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Comment by bjt | Hacker News Reader

I like that he followed a process of gathering suggestions from real users and then testing his solutions with them. It's a big step above the typical "I redesigned X!" posts that look really pretty but probably aren't very usable.

I wonder what kind of job one would expect to get from this. These tasks (gathering user feedback, doing visual designs) are probably divided between several people at Ableton already. Does he want to replace the whole team? Is he asking to be their boss? Would he be OK with a junior position that lacked authority to make all the changes he's proposing here?

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This is obviously just a proof of skills. He isn't trying to get on top of everything and everyone, but he's simply showing that he has the skills needed to do a full redesign. By asking users for feedback, he shows that he cares what users want and isn't just here to implement whatever ideas come to his mind.

So if he gets an offer, it would most likely be as a designer. Of course the HR department will have to make sure that his skills also work in the given team.

yeah... are their any success stories with regards to these kind of post? all the ways i play it out in my head don't seems great...

1. someone at exec/board/mgmt-level somewhat detached from product development process sees it and comes in with the "see! this is what it should look like, this looks way better, this guy gets it and he doesn't even work here! you should hire him / do this." which doesn't tend to be received too well from the people doing the actual work, who for right or wrong have all sorts of reasons it doesn't look like that.

if they are forced to bring him in or do it they probably aren't going to like it / him.

2. someone on the team sees it and goes "well, this dude doesn't understand the massive complexities and risks involved in something like this but hey that one piece is not that bad of an idea, let me re-work some stuff", but it doesn't seem like it would help them much to bring him on-board... "uninvited" has a negative connotation for a reason.

of course if could play out very differently, but responses along those lines (if any at all) seem most likely from my experience. it seems like a good approach to rally community support for something, but the community is not the people building the product by definition.

This is merely a way for him to demonstrate his design process on his own terms using a complex real-world project.

Sure, he might love to work at Ableton, but as a portfolio artifact this project may very well attract attention at other places which are interested in that kind of skill-set. I think that's really the intent rather than a single-minded, unsolicited appeal to just one employer.

Its not unprecedented. Googly-as-heck went much further [https://medium.com/@googleyasheck], spent 8-months publicly preparing for a google interview, blogged about it, then didn't get hired by Google. He instead got hired by Amazon. Not bad at all and not a waste of time-- though I bet it was hard for him to get rejected by his dream employer.

Phillip Sackl landed a design-job at Mozilla by doing something similar. It wasn't as complex as a full redesign, though.

The application: http://readyformozilla.com/

The design-work: http://readyformozilla.com/panorama/

Panorama was one of the most promising features Firefox had, but they killed it. There was a guy who maintained a plugin version and even did some cool improvements to it [1], but he abandoned it because of Mozilla killing their older, but more featureful APIs - even those that are e10s compatible. I still use this thing sometimes and I'm quite sad to see it go.

[1]: http://fasezero.com/addons/

Such a sad story, shared by many who supported Mozilla for so long. RIP Firefox Addons.

"This is my unsolicited redesign of the Ableton Live. I did this to showcase my design skills to peers working at Ableton, where I would love to work as a designer."

Andrew Kim did a famous [1] rebrand of Microsoft [2], and then landed a job there because of it [3].

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4195208

2: http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/2012/7/3/the-next-micro...

3: https://www.theverge.com/2013/1/19/3895444/andrew-kim-the-ne...

Yeah, I think that's the first thing that came to mind for me. That said, looks like a fairly clear graphical system, aside from the lack of lighting context for some of the controls.

I'd be interested in implementing something like this and putting it in front of some artists. A lot of the time companies like Ableton face a challenge where they have to choose between changing their UI to make it more useful, and keeping it the same so as not to upset their existing userbase.

Personally I think that UI should be completely decoupled, such that you can iterate on the backend to your heart's content, and fork your UI more or less at leisure; leaving your existing users with a stable experience if they want it, and offering new users an exciting, productive, and discoverable view into the same system.

Would be awesome if it does go beyond just decoupling it internally (which I hope they more or less do already), but open the UI part up to the users.

If you look how much time gets invested into modding some game's UI, how much neat things could be done, if the whole UI of a DAW is easily moddable.

I guess you can kind of mod Ableton Live using Max4Live, although while you can add new tools and connect to existing tools, you can't (last time I played with M4L a few years ago) change any of the core widgets, so its definitely not as deep as what I understand you to be saying.

XUL!

These tasks (gathering user feedback, doing visual designs) are probably divided between several people at Ableton already

I hope the tasks are not divided between people. Feedback loops work best if they're quick and direct. Designers should be able to observe users try out their own designs.

The rest of the team would work on other aspects of the product, e.g. other design aspects or implementation.

Does he want to replace the whole team?

I think that in order to get the best results it should be part of the company culture to question everything, and sometimes that means questioning the work of other people. In the same way, everybody should be thankful for helpful feedback and suggestions.

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