

Ask YC: webapp's frontend spruce up - mig

Hi,<p>We are a self-funded  startup working on a webapp. We would really appreciate any comments/suggestions/feedback/pointers regarding the following.<p>Some of the people that we have showed our app to have suggested that we spruce up the frontend before actively marketing our app. What is the best way to do that if we are not web designers?<p>If we were to get web designer on contract, how much  would it cost approximately? 
What would be the best place to look for one?
 What should be the expected deliverables from a designer(jpegs/sample html/flash files)?<p>What are the legal issues that we need to be aware of?<p>Thanks a lot for reading this,<p>Manu.
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midnightmonster
I'm wary of attempts to "spruce up" web apps after the fact. Like skinning
desktop apps, often the best you can do is put a pretty picture on a lousy
user experience, and generally you don't even get that far. (I was going to go
for some metaphor about women and makeup, but I just couldn't make it work: I
like my wife best without makeup, but I prefer web pages/apps with tasteful
styling.)

Except... I just did this very thing. Or rather, I was the designer. I made a
beautiful, humane interface for a web app built by someone who (by his own
admission) couldn't design his way out of a paper bag. A rush job, too.
Somewhere in the middle when my design looked like blue-gray iphone-rejected
ass I kicked myself for taking the job on in the first place, but the next day
I pulled out of the blue-gray ass phase and ended up building something I'm
really proud of and that the client and everyone who sees it loves. And it was
on time and on budget, too (within $50 of the dead middle of my estimate
range, in fact).

I'm not sure what the keys to success were in this case. I expect it helped
that I was very familiar with the app and its goals, and I think it helped
that I'm not (just) a "Designer". I've worked on web apps in almost every
technical or creative role, and often I build the whole thing myself from HTTP
to pixels.

I don't read news.yc looking for gigs, and frankly I didn't see myself doing
jobs like the one I just did--something about not wanting to be labeled a
Designer. But if you want to contact me you can use my screen name @
gmail.com.

To answer some of your specific questions:

Legal - Contractor vs. employee & ownership of IP. The first is not hard. Call
them a contractor and not an employee (important but not sufficient by itself)
and tell them what you need, but don't try to control when or where they do
the work (you can have a deadline, but not scheduled hours). The second is not
hard either, just make sure you nail it down. The contract I use assigns
copyright of completed (and paid-for) Works to the Company but reserves to the
Service Provider "(i) know-how, techniques or general expertise used and/or
developed by Service Provider in the course of providing Services hereunder;
(ii) pre-existing materials or intellectual property; (iii) all generally
known or published information; or (iv) other software and related ideas,
designs and materials which Service Provider has developed or is developing
for itself and for third parties" while granting to Company a limited license
for any of the above insofar as it's incorporated into the Works.

Deliverables - You should receive working HTML files with all the accompanying
CSS, JavaScript and images, but also the PSDs or whatever that went into
making them. @brianr, "slices" are for tables and CSS designs that wish they
were tables. No one can provide you with the images pre cut correctly without
knowing exactly how the page will be built, which no one can know until it's
built, because if there's anything technically interesting at all about the
CSS, the first implementation is likely to have some issue in some browser.

A PSD is not enough because a webpage is not (unlike a magazine page) a static
image. It's especially ludicrous to consider a PSD much more than a concept
when you're talking about a web app (i.e., a collection of web pages where
many pieces are not only dynamic but functional).

Price - second NoBSWebDesign that this is really impossible to even ballpark
without knowing a lot more about your app and what you need. Personally I
don't take jobs for a few hundred for people I don't already have a
relationship with--too much overhead. OTOH, I recently had a subcontractor do
a really nice design concept for me for a simple professional site for less
than $200. But that was only to the PSD stage (a concept that still needed to
be brought to life in code and web graphics) and with a lot of guidance from
me. And it was just a small professional website, not an app.

~~~
NoBSWebDesign
Well put. To summarize:

1.Make sure they are Contracted (and look up the IRS's definition of a
Contractor).

2\. Get the PSD, CSS, images, and javascript if applicable. Also, get at least
a couple HTML's all styled up so you can put it into your dynamic template
more easily.

3\. They'll need a lot of access to the app to figure out how it's assembled
and constructed and they'll need to study every element that's present in the
whole app so they know how to style it. I'm a designer/developer, so I'm not
extremely familiar with the whole process of getting someone who is ONLY a
designer. Also, the estimate is just that, an estimate. Don't trust anyone who
says otherwise.

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lanej0
Most competent web designers should be able to provide any level of
deliverables. If all you need is Photoshop because you can handle the HTML/CSS
in house, ask for that. Should save you some money.

On the other hand my experience is that if they can't provide you with the
HTML/CSS, skip them. It takes some understanding of markup in order to design
a good web site. I've worked with too many designers that do mainly print work
who decide to try out their skills on the web. Usually leads to a poor result.

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NoBSWebDesign
If you need a web designer, I would start with any designer you might have a
personal connection with (even if it's a friend of a friend). Those are
usually the situations that work out best in my experience. Otherwise, try
putting up a Craigslist post for a designer in your area or Google for a
designer in your area.

As for cost, it really depends on what the state of your current app is (i.e.
what does it look like now, how complex is it, how unique do you want the
design, and how compliant do you want the site (flash/no flash,png's with
transparency or just jpegs...)). Personally, I'd try to steer clear of anyone
who quotes you a price without really examining the site first.

However, so as not to just brush off the price question, I'd charge anywhere
from a couple hundred for a crazy easy redesign to a thousand for a more
conceptual and custom design.

Deliverables: You'd want to get the CSS file obviously, any additional IE
style hacks that may be contained outside the main CSS file, and all
associated images. And the flash stuff if there are any embedded flash files
(I'm assuming that for a webapp, you're not referring to a full flash site,
because that would be ludicrous and highly unusable).

Legal: Make sure that you have a fully "Contractor" arrangement in place and
that there are no ambiguities that could cause the person to be confused for
an employee, because the IRS doesn't like that much. Also, try to get full
ownership of the artwork if possible, so that you can reuse images on print
stuff later if you want to. I always give my designs to the client to do with
as they please, but it's not unheard of for them to retain ownership. Either
way, it should be outlined in the design contract.

Wow, that was long, but hopefully it answered your questions.

~~~
mig
Thanks for the response. Are there any sample "Contractor" legal documents
that one can download from scribd , docstoc or anywhere else?

~~~
NoBSWebDesign
I have no idea why my font is a lighter color on your computer. It looks fine
on mine.

I'm not sure if there are any up on Docstoc, that site wasn't around when I
wrote mine. I did a lot of research in making mine, typically the designer is
the one who writes it, and then you look over it and tell them what parts
you'd like to add, remove, or change. I can put mine up online for you to
see/use once I get back to my main computer. I'll let you guys know.

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brianr
On the topic of deliverables--if you're adept at HTML and CSS, you can
probably save money by asking the designer to just send you the Photoshop
(.psd) or Illustrator (.ai) file, and maybe image slices if they can do it
quickly. I've done it this way quite a bit and it's worked well.

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wumi
i asked 'Where to find designers" this was the response, hope it helps

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=91204>

