB, having only flirted with the latter two. But in the case of Coghead there are (two main) reasons why I haven’t gone beyond flirtation with their system. I started with them, after all, and only migrated to Zoho Creator after it became clear the folks at AdventNet were offering something much closer to what I was seeking.

I do think Coghead benefits from a lot of favorable press, their backers fund some impressive companies, their new Coglets look promising, and I’m sure they have a lot of smart people on board who are agressively evolving the CAS. Until I hear of a really good reason though, I’ll stick with continuing to play with Zoho Creator and, when I do venture out to other online application development sites, the next will probably be Dabble DB. At this point I fail to understand how Coghead commands the attention of 17,000 developers and frankly, what all the excitement is about.