

Show HN: UXArchive - How the best iPhone apps handle userflows - LeonW
http://uxarchive.com/

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theabrodo
I have built this site with my friend Nathan. I am a designer myself and
wanted to build something to help people build better iPhone apps! Would love
your ideas on other awesome user flows I could add to the site! Do you know
any great onboard, explore, search flows?

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benzor
I think this app is excellent, both in its idea, its (brief) presentation and
what it promises to become, but the execution could use some work for now...

Random concerns that I have, assuming you want this to grow into a big,
comprehensive UX flow database:

\- There shouldn't be a search if I can only select from existing content and
can't actually search, a dropdown would do fine for now.

\- If you're to keep the search bar, at least add a friendly fail message when
I search for something that isn't listed, like "No results, but take a look at
what we have here instead!"

\- How do you plan to scale? User submitted screenshots? Scraping the app
store and providing a means for users to tag flows themselves? Ideally this
needs a clever system that scales independently of the work you put into
maintaining it...

\- Speaking of tags, you should add a tagging system for each flow anyways
since there's a variety of names people will use to refer to those things, and
this would help with the search a lot.

Anyways, don't get me wrong, I like the idea and I want to see it grow beyond
just a demo into something really useful. I merely think that, as a UX person,
this has room for improvement, so keep up the good work and keep on iterating!

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theabrodo
Thanks for all these ideas! The good news is that most of them are already
being built!

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so898
You know what? I am a iOS developer and I can tell you that no matter how good
your application is, without advertising, you will get nothing. There are many
great applications in App Store, however, no one cares. The new search
function of iOS App Store, and the new top charts, Apple only wants customer
to get application from there, because those applications are GREAT, and your
new application to them, is just another number. So what I say? Forget about
this content, find someone who can post the review of your application to some
famous website such as HN, Engadget, Cult of Mac... If your application is not
too bad, you will always get the thing you want. Maybe, find some companies
that could help your application go into the Top 10 is the best way.

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pc86
I don't think this is remotely relevant to this post, which about building a
better UX in iOS applications.

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nanijoe
It is pretty relevant...How do you objectively measure a "better UX"? IMO ,
there is no better measure than the users voting with their wallets (ie
purchasing the app) . In my experience, all these dribbble orgasm inducing
designs just don't matter. Sure they may get your app featured by Apple, but
good luck building a business based on winning that lottery. As an experiment,
go on iTunes and tell me how many of the top non-games features a design with
so-called better UX. My simple theory of iOS UX design? Do shit that users
expect!!

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mnicole
This is a marketing problem. If your designer is posting on Dribbble, your app
is definitely being seen; my iOS concepts get more views than anything because
that's what people are searching for these days. People may like the design,
but may not have a reason to actually download it.

In the same vein, all of these "pretty app UI" sites rely heavily on
submissions. If you think you have an app worth looking at that could possibly
convert eyes to sales, submit them to these sites.

Additionally, "Doing what users expect" doesn't always have a straight-forward
answer.

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tolmasky
My buddy that makes one of these apps wanted to email you something, but got
this when emailing team@uxarchive.com :

 _Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

team@uxarchive.com

Technical details of permanent failure: Google tried to deliver your message,
but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other
email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The
error that the other server returned was: 554 554 5.7.1 <team@uxarchive.com>:
Relay access denied (state 13)._

~~~
pirateking
Tried submitting my app and got the same.

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theabrodo
Thanks for trying to reach out and very sorry that it didn't work. We had some
DNS problems. The email service should be back in three hours.. Sorry for the
inconvenience.

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QuantumGuy
Why only iPhone apps and not both Android and iPhone apps?

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nbarraille
We will add Android apps support in the future, but we need to figure out what
the best way is for doing that, as the variety of screens sizes and
resolutions on Android devices is much greater. Don't forget to subscribe to
the newsletter or follow @uxarchive on Twitter to be informed when we add
Android support :)

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Groxx
A lot of _pretty_ userflows. Excellently detailed, really.

But haven't you already failed to a large degree if you have to _explain_ how
the system works?

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theabrodo
Thanks! Well it's not about explaining user flows but visualizing them so that
you can compare them. It's really useful to do so before starting a project to
see patterns, interesting ideas ets. I found it also really helpful to discuss
with your colleagues...

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Too
How does UXArchive handle...displaying images:

At a fixed size, aligned constantly 200px from the top of my screen without
ability to scroll down, effectively cutting all images in half. (standard
1200*800 laptop screen)

There are other issues with the image popup, some times the images are
displayed on 2 rows and some times on 1, still without any vertical scroll so
i cant see the second row. When there are many images the horizontal scroll is
annoying and sometimes my mouse wheel scrolls the background and not in the
popup window. Keyboard navigation like next/previous buttons would be good.

Otherwise a pretty good idea, you just need a larger collection of apps.

~~~
theabrodo
Thanks for the feedback. Can you please send us some screenshots of problems
you see? email team at uxarchive dot com

We will be adding more content shortly. Any ideas in mind on specific user
flows you would want to see added?

~~~
Too
Dont have time for screenshots but i can tell you that i'm on firefox 17

~~~
nbarraille
Thanks for reporting this. May I ask what OS and screen resolution you are
using?

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raja
Great resource. Two other amazing resources for mobile patterns are
<http://pttrns.com/> and <http://www.mobile-patterns.com/>

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wlue
Reminds me of pttrns (<http://pttrns.com/>). Being able to look at a lot of
apps can be a source of great motivation if you're having designer's block.

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jrvarela56
Very nice, got me thinking why the heck I never bother looking for something
like this for websites.

Found these two:

<http://ui-patterns.com/> <http://quince.infragistics.com/>

A lot of room for improvement.

Does everyone use something like this or am I just over-estimating the
importance of a library to browse for UI patterns?

~~~
theabrodo
Thanks! And thanks for the links. I'll try to list them into the about
section. I have listed a couple of them already, you should have a look!

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aka_me
Great resource! It is key to design the first run experience to align with and
support our goals as online services.

Had started a similar experiment on what we call the First Run user experience
on Tumblr a few months back, but lost steam after a few apps:

<http://thefirstrun.tumblr.com/> We were also adding commentary on the flows.

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joshmlewis
Holy..! This is awesome. Made my day as a fellow designer/ux guy. I am in the
process of mocking up a new app now and I'm sure this will come in handy. Good
job!

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theabrodo
Thanks man! What user flows should I add?

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feedly
I really like how you can take a specific facet of a mobile application see
how it is implemented across various applications. Very nice design.

~~~
theabrodo
Thanks! We will be adding more user flows from Feedly so stay tuned!

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theabrodo
Sorry again for the email problem, team@uxarchive.com is back up! Please
contact us if you have any user flows in mind we should add!

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killermonkeys
Hmm I think this is a good idea but the layout on iPhone is poor. I'd suggest
making it more usable from a phone.

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grishma
awesome stuff but, scrolling left to right in userflows pop-up is difficult.
Given that this is a ux site, surely you can make it slightly easier to
navigate

also, your feedback email id doesn't work (mail bounced back)

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by_Seeing
HOLY SHIT! As a designer, this is blowing my mind.

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theabrodo
Wow thanks! This is the best compliment! Any user flow I should add?

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dorington
This awesome, I'm digging it!

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fleitz
Looks awesome!

