

YC Facelift: Pebble - mahipal
http://kyrobeshay.com/post/21217064143/yc-facelift-pebble

======
ericabiz
A couple things about this one that didn't click with me:

1) You mention "iPhone" at the top. Sorry, I've already clicked "Back"--I'm an
Android user. Except Pebble is the first thing I've ever funded via
Kickstarter, and I'm ridiculously excited about it, so I'm clearly in their
target market.

2) I don't get the "Beam your music, Scotty." part--it's not the biggest draw
for me (and I'm not a Star Wars/Trek person, despite being a huge geek!) My
biggest interest in Pebble? It's a watch that lets ME do what I want with it--
I can display the time in weird fonts, or make it say:

seven

thirty

THREE

...or any of those other cool things. In other words, it's the design and
flexibility that interest me more than the features.

Pebble lets me be crafty...with my WATCH. That is freakin' awesome. It is SO
awesome that I will be wearing a watch for the first time in years. And that's
exciting. I feel like this page misses that genuine excitement that got me to
buy a Pebble and tell all my friends about it.

~~~
kyro
Fair criticisms. However, you're speaking, presumably, from the perspective of
a developer – someone who'll be writing apps for and fiddling with their
Pebble. I designed this from the perspective of a consumer who intends to
purchase the product because of its looks and the apps available for it
already. The iDevices are not advertised in a way that directly appeals to
tinkerers and developers, but rather to everyday people who want a cool device
that does cool things. Of course, I'm assuming who Pebble's target market is,
and I could very well be wrong.

~~~
ericabiz
Probably not, actually--although that's a fair guess based on both the content
of my post and the fact that it resides on Hacker News. I'm swamped with my
own business currently. I'm more of the "consumer interested in the looks and
apps" category.

------
justjimmy
Just wanted to give my 2 cents:

What you are doing is really dangerous. "In an effort to refine my design
skills, I’ve decided each week or so to redesign the landing page of a YC
company I dig and whose website I don’t feel so similarly about."

Doing a facelift on just the landing page, or rearranging elements around a
page is _not_ design. It's a subset of design. What's worse, is that these
redesigns you offer gives zero context, no interaction, no brief, no
reasoning. It's purely visual reformatting. Every placement of content, layout
has a reason – you need to provide those in order for us, the reader, to
understand your thought process and why you did the things you did.

I'd suggest taking it a step further to give more 'meat' to your posts. Use
services like Invisionapp to create clickable hotspots to allow users to
explore the redesigned site. Offer your thoughts as you go through the
process.

A simple image with a few words on the product and why it's awesome doesn't
really tell us anything about your process.

(Design is about solving problems – you also need to identify what is wrong
with the original design, then offer your solution and explain why they are
better)

~~~
replicatorblog
This is a popular sentiment among designers, but it is equally dangerous. The
flash, sizzle, and aesthetics are a HUGE part of design. People make
judgements in fractions of seconds, well before they have a chance to
experience interactions or any of the deeper level design issues.

I've seen three of these redo's on HackerNews and each time the redesign is
aesthetically much nicer. Sure there are some things that could be better if
he understood the market or product context at a deeper level, but each
service looked more professional/desirable.

I manage a team of designers and these would be great deliverables if the goal
was to help establish a style guide for a brand. After this round, I would
have a PM and a marketer work with the designer to optimize flow/content, but
this is exactly what I'd expect from a visual designer.

~~~
va_coder
This whole thread is getting really dangerous

------
ryanglasgow
No offense but this looks like a generic template with content filled in. A
clean and simple design like this needs to demonstrate excellent typography
and spacing, neither of which I see here.

If you wanted to let the product speak for itself, I would have drawn
inspiration from Flipboard or Path. Both of these sites heavily rely a clean
design coupled with custom typography and a well integrated video.

------
Angostura
Coming at this fresh, I have absolutely no idea what a facelift is in this
context, and you don't give any. Have you redesigned their web site? The
product? What's the relevance of biosensing?

Confusing.

~~~
pg_bot
The author has been redesigning the landing pages of different YC companies.

------
aaronkwhite
I really like the clean design and simple color palette, the one thing I would
address is the Typography. You've clearly chosen a non-standard typeset,
however I think it's extremely understated in this design.

There are some really good points about not highlighting both iOS & Android as
supported platforms (Android has a much larger user base). One of the really
cool things about the Pebble, is that you can grab apps for it or build your
own and this is really lost in the design you have.

I love that you are taking on these types of projects/exercises! Don't get
caught up in all the negative bias, you'll never please everyone... Would love
to see an update to this design, to see how you execute with this type of
feedback. Keep it Up!

------
SomeComments
Gee, it sure would have been nice to see that the watch communicates with all
these marvelous devices via bluetooth.

I mean really. Why are we left to assume that it's a bluetooth watch? Why
can't they just come out and say it? Are they shy or something? Do they
themselves secretly believe that by stating that it is a bluetooth device that
they some how lower the watch?

Why do they insult their ostensibly budding (zomg! rockstar ninja!11one)
"hacker" community with stupid diagrams like this?

<http://www.getinpulse.com/images/how-it-works.jpg>

~~~
SomeComments
Seriously, the first place I could find where they explicitly state that the
watch communicates via bluetooth was here:

<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.getinpulse>

~~~
superchink
Check out the kickstarter page for the product:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-
paper...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-
for-iphone-and-android) . It's very clear about Bluetooth being the method of
communication.

------
replicatorblog
It would be cool if you included the "Before" in the blog post as well. Nice
work on the design, especially for a medical student!

------
web_chops
I think pebble is the next big thing and might even get rid of its dependence
on the mobile phone in future. Just imagine Siri helping you get through your
day with out taking the phone out of the pocket!

------
pault
I don't think there is anything wrong with what you are doing, but I hope
people understand that there are many, many talented designers out there
working for companies with horrendous websites. It's very easy to make a PSD
mockup of a single landing page working in a vacuum. However, see how that
pretty PSD looks after making its way past meddling founders, overworked devs
that don't give a damn about aesthetics, and technology constraints. Building
beautiful websites in a business environment is _hard_.

------
eel
How did you decide what to include on the page? One thing that I noticed was
that you removed the news mentions from this facelift, but the one you did
last week has news mentions.

------
untog
Unlike most of the other facelifts, I'd say that the inPulse web site is
definitely in need of a refresh. So this was interesting to see.

------
citricsquid
I think this idea is cool (YC Facelift) but without explaining _why_ you did
what you did your designs are just "oooo pretty". Nobody will learn from your
work if you can't explain _why_ you did what you did, and if you _can't_
explain why then the criticisms here are probably valid. Design is more than
just pretty.

------
gwillis13
kyro, I would actually like to see you do a design that doesn't fall into the
"web 2.0" trend. Your designs overall are nice, and flows well, but falls in
the realm of "template" in my eyes.

Really push the boundary of the design to stand out from the rest.

Also don't take this as all web 2.0 sites are similar, or you can't pull
inspiration from them. Just something refreshing to break the mold of mundane
would be nice.

------
kenrikm
I like your design better, much cleaner. I was not a fan of the exec redesign
you did however this one is a big Improvement. Good job.

------
flavien_bessede
You should start accepting requests, I know so many startups that could use a
big redesign.

