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Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?

#171

Post by markroseman »

First decide if you just want it to look nice, or if you want it to work nice. For the first there are already lots of suggestions here.

For the second, do you have some users or potential users (right needs, skills, etc.) nearby? Get them to use your software and watch them. Or use screen sharing to do it remotely, along with an audio link. Get them to talk through what they're doing. Watch to see the trouble spots, ways they approach using parts of the software that maybe don't match how you expect people to try to use it. Does the way your user interface is organized help or get in the way? Do the cool widgets you used make sense to people other than you?

Start this early, with the crappiest thing you can get up and running visually. Don't wait until you've invested huge amounts of effort in making things look just so. This may lead you to deeper changes but ones that might make the system a whole lot better.

Or, you could wait until you've put in so much effort and baked in so many decisions about how the system should work that you're not about to make any structural changes. Just put some lipstick on the pig.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?

#172

Post by maroonblazer »

sfilargi wrote: post #150
jolmg wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For design you have to have an artistic nature. I know what you mean, but I now read "artistic nature" as making subjective/arbitrary decisions that for some unknown reason a lot of people favor. Though by the way I read d0m's comment, it seems like there's a fair amount of objectivity in graphic design as well. Lots of logic: If you need to design something, it's because you have a goal and you need to make every…

Yeah, I get it, even art has to follow some ground rules to begin with, but do we know what exactly is it that makes Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” such a great composition?

Music is a very different domain than visual design and we have heuristics for both that, if followed, will keep a musician or designer from composing/designing something demonstrably 'bad'. Will it be brilliant? Likely not, but "not bad" is not a bad goal to aim for.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?

#173

Post by booleandilemma »

sfilargi wrote: post #117
d0m wrote: post #51

A 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…

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.

Maybe it’s because I just stepped away from a harrowing 5 hour troubleshooting session (which I’ll be continuing on Monday), but I just can’t bring myself to agree with your comment.

You (and too many other people) make it sound like engineering is akin to following steps in a cookbook.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?

#174

Post by maybe-not-in-ux »

sfilargi wrote: post #150
jolmg wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For design you have to have an artistic nature. I know what you mean, but I now read "artistic nature" as making subjective/arbitrary decisions that for some unknown reason a lot of people favor. Though by the way I read d0m's comment, it seems like there's a fair amount of objectivity in graphic design as well. Lots of logic: If you need to design something, it's because you have a goal and you need to make every…

Yeah, I get it, even art has to follow some ground rules to begin with, but do we know what exactly is it that makes Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” such a great composition?

It's helpful to deconflate art and design. Design uses artistic tools in the service of clearly defined and objective goals. It is a learned skill.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?

#175

Post by maroonblazer »

weinzierl wrote: post #118
hathawsh wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also doubtful about color psychology, but color model theory (including color wheels) has some real substance. Most web sites from the late 1990s are today recognized as ugly because the color choices were awful (perhaps because they were trying to be compatible with graphics cards that only allowed 8 bits per pixel.) Web sites with colors that fit a recognized color model appeal to a lot more people. Color model…

> Color model theory is similar to music theory, in the sense that both theories may just be a codification of familiar patterns. That doesn't mean they're not useful. Color harmony might well be just a codification of familiar patterns. Musical harmony on the other hand is very different. While it certainly has some parts that are rooted in familiarity, especially when it comes to consonance and dissonance of certai…

They said music theory, not music harmony. Music harmony is a subset of music theory and music theory is a codification of familiar patterns. Those patterns likely formed because of their strong physical/physiological effects.

I don't know enough about the visual arts to know whether color harmony is a subset of color theory. Or if color harmony is even a thing.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?

#176

Post by bookz »

minhaz23 wrote: post #126
deltron3030 wrote: post #124

>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?

RefactoringUI series already mentioned is great for specific tactical tricks that are immediately applicable.

To develop a deeper understanding and taste, I would recommend "Design Basics" by Lauer & Pentak. I’ve studied and taught design from it and think it is a great introduction to the fundamentals. The latest edition tends to be overpriced as a general rule. I would go for one of the older editions. Personally, I don’t think the content improved any after the 5th ed (which is excellent). Immersing yourself in that kind of content can give you deeper understanding of why specific suggestions from folks like RefactoringUI work as well as they do and develop sensitivity in perception.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?

#177

Post by mukeshsoni »

d0m wrote: post #51

A 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…

I recently went through Sarah Drasner's workshop "Design for developers" https://frontendmasters.com/workshops/design-for-devs/

It went through exactly the points you mention in good detail. And she also showed implementation of some of these ideas on the web.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?

#178

Post by chiefalchemist »

sfilargi wrote: post #117
d0m wrote: post #51

A 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…

Yes and no. Design (as I think you're using it) is not UI / UX.

Ultimately, both code and aesthetics easy when building product. The hardest part is getting people to the product, signed up, onboarded, using, __and__ coming back for more...is very very hard.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?

#179

Post by zapzupnz »

ioddly wrote: post #104
d0m wrote: post #51

A 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…

> Reading material design from Google https://material.io is a great start. You may not like the UI of it, but the UX and explanations of why things are this way are really interesting. To add, I've found reading the design documentation of some web and mobile UI libraries to be very enlightening. For example, the colors section of BlueprintJS has helped really narrow down how I use colors: https://blueprintjs.com/do…

I'd add Apple's Human Interface Guideline document and annual WWDC sessions on user interfaces. Even if you don't use a Mac or iOS device, or even if you hate Apple, taking the time to understand why they think their user interfaces are the best on the planet goes a long way to being able to understand why other companies also think their user interfaces are the best on the planet. The ideal result isn't a happy medium, though; it's whatever suits each platform best, something you only understand when you know what each platform's designers are going for.

Don't look into Microsoft's design documentation though; even they can't decide what their design principles are. The only time they did, and stuck with it to the end, was Windows Phone.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage UI/UX for your side projects?

#180

Post by lobo_tuerto »

jolmg wrote: post #127
d0m wrote: post #51

A 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…

> Basic on typography (It makes a big difference even if most people don't notice it) Can you expand on why typography matters? I've never understood why some people seem to care so much about kerning and line angles in the glyphs and such. What do you think are the most important topics in typography people should learn and why do they matter?

It matters because of Comic Sans. :)
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