
Ask HN: Would you pay for design lessons? - marcomassaro
I am an experienced UI/UX designer and was thinking of opening a service posting web design video tutorials, source files, tips, one-on-one help etc to monthly subscribers.<p>Is this something you would be interested in? And if so at what price point would you feel comfortable paying?
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starpilot
Just a caution: people who "would buy" generally greatly outnumber people who
buy. You might want to try advertising your product like it exists and tally
up serious inquiries. It's easy to rattle off things you "would do," a bit
more effort to actually do them.

~~~
marcomassaro
Valid point - I wanted to use this as more of a gauge and then take the next
steps.

~~~
smartwater
It can't even be used as a gauge.

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marcomassaro
I disagree. I am reading a lot of good feedback here. Maybe these people won't
buy but they are offering up a great deal of advice, ideas and more that are
helpful in starting the process.

~~~
smartwater
Feedback is great, but I wouldn't rely on any potential sales numbers you
gather without first getting commitments in writing, or even a deposit.
Someone saying they will buy is a lot different than doing. A friend of mine
recently had less 10 commitments out of 100 come through with cash, and that
was with written commitments-- they basically said "then sue me."

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yid
I would consider paying for an in-person tutorial/workshop, probably not for a
newsletter. There's already Hack Design which I subscribe to but never find
the time to read.

~~~
marcomassaro
In-person is a good idea but too hard to scale in my opinion. I would really
be looking for students who WANT to learn rather than students who just sign
up to poke around and never use it.

~~~
goldfeld
I think the problem with a newsletter of design lessons is that there is too
much game in town already, so it becomes harder and harder to pick and choose
(except for people who know who you are, if you think there's a good market
for that then by all means go for it.) Lessons tailored to feedback on the
customer's already designed product, however, is something I'm yet to see. And
it ensures you get people who WANT to learn, since they even built something
already and tried their best. You could start doing it yourself, but if you
think from the get go of a domain and brand, you can easily scale by creating
a marketplace for this kind of instruction down the road. And really, I think
personal lessons coupled with design critique is a sorely needed service, and
would set you apart.

As the GP said, I also already subscribe to Hack Design but I've had the first
lesson, the Objectified documentary, open here for weeks now. I'm yet to take
the time to go past that. I'm busy designing and building my app. Sneak into
the MVP builders' workflow and help them, and I think you're gonna find the
best customers in as much as you're looking for people who are self-motivated
and wanting to learn. There's just not enough time for everything we want to
do. Take the time to filter the chaff out of the enormous amount of material
for learning design out there, and pick the best stuff that I need __right now
__, as per the horrendous mistakes I made on my app, and I'll pay you premium
for it.

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stfu
Only if it is really increasing my personal learning curve.

1\. I want to try stuff my own.

2\. Then I want an expert to step in.

3\. The expert should teach me how to improve the stuff I already started.

4\. And now the important part: I need to understand why/what makes it better.

5\. Teach my how to "think" like a pro.

There is a gazillion of tutorials and stuff out, but what I am missing the
most is fixing the gap between what is going on in my head vs. what is going
on in the head of the teacher.

~~~
psweber
This might help the OP come up with a hybrid approach. Create tutorial videos,
blog posts, whatever that have lessons with exercises. Publish them for free.
People pay for you to take time reviewing their work and then meeting with
them over Skype for feedback and personal instruction. Hmmm. I guess that
doesn't scale too well either. You would have to charge $100+ an hour to make
any money. Maybe you charge a small monthly amount for access to all content.
I dunno. Actually speaking to the person with experience is key, but their
time is so valuable that it stops being affordable enough for people that need
it.

~~~
goldfeld
Consider that the OP creates a marketplace for such services. He can funnel in
enough customers that someone offering services in his marketplace can easily
find $100/h gigs to fill their whole working day. He can scout out great
talent who would be more than happy to make anything close to $800 a day, or
half that much for that matter.

~~~
psweber
I like it. I know multiple people who would love to be able to pick up work
like this on a light day. Everyone should be teaching their craft to some
degree, too.

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RyanZAG
I would probably pay for the one-on-one help part. In particular, anything
along the line of professional review of my own designs would be something I
would pay for. I wouldn't pay for generic design advice from tutorials etc, as
these kind of things are often a lot of work to really use and it's difficult
to know if you've learned anything or used them correctly - plus there are
very good ones available for free already.

I'm not sure how you'd be able to charge for this - if you charge consulting
rates for one-on-one then only expect a few large companies/startups to sign
up - and these guys would probably just hire a design consultant directly. If
you went for a cheap offering, you'd need to keep the advice very short and
shallow so as to cover enough people to make a living wage - and shallow
design advice is not that helpful.

~~~
mduerksen
One-on-one reviews are tremendously valuable, and I suspect not only large
companies would buy them for consulting rates.

Consider a startup product on the finish line, which lacks polish because non
of the makers is a professional designer. If they are like me, they do notice
that the overall design is not professional/engaging/appealing enough, but are
themselves not able to identify why exactly, and what to do about it. Thats
where professional designers are sorely needed.

Me in that situation would not hesitate to pay you, say $600 (in european
circumstances) to sit with me for 4 hours interactively, you giving advice and
me tweaking the css/svg (the harder stuff for homework), provided

a) I am convinced you know you skills

b) You are able to communicate effectively with a non-designer

c) You could concentrate on the low hanging fruit: Limited effort which still
improves my design significantly. It won't perfect, and doesn't have to be.

Note that for all of these points you would have to gain my trust, which is in
itself a lot of work. Without that, I might still give it a try, but I would
only willing to pay you throwaway money. But gaining my trust doesn't have to
be one-on-one though, a good blog or your tutorials could do.

~~~
marcomassaro
This is something I really want to get into. Consulting. However, I regret not
having blogged sooner about my skills/expertise so it is definitely something
I need to do in order to build up credibility outside of my network.

Appreciate the reply.

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faet
I'd be willing to pay for a book (E or physical). I'm not a big video fan.
Probably $40-60.

Not sure what I'd pay for one on one. If you were willing to look at _my_ code
and evaluate, I'd be more interested. Rather than something 'lecture' style.
You could then do future posts/tutorials via my one on one. "This was the
original code, it was good but XYZ was lacking. So we did THIS. Here is a
before/after shot, etc".

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emilioolivares
Very interested, but would have to be in-depth to be able to compete with all
the free stuff on the web. For example, I'd pay for a tutorial that walks me
through the design of a complete website app from start to finish, if it has
video even better. Also, please don't exclusively make it subscription based.
I'm willing to pay 30 - 50 dollars up front to learn something in depth (it's
similar to paying for an e-book) than to subscribe monthly for something I may
not have time to go back to. Offer both options.

If you do go through this, please dedicate a large portion of time on your
workflow and tools. Not enough programming, design books do this. For example,
when I learned Python and Django it took me a while to figure out VirtualEnv
existed and things like Vagrant etc.

Put up a landing page and ask users to leave their email, it will help you
gauge interest.

Good luck!

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goldfeld
I would pay for lessons in the context of design critique. Meaning, I have
(attempted) to design something, you offer harsh critique bracketed by
tailored lessons. I think you'd have a good market since a lot of devs try
their hand at designing their apps.

~~~
mryan
Good idea. This would be easy to sell as a package too - "For only $X, I will
prepare a detailed feedback report on your site, and provide Y hours of
training tailored to your needs".

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jonathanjaeger
You should check out The Skool (<http://theskoolrocks.com/>) with Jose
Caballer. He's the host of the This Week in Web Design podcast and former
creator of The Groop design agency in LA. He has conferences as well as weekly
group calls and one-on-one help, along with all the tutorials. You might be
able to get some background on the pricing, although he caters more towards
professionals looking to improve their career rather than strict tutorials of
how to design better. But it's a good starting point. Also, you need to see
how much value you can add compared to a DIY subscription to something like
Treehouse or Lynda.

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throwaway1979
I am cheap and so are many other consumers of your product. That said, I have
probably spent a few hundred bucks last year on online education (mainly
codeschool and peepcode). The stuff I've paid for has the following feature
... some part of the education is given away for free. For other parts of more
advanced parts, there is a fee. I guess this is a variant on the fremium
model. This is how you get my hard earned cash :)

Regarding a price point ... I don't have a huge hesitation dropping $5 or 10
for a 1 hour screencast. More than that makes me think.

~~~
marcomassaro
Thanks for the reply. It seems peepcode is just video lessons - signup, review
and try your best at it. I'm looking to actually make a community here where I
put up video lessons but also interact with my students to help them become
better.

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sunnybunny
Why not just set up a skillshare class and find out exactly what people want
directly? They would take care of the distribution for you, and so you can
just figure out the content of the experiment.

~~~
mnicole
This is what I was going to suggest. There are already other people offering
courses on UI/UX there, as well.

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briandear
I would. Make it like Railscasts and charge similarly and I would subscribe
today. I would suggest very concrete lessons designed around a specific task.
5-10 minute lessons with a comments section and source code on github. Make it
where I can login using my github account.. I would follow the railscast
pricing model as well. Free + a Pro plan. Railscast's system is awesome. I
would follow what has been proven successful. Good luck!

~~~
marcomassaro
Thank you - much appreciated!

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_lex
Check out <http://teamtreehouse.com/> as a basic business model that's similar
and works.

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grimtrigger
I (a web developer) wouldn't. There's so much free info online I couldn't
imagine paying for it.

Also, I'm not convinced good UI/UX can be taught.

~~~
marcomassaro
I agree that there is an abundance of information online. Its that abundance
that took me YEARS to fully grasp design and get to where I am now.

I am confident I can help others learn design much faster than trying to sort
through all of the tutorials and tips online (which is a ton of trial and
error).

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absconditus
I already do:

<http://nathanbarry.com/webapps/> <https://peepcode.com/products/design-
bundle>

~~~
marcomassaro
How is peepcode working for you? Can you tell me more about how it has
benefited you (if it has)?

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t0
Your work is pretty amazing. I would suggest a freemium model where you give
away a basic tutorial and sell the video/source/1on1. Definitely interested!

~~~
marcomassaro
Agreed - I plan to give away some free content and help in order to build
trust and a community. Thanks for the post.

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Sakes
I would (developer) but it would have to be for a price that I wouldn't think
twice about, 4.99 or 9.99 maybe per month.

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hayksaakian
Maybe the railscast model could work for you.

The only issue I see is there is an inundation of YouTube tutorials in this
area.

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YuriNiyazov
In-person, or one-on-one via Skype or e-mail - yes. Just online materials or
newsletters - no.

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madiathomas
After seeing your work, I can safely say I wouldn't mind paying you to teach
me design.

~~~
marcomassaro
Thank you - I'd love to help others and teach them what I've learned / built
up over the years.

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alimoeeny
No, sorry. I try to learn by observation and as a developer that's enough for
me.

