

Ask HN : What do you think of our new app design? (plus the history of it) - dan_sim
http://behindtheclock.timmyontime.com/post/98498643/the-history-of-our-design

======
alexk
I am not a professional, but can share my personal experience. (looking at
ss5u.png)

1\. TimmyOnTime has a shadow and the following text - "time tracking..." does
not, besides they have different fonts (I understood later that TimmyOnTime is
a logo and the following text is an explanation, but at the first time I was
confused)

2\. I would make the header text giving the most important message bigger and
cleaner.

3\. The main picture on the page makes no sense to me. I see 6 different
images: Address book? (what does your app do with it?) Adium (I don't know
what it is) AOL instant messaging (I am using ICQ, Jabber and Skype) and 3
other images below having no meaning to me. Then 2 minutes later I notice the
text explaining that I can use your app with Google talk, MSN and aim.

4\. It seems to me that text on your button has more space on top then on
bottom (is it your intention?)

5\. Your customer feedback uses the smallest font, gray color on a white
background what makes it hard to read and notice, I would value my customers
most of all and make their feedback more noticeable.

Once again I am not a professional, just a software developer and these are my
personal thoughts and impressions.

~~~
dan_sim
That's exactly the type of thoughts we're looking for. I forgot to mention
that the screenshots were not the actual screenshots we'll use. They are there
for the general feel of the "mockup".

------
pxlpshr
With all due respect: developers are not designers, and visa versa. _Puts on
M$ Monkey Suit_ , "Delegate, delegate, delegate!" I know you're not a big
company, but that doesn't matter — if you're developing a consumer-facing web
application, you need to be thinking about UX/UI, branding, etc. The bar is
raised, web-app market is ultra-competitive, consumers will ditch a bad
looking site.

In my humblest opinion, your current website is better structured and more
professional looking than ss5u.png, but that's not to say it can't be
improved. I too am not a fan of the color scheme (brown, orange, etc.) but
from a design standpoint, it's feels like a complete thought while ss5u.png
looks and feels like an unfinished wireframe (as a customer, I'd wonder if
your product is unfinished too). However, there are elements from ss5u.png
that I think you can merge, like the call-to-action button for one, the
lighter color scheme, etc.

I think people mistakenly believe a designer's job is easy, and quite frankly
it's not... it's torture. Reading your blog post, I was happy to see you came
to the same conclusion. :) People see a clean and simple design and say,
"that's easy, I can do that!" but fail to realize the amount of work and
iterations that it took to get to that point. Visual harmony requires balance,
and there's a reason why few companies can reproduce Apple's simplistic
product design. It's NOT easy.

Designers live in a perpetual cycle of NEVER being satisfied because we tend
to be obsessive-compulsive. I'm glad you got to experience this, but now I
think you should put down the mouse, get back to hacking, and let a
professional handle the job. :)

~~~
dan_sim
A designer job is infinitely hard to do and I learnt it from our various tries
to get something good looking. Maybe I have a dream of being a good designer
and that's why I can't delegate it ;)

On your side, what do you do to have a good design?

~~~
pxlpshr
Every designer has his own process: some prefer to sketch first, some use
photoshop as their sketch tool. When people watch me use Photoshop, it's very
much akin to hacking because I've got all the keyboard shortcuts memorized
like the back of my hand. That being said, I tend to start with PS because I'm
faster and it's more eco friendly.

If you really want to be a designer, then you need to teach yourself the
basics. Photoshop suffers from being too accessible, so a lot of amateurs tend
to ignore the basic universal rules of design. For starters, learn the basics
of grid design, information architecture, and typography. There are a lot of
great books on Amazon, but you should be able to get a strong grasp of the
basics just by googling:

[http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/26/grid-based-
design...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/26/grid-based-design-six-
creative-column-techniques/)

[http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/resources-grid-
based-d...](http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/resources-grid-based-
design/)

Here's another link that went around Twitter, a lot of simple things (but not
obvious to a developer) I think you can apply to ss5u.png such as proper white
space / padding, etc..

<http://wefunction.com/2009/04/quality-within-web-design/>

Like all crafts, you can't expect to be a design god overnight... it takes
practice, studying other's work, reading, etc. I think it's admirable that you
are learning to design, and if you really love it — keep doing it!!! But from
a professional standpoint and as a business owner, don't practice on your
company until you're absolutely confident you're up to snuff. If you were B2B
product, I think design can be a much lower priority _to an extent_.

------
raptrex
you should make Add timmy@timmyontime.com, Add timmyontime and Add
timmyontime@hotmail.com these into links (well i know u can make the one for
AIM into a link)

and this is a reason to use the app, not a feature: 98% instant messaging VS
2% web Type what you are doing instead of clicking in a cumbersome interface.

~~~
dan_sim
In fact, you're commenting of the old site. To comment on the new one :
<http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/2460/ss5u.png> . We could make the "add
timmy" clickable but it doesn't work well on every computer (in fact, on my
own computer).

