

Ask HN: Please review our web app - User Interface Throwdowns - nate
http://ninjasandrobots.com/

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avinashv
Polluting my Twitter feed with the votes from this is a total dealbreaker for
me. Of everyone that follows me, only a small group of people read HN and will
have heard of this. The rest of them are going to see some convoluted
hashtags.

Is that your way of marketing this? It's not a bad idea in principle, but
you're losing (1) non-Twitter users and (2) people like me who want to
maintain their Twitter stream.

~~~
nate
yep, heard loud and clear. we'll do something better around that

------
nate
Just something quick we (the guys at Inkling: inklingmarkets.com) whipped up.
I absolutely love the 37better projects and explorations of making a design
better. Here was a good one I saw today:
<http://jasonzimdars.com/svn/highrise.html>

We thought we could use a site to help foster more of these redesigns and
commentary around them. This is just "half a product", and was curious if
anyone got any use out of it before we explore it further.

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Zak
Potentially cool site, but I'd really like to see the voting handled on the
site and the twitter integration optional. I dislike twitter and, for the
moment refuse to use it on principle.

~~~
nate
K, thanks for that, i debated about that too. I don't see it being too hard to
have native comments and slurp in twitter posts.

~~~
wizard_2
It's probably overkill but the wordpress plugin that the backtype guys made is
wonderful for reclaiming your comments.

<http://www.backtype.com/home>

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sachinag
The Twitter message it throws off when you click "Tweet my vote" is completely
non-human readable to someone not familiar with the site. It almost looks like
spam. You have room to make it more verbose, which could help with virality.

Also, since you're in Chicago, why the hell don't we ever see you guys out?

~~~
nate
Agreed, that twitter message looks gross. And I wanted to keep it as short as
possible so people felt comfortable adding their own message rather than just
leave some redundant default text. Feel free to add a throwdown of what the
default message should be? :) We'll think about it more over here too. Thanks
for bringing it up.

I don't know why you don't see us :) We are pretty social.

~~~
sachinag
"I voted for Robot for new versus old Yahoo. #nar #hashymchashyhash
bit.ly/zombies" That's bizarre, yet descriptive, enough to invite a click. I'd
say Ninja is old, Robot is new since you have old on left and new on right.

Pick a night. I'll get shitfaced with you. Ask the Pollers or Thomas or any of
the other folks: it's how I roll.

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twohey
I'm probably being unfair, but I want to "feel" the proposed interaction and
the single picture + text does not do it for me. I know that people are
proposing and not implementing a new interface but, to me, web interfaces
hinge a lot on interactions.

Maybe if there was some way to storyboard an interaction, I'm not really sure.

Also, there should be some form of anonymous voting, I didn't feel like
letting this thing onto my twitter.

~~~
nate
I totally agree. Real html of the redesign is better than just looking at an
image. You can add whatever link you want so when people click on the image of
your design it can definitely go to a site where you created an interactive
experience.

I should probably add a "click to see more of this design" or something since
it may have not been apparent that you can see whatever else the poster wanted
you to see.

Also noted about not wanting to use Twitter.

Thanks for the feedback!

------
FictiveCameron
We did something that would probably go well with your site for Evernote.
Probably could stand a once over from a talented visual designer, but overall
we're happy with the UX choices.

<http://fictivekin.com/Evernote_Redesign_A_case_study_in_UX>

~~~
nate
Sweet, exactly. Feel free to throw that up there!
<http://ninjasandrobots.com/throwdowns/new>

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trickjarrett
I think you also need to make it usable for people to ask for help redesigning
a site. That's what I expected from the title 'User Interface Throwdowns' - I
don't know how much use it would get.

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nfriedly
> Who doesn't like ninjas AND robots? :)

Cowboys.

~~~
buugs
I think the traditional answer is pirates :O

------
systems
okay, I don't know if I am alone in this, but whenever I see someone mention
37signal I think "Wannabe Fanboy Ruby-extremist" which is not good!

As for the design, its okay, but the site 'raison d'etre' is not obvious
thought, you also could have used a better logo! or a logo!

------
rishi
pretty cool nate - is there anyway you can hook up mechanical turk to it and
get some A|B testing out of it? or is that not the point?

~~~
nate
hey man! been a long time. you raise an interesting point, and i have thought
about it, but not very long and with no real conclusion. like even summarizing
ryan singer's github nav redesign:

<http://ninjasandrobots.com/throwdowns/2>

he actually ends up with a couple explorations in there.

or like the new guy at 37s. here's his backback redesign too:

<http://jasonzimdars.com/svn/backpack.html>

and he's got a couple explorations in there too.

not sure what to do with that yet. not sure if its a do 1-many of after
designs? people can now of course just create many new entries with the same
before design over and over. obviously not the most efficient. still have to
think about this one and see where it goes.

