fairpx

It's nice that we can start building with the SDK, but I'm more interesting in experiencing what I've made. I'd rather have the device and build a simple hello world demo that inspires me to build more vs spend a bunch of time diving deep into an sdk and while having no idea how the end user will experience the stuff I create. With iOS for example, you could develop a majority of apps by just using the simulator, since the experience is (mostly) 2d. But I remember when starting out, the more fun projects to work on were using the accelerometer. The only way to experience the magic in that case, was with an actual device. With Magic Leap, the entire experience is spatial. So it's probably the other way around where the device is mostly the only way to really understand what it is that you're building.

Can go both ways. Sometimes certain pm’s have been through bad experiences which can be better learnings than looking at their good results.

I keep coming back to the standard notes app in iOS

I run http://fairpixels.pro - a productised service that helps engineers design better products. We’ve been profitable and growing rapidly from the get go. We’re not trying to build a unicorn business. Just an environment where a small group of senior designers can work with a select amount of startups and do the best work of their lives.

If you have any questions about productised services, I'd be happy to share how we've done it.

I’d like to add one more tip: good design. I’ve seen and designed many decks for startups and some engineers pay zero attention to design. Sure if you have insane traction or other extraordinary data points it becomes less of an issue. But the investors, like yourself, are human beings who want things to look clean, neat and be clear. Nice design doesnt mean add nice colors. It means to make it a joy to go through with visuals of your product, clear font and font color selection, consistent branding etc. don’t waste too much time on the design but do treat your deck as a product of its own.

If you need any advice, feel free to ping me.

I design interfaces for a living, but tinkering with hardware is one of the most satisfying journeys I know. Every now and then, like OP, I play around with different hardware projects. It's amazing how, showing a half-baked hardware project to a friend gets them a lot more exciting than showing them a nicely designed software project. It feels like when you're tinkering with hardware a lot more parts of the brain are challenged and thus generate a more fulfilling experience. I highly recommend everyone who's into software or design but never did anything with hardware to spend some time this week building a simple blinking LED project with the Arduino. You'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

Fantastic article patio11. I work with a lot of SaaS companies on a daily basis (designing their product with our team [1]) and get to see the thought process of the founders. The part about product market fit is super crucial. I can clearly see that the founders that keep an ongoing feedback loop between customers and product always end up building a more successful business. Will def. share this insightful post. Tnx for the writeup.

[1] http://fairpixels.pro

They should blame the [1] software and issue a redesign

[1] https://hackernoon.com/redesigning-hawaiis-emergy-alert-inte...

3D, it's going to be a critical skillset for working in a bunch of industries.

Ping me. We might have a new service for you then :)

This year we launched a new service [1] unlimited UI design for startups. What started as an experiment, completely shifted our business and became the core of what we do. Wrote about it on reddit [2]

[1] http://fairpixels.pro

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/6wz5d5/10kmrr....

This year we launched a new service with unlimited UI design for startups. (http://fairpixels.pro)

It’s always interesting to read these and how different technologies go through a chain of events to rapidly gain mass adoption. Looking forward seeing what the next 12 months will bring us. Space? Breakthrough in AI?

What helped for me is build a team around you. The moment there are others that join your mission, everything changes. I started out my service based UI design business (http://fairpixels.pro) as a solopreneur. At some point, I started getting the same feelings as you're describing and realised (from past projects) that having a team for support had always worked for me. If you don’t have the budget, no worries. You don’t have to hire full time people. These can be VA’s, freelancers that occasionally help you out or even a mentor that actively pings you to keep updated on the progress you’re making. Knowing you’re not by yourself has been a huge motivator for me and might be the solution you’re looking for. Good luck & feel free to ping me if you have additional questions.

I’d keep building and tinkering on projects. Probably with less worries about monetizing

I think that’s a given here

Are we (http://fairpixels.pro) within your budget? :)

For our company (http://fairpixels.pro) it was productisation. We used to operate like any other UI design agency, prospecting, talking to potential clients, going to networking events etc. But by productising our service, building a sales funnel and treating the entire flow as that of a SaaS. It enabled us to:

* Lower prices (Since we didn't have to spend time networking, prospecting etc.)

* Create predictable sales funnels

* Spend more time working on the stuff we love, instead of wasting time with prospects that weren't interested in the first place.

I’ve been following OS UI experiments for some years and the problem with all of them was that they took an approach that sounded cool but wasn’t really practical. From 3D desktops to strange card based interfaces that wanted to replicate the messy physical desk. I think the key is to redesign the GUI by removing stuff instead of adding fancy new ways of shuffling files.

It's fascinating how the GUI's haven't changed much since. I run a UI design agency (we work mostly with startups) but would love to collaborate with someone who's working on a (niche?) OS and see if we can redesign the UI. Open Source is fine. If you're working on something, hit me up. Details in my bio :)

We actually do this on an almost monthly basis, so who knows :) We would LOVE to work on this particular project. Is there anyone you know we can contact specifically for a more tight collaboration? Find my email in my bio

I would love to incorporate this in some of the UI design work we do for startups. Are there more similar libraries available? We could reference it to our network of clients (mostly developer driven startups) to help translate some of the design ideas we propose. If you know of other similar projects like Metaballs, please do share below or ping me (details in my bio)

A lot of people have this strange image about refugees. These people fled from a war zone, not because they don't have any food or are illiterate. In fact, a majority of the refugees are here because they have money which they spend on the journey to flee their country. Among them are doctors, physicians, engineers, etc.

Fascinating. Anyone providing workshops/courses for complete beginners? Would love to have my team (of UI designers) get to play around in this field for inspiration sake. If you provide this stuff, please ping me (details in my profile)

How about giving them good equipment and organise hackathons, so they can build the things they need for themselves, while having fun. There are a good chunk of developers among them with awesome ideas. Nothing beats a product built by someone, for him/her self.

We'd love to contribute (with design). Are you aware of anyone interested in collaborating. We're looking for something that we can use ourselves and thus contribute to crafting a better experience around the software.

If there's anyone working on an Open Source Slack (or Keybase) alternative, hit me up. I run a UI design agency and we'd love to help design a better interface for an open solution that we and others can use. Find my details in my profile, or go to http://fairpixels.pro

These text only approaches are fantastic. In fact, I recently designed the UI for a conceptual Text-only Techcrunch.

Feel free to download the files and build something with it.

[0]https://hackernoon.com/redesigning-techcrunch-1ecae542e6af?g...

> Trying to cram your thoughts into a Tweet – we’ve all been there, and it’s a pain.

When I read this, I thought I was on somebody's blog who wanted to give her idea on why they didn't like Twitter. Then I realised this was... Twitter's blog.

The constraint of 140 characters is what made Twitter, IMHO, interesting. Sure it required you to do a bit of puzzling, but that's exactly what made each tweet read worthy.

Then came the bots and the spammers and the place got ruined. Twitter has a bunch of problems, but the 140 characters isn't one of them.

Fascinating. Would love to see Google (who's mission is to collect the world's information) start 3d scanning and mapping the world underwater in a more detailed way.