Donating 8 hours design time to any project | Hacker News Reader

Donating 8 hours design time to any project

8 pointsCheeese10 comments

I have a free day tomorrow that I would like to donate to any project. What I can do for you in 8 hours?

- Look at how your content is structured and figure out the best way to communicate your idea - Working on the user experience and the mechanics of the idea - Take a look at you branding (fonts, colours, logo etc) - Make broader recommendations that might make the idea more compelling

Realistically I will be able to get one (maybe two) key pages designed. Once it's done I will deliver a PSD with all the design assets you need. If you are serious about making the UX of your idea better and are willing to implement some changes drop the URL in the comments or email me at oneintenthousand@gmail.com

Why am I doing this? Because I am also trying to get a startup rolling myself and have learned much from other people willing to donate their time. I also love design and figuring out design problems is always an interesting challenge. I will pick one project and get cracking tomorrow (Australian time). You can check out some of my previous work here: http://www.jasonstrachan.com

People here keep on telling me that my website (http://www.tarsnap.com/) is horrible. I'm not convinced that it's really as bad as they say, and given my intended audience (unix geeks who appreciate a lynx-accessible website) I don't want to lose the minimalism; but if someone can improve the site without losing said minimalism I'd be very interested to see the results.

Your website actually has a decent design. It's easy to read with big enough font size, line-height and padding and basically it has no glaring annoyances that plague badly designed websites.

I say even more minimalism could do well in regard to the color scheme, and probably the flow of reading on the home page could be improved as well (e.g "Start Using Tarsnap now!" could be placed right underneath "Tarsnap pricing").

Other than that, buttons linking to quick download and registration should do well, too.

your website is fine, unless you are targeting non-SysAdmins. Are you?

I agree, you have some of the most important things right. It communicates very efficiently and probably works well for your market. One thing to be careful about is it does look very generic, that makes you less memorable.

I'd be ashamed to accept your offer without any payment in return, but I'd be most happy if someone that knows design would have a look at ww.com.

So go and spend your 'free' time on something else, but if you feel like doing a freelance job let me know.

What a fantastic thing to do by the way, really classy.

OK looks like we are done here. So tomorrow when I wake up I will be working on... drum roll ... Simple Invoices :)

Well done Mr Kelly, I will be emailing you with the details in a little.

hey jason

an open source application that i work on needs some serious UX love - both app and website

Simple Invoices - website: http://simpleinvoices.org - app: http://simpleinvoices.org/demo

your time and any improvements you could make/recommend would be greatly appreciated by our users

note: am in melbourne, australia - so timezone is all good

Cheers

Justin

8hours could make a world of difference on FilmBet.com

I sent you an email.

Anyone else? I'll pick a project in the next few hours...

I would love some assistance, but I don't think this is the type I need. What I really need is some hook that will help get me mentally engaged and drawn into learning to make a simulation. I don't really know where to start and my attempts in that direction so far have not born fruit.

Good luck. I hope this goes very well for both you and whomever you gift your services to.

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