I'm very experienced at UI/UX and suck at programming, so I'm happy to help you out. (I might need your help too one day!)
Find me at www.mathlete.com
Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?
151–160 of 203 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?
#152Do basic stuff and tell everybody you're keeping it simple. See https://pinboard.in/. At least programmers like it.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?
#153A lot of engineers have the mentality of "engineering is hard, but design is just whatever some color matching and styling". I'll prob. be downvoted but here's my honest opinion: I think you'll gain a lot career-wise to learn about UX and UI. You'll be able to understand products in a deeper level from the customer's side and will then be able to make better decisions as an engineer. You'll also have a much easier ti…
Steven Krug has a good book as well.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?
#154A lot of engineers have the mentality of "engineering is hard, but design is just whatever some color matching and styling". I'll prob. be downvoted but here's my honest opinion: I think you'll gain a lot career-wise to learn about UX and UI. You'll be able to understand products in a deeper level from the customer's side and will then be able to make better decisions as an engineer. You'll also have a much easier ti…
Made the bullet list readable on mobile: * Visual hierarchy (I.e. the same way you divide your code in modules and functions, you need to divide the visual space in a clear hierarchy). * Basic on typography (It makes a big difference even if most people don't notice it) * Understanding what's UX (I.e. reading "Don't make me think"). Just "caring" and "thinking" about UX will improve designs, even if you don't have mu…
HN really needs to copy markdown for lists starting with * or 1,2,3,4 etc
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?
#155A lot of engineers have the mentality of "engineering is hard, but design is just whatever some color matching and styling". I'll prob. be downvoted but here's my honest opinion: I think you'll gain a lot career-wise to learn about UX and UI. You'll be able to understand products in a deeper level from the customer's side and will then be able to make better decisions as an engineer. You'll also have a much easier ti…
> A lot of engineers have the mentality of "engineering is hard, but design is just whatever some color matching and styling". Just anecdata, but as an engineer I think engineering is easy and design is hard. For engineering you just have to follow logic, reasoning, good practices and have discipline. Also you can test your code to death to make sure everything is correct. For design you have to have an artistic natu…
Probably on the same lines of the sibling comments, but here's my 2 cents. (I'm the design lead at software company, strong fronted dev background)
I believe that design should never be a creative process — when it is it means you are improvising — and that's simply disrespectful of the users. Well, you can have some sparks of creativeness (which usually is just an insight finally coming together from different datapoints now connected) but the process that brings you there is analytical, cynical, cold and methodical.
Explore the domain, document possibilities, group approaches and make comparisons.
To answer OP's question: the problem is usually time. If you spend 2 weeks developing a feature, why would you think 2 hours are enough to design it?
It would be like that Futurama episode where Fry writes a tv series episode script in hours and he's surprised that it lasts only 10 minutes.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?
#156I've discovered that https://tailwindcss.com/docs/what-is-tailwind/ fits me best as a way to do UX/UI as a backend person. Feels like functional programming with well-defined, limited number of building blocks, whereas normal CSS styling always seemed like endless amount of options. Also the docs are really great with some ready-made patterns. No idea if it is for everyone but I enjoy it right now.
Frameworks like these are terrible for your document size and page load performance once your project scales. Why would you write anything that can't scale if you can avoid it? Whether or not you're looking to turn your pet project into a SAAS business is a moot point when you can get scalability for free with other approaches.
I mean, with something like PurifyCSS or some other 'css tree shaker', something like this is perfect.
On an (albeit fairly simple) app that I'm building, my CSS file, using Tailwind, is 6.1kb gziped. I think that's pretty reasonable.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?
#157>How do I solve this? Develop an interest in design in general. It‘s a skill that grows with your level of immersion. It‘s helpful to have developed a taste before making design decisions, or even for deciding what to learn and who to follow. You could start by reading about the history of design, especially where design started to emerge as its own thing from art in the early 1900s. Knowing the history and political…
Any resources you can recommend for learning?
Design Literacy by Steven Heller is a good comprehensive book about graphic design.
Here‘s a more general video you could watch now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBCa_jbxGfI
What‘s important to understand is that graphic design, architecture and product design did evolve at the same time, with similar underlying principles. It‘s all related.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?
#158What I do --- Iterate.
If you have time, go through the versions of my single page app (single file, actually):
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?
#159This is my problem as well, I’ve started to take web sites I like the look of (like mobile twitter) and first drawing them by hand and then using plain html and css try and copy them pixel for pixel.
I’m copying images etc and buttons don’t work because it is the layouts that I’m trying to get right.
I’ve learnt so much doing this that it has really helped.
Reading some css tutorials and learning css is a world away from having to find a way to get an element to appear in a very specific place.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?
#160Sounds like you're on the right path in that you have a genuine desire to create great looking products. This means you have a respect for design, which is hugely important.
I used to be a back-end guy (I once co-authored a book on an ORM and just love middle tier and db shizzle). I had a huge appreciation for products that looked and felt great, but only had the back-end skills. I had a genuine desire to build skills in design so I could make better products.
If you want to take some short-cuts to build great looking stuff I'd do the following
- Build a mood board of stuff you think looks great. Set your own standards bar.
- Play around with Sketch or similar to learn how to get the look you like (this will make you think about UI design problems). This might take years but you have to start somewhere.
- Read "Design of Everyday Things" and "Don't Make Me Think" and a few other design classics. The principles stand strong.
- Get help from designers to bridge the gap between your skill level and where you want to be. When I started my company, I'd find designers who had a visual style I liked and paid them to help out.