
Show HN: Friendtainer – get reminded to meet with friends regularly - miloszpp
http://friendtainer.com
======
smt88
Going to start using it immediately. Thank you!

Edit: the starting, blank page (with the plus icon in the bottom) made me
think the app failed to load. Some guidance for a first-time user would be
great.

Also, those buttons on the bottom right are a UX anti-pattern, in my opinion.
They're hard to notice, and it's not always clear exactly what they do. On a
larger screen, they're a tiny footnote on the bottom right side of the page
that is hard to notice.

~~~
miloszpp
Thank you so much for the feedback!

I will add some text to show in case of empty list. I agree the button (FAB)
is difficult to find on large screens but it is part of the Material design
guidelines ([https://material.io/guidelines/components/buttons-
floating-a...](https://material.io/guidelines/components/buttons-floating-
action-button.html)). I will think of some other approach.

~~~
smt88
Why is following Material guidelines important to you?

~~~
miloszpp
My reasoning is that since it made it into the guidelines, some people believe
that it's not a UX anti-pattern :)

~~~
smt88
Google isn't some all-knowing authority on UX/UI. In fact, their UI is pretty
terrible for most applications. It's hard to tell what you can or can't click.
There are hidden controls everywhere.

You can decide to blindly follow standards or do some real user testing and
see how well your UI works for people. Stand over someone's shoulder while
they use it for the first time and see how quickly they figure it out. Do some
A/B testing.

For the record, the UX/UI community in general had a lot of negative reactions
to Material when it was introduced:

[https://medium.com/tech-in-asia/material-design-why-the-
floa...](https://medium.com/tech-in-asia/material-design-why-the-floating-
action-button-is-bad-ux-design-acd5b32c5ef)

[https://medium.freecodecamp.com/material-design-and-the-
myst...](https://medium.freecodecamp.com/material-design-and-the-mystery-meat-
navigation-problem-65425fb5b52e)

[http://blog.usabilla.com/flat-design-going-
far/](http://blog.usabilla.com/flat-design-going-far/)

[http://www.matthewmooredesign.com/almost-flat-
design/](http://www.matthewmooredesign.com/almost-flat-design/)

~~~
miloszpp
Thank you, it's really helpful. I have very little experience with UX so I
decided to start by sticking to the guidelines. But what you are saying makes
a lot of sense and I will definitely look into doing some tests with real
users.

------
RoyTyrell
Nice job on the site. Am I the only one that can't help but read the name as
"Friendtainter".

~~~
miloszpp
Thank you!

Hmm, I'm not a native English speaker and the similarity didn't occur to me.
Might not be the most fortunate name after all... ;)

------
19eightyfour
So this is sort of like CRM for your friend relationships?

~~~
miloszpp
Haven't thought of it but yeah, it nicely summarizes the idea.

