We've got loads of ideas about what families want to do online, but we'd prefer to be guided by what real users feel are the best features for them and their families...
Let's start the conversation here, with some idea for starters: - view our family tree - print our family tree on a beautiful A3 glossy page - view our family profiles and view an individuals news - upload our family photo's - upload our family recipes - send messages to our family members to discuss stuff - plan and view family events - have a place for my kids to play safe nline games - send gifts easily to our family - print news, photos, recipes, messages and have them sent by snail mail for me
-add a pet into the tree (and not only a bird) -send sms to all your family members in one click -generate a family pic out of all the pictures with a special background (like end of year school pic)
Thanks for the Genoom heads up - already on that, and about 10 others... seem to be popping up everywhere. Facebook API - in the works, but needs to be useful - so thinking on that still in progress. Gedcom DB: yes, in the works; as is joining two trees, but as you know, not a simple thing to do...
@dhoughton: I totally agree with you - and we're committed to doing something that is useful rather than anecdotal, so the challenge is to build something which people love to use, and which they find useful... Thanks for the great ideas, most of them are in the works, and some of them on the way... ;-)
to build on Gareth's interesting <a href="http://pregnant.kindo.com/blog/2007/08/06/features-of-the-ideal-family-network/en/">post</a>
One of the point that is not clear is where the boundaries of family are. Does family mean close friends? Yes probably for some people. But including close friends in the tree is something tricky.
In our case i think we should stick to family. We are different from the next door social network because we value families. Families must feel comfortable in using the system.
Being able to add friends in my tree makes no sense to me.
However being able to exchange stuff with some friends that also have their family tree is something that could be great (send my grand mother's recipe to my friend's grand mother for instance)
By focusing on families we might restrict the number of people in the tree (your friends wont be there) BUT we will make our family members feel at home and we may encourage more families to sign up because they'll feel it's a secure and trustful environment.
My mum will not feel comfortable putting pictures or sensitive family stories online if she knows that they can be seen by my cousin's friend.
I feel like we should pay attention not to break the family circle. I do not think friends are family. By keeping friends out (sorry guys, i still love you), we create a pure family environment that will be close to the "family only" gatherings i used to have when i was young, where ALL people feel 100% at ease for sharing information.
This is what i'd like my Kindo to be.
I like the idea of assigning different weights in the relationships and have an inner circle. This is very important. In my own case, the inner circle would probably start with my grand parents, parents, parents sibblings, cousins and my sister or brother's partners and children.
To tackle the case where a friend is actually very very close to the family, we could just add it as a sibbling. But here comes the problem of unique members in the realm of all the trees. Another subject.
-being able to print the family tree is a must-have feature! When I created my tree I immediately wondered how I would ever be able to print this not very conveniently shaped structure... I am sure people would like to have a print-out of their tree.
-inner circle would also be a good idea. "Family are friends that you haven´t chosen..." I think in every family there are people that you are closer to than others, and if it´s a very big family "spam" might become an issue as well... I don´t need to know about everything that´s going on in the more distant family.
-I agree that there should be no friends in the Kindo network. This is what facebook is for and all the others. Kindo should stay away from this and be a different space for a very special network - the family. I do wonder however if you are able to connect to other family trees though. Lets say I´ve created my family tree and get married to my partner, can I import his family tree and connect it to mine? Here the option to select people for an inner circle becomes also very important again as you for sure don´t want to share everything with everyone.
One thing I forgot to mention in my previous comment: I would love an application where you could map the location of all your family members! I think where poeple live would also be a valubale information that should go on the profile cards.
I'm not that sure thar friends shouldn't be aloud in the trees. Sometimes, there is a very close friend that a whole family consider to be part of the inner circle. And what about god fathers, for example? I think it could be nice to have a sort of "special guest" status for these situations. The idea of different degrees of closeness is quite nice.
I'd be really interested in seeing a GEDCOM import (and maybe export) feature. This would allow me to jump-start my tree from data that I have already entered offline (and in geni).
My g/f's comment "but I already entered everything into the other website", arghgh.
@normanr Thanks for the feedback. The GEDCOM import feature is something that has been asked for previously and we have it on our long list of feature requests. This will definitely make it easier for users on other sites to transfer there family tree data.
@Oralion Fair enough and an interesting point - would you go as far as saying that you would like to see an anniversary of a person's deaths? It's just that this is a sensitive topic and we have had quite a few users give us feedback about making the record of death as subtle as possible...
Hi there, Just joined a few days ago and my family and I are having a lot of fun setting up our tree. Have read through all the other comments and suggestions and mine have all been mentioned already so just wanted to reiterate: 1) agree with being able to see where the person is currently living on the main page - we are a very far-flung family and it would be great to see where everyone is. 2) date of death is very important in a family tree, it needs to be included. 3) place of birth would be great too in the profile page 4) LOVE the suggestion someone had about the legend. As the tree gets bigger it becomes difficult to work out how someone is related to you, so having a legend to say who is a cousin once removed, etc. would be very cool. 5) this may sound a little selfish, but since I'm the one that started my tree, is there somewhere that it can say this? I would love to get a little credit from some distant relatives for reuniting everyone... Thanks for great site, looking forward to growing with it!
Thanks for the great feedback and I am so glad to hear that you are enjoying the application. I have added all of your comments to our list of important user feedback which will eventually be converted into features for you to use.
I believe that the most important feature that is missing is to allow inter-relationships between the memebers of the tree.... like cousins married, etc. It is impossible to build a big family tree without that feature.
I would love the ability to print and export this tree into some sort of a standard format. Dates of death are important, and I think it would be neat to have a feature that will "calculate" someone's relation to you in plain english: Step-cousin twice removed... I don't know what that means really, but I think it would be neat. Otherwise this service is terrific on many levels. The UI is brilliant and beautiful. And the text on the site is very pleasant and just plain friendly! I love it, please keep up the great work.
I agree with previous comments about date of death, it's important. Also it would be good to see in the tree, who is not alive anymore, maybe different color or just remark - deceased? And one thing - if someone is dead, and not divorced, it's not good to show she/he is ex-wife/husband and he/she also isn't really someones husband or wife. It's kind of confusing now. Especially when someone has a new family and they are not married yet or maybe they are separated already.. Oh, and the real picture of growing tree would be super:)
1) Search by: year, name, home, birthdate, place etc. 2) Be able to export data 3) A built in chat-room that shows who are currently logon, and allow them to message each other 4) Printing function. 5) Option which allows individuals to chose which family birthday should be display. I will prefer not to see the birthday of all extended family. 6) Nice API that will allow me to display birthdays on my website.
As I keep using kind, I will find out what else I need.
Sorry my bad English, I am from Brazil suggestions: - The person who created the tree could be the "administrator", And be allowed to change everything in the tree including profiles of others and deletes them - The administrator could be changed by a vote by family, or something similar - The person could exclude yourself, The person would not disappear from the tree, only your personal information and photos, minus the name, obviously - A forum in Portuguese :-P
Hi all, Also a Google map of the family, with birth/living/death place and town. It will be used by the name of the town or with GPS coordonate. It will be great also to see who create the first the tree. And I'm agree with this point: - send messages to our family members to discuss stuff , but with one click to everybody (to give us news updates, pictures updates, etc...)
Giving people "admin" rights is a tricky business - I know in my family there would be problems as a result of this... Something we need to think about a lot more Yes - we're working on something which removes your data from the tree, but not your profile as such Please feel free to start Portuguese threads in the forum!!
@Jerome: Google maps mashup is on the way! Thanks for that tree originators idea Messages are on the way too!
@indo301: We're working on the printing ;-) We're also working on GEDCOM save and import Tree widgets are in the not too distant future Tree search is something we're working on - would you like that to be in the flash, or in HTML? Date of birth, place of birth takes up a lot of space - so we've added it to the full edit profile - check it out and let me know what you think?
A note to all: Printing is on the way! ;-) Thanks for everyones feedback and keep it coming!!
