47 karma · joined July 7, 2010
We've learned over the years that we spend most of our time convincing clients to trust us and sign off on work we already know is good. Through Microawesome we're asking them to trust us, and in return they will get a good result fast.
It is definitely not for everyone, but that's why we're doing it "on the side", we still have our studio which offers a standard agency-type design service.
Currently seeking long-term projects to book in Q2 2018, but accepting short-term engagements as well.
Location: Novi Sad, Serbia
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: UX/UI, static front-end development and prototyping (HTML/CSS/JS)
Résumé/CV: https://sprawsm.com/
Email: dudes@sprawsm.com
As a designer, sometimes all I work with sometimes are images (e.g. when working on a moodboard), and this would enable me to work much more efficiently.
Disclosure: it's my company's service which we use daily.
We've included it into our own starter pack, and I believe that the new Foundation framework uses it as well.
We've finished the integration of the complete new UI (take a look at some screenshots on our portfolio http://sprawsm.com/project/funnel/) that we will be releasing in a few days.
We've been using it for over two years now for our design company, worked wonderfully.
If you don't have much experience in these fields (UI and UX, as if they are two different things) you will quickly learn that the above trumps most of what you might have learned throughout a formal graphic design education and/or experience as a graphic designer.
So, my direct advice would be to study user behavior on the Web, psychology, and usability. Learn (if you don't already have the habit) how to think through user flows in lo-fi mockups and wireframes, immerse yourself in good UI design, and make it your priority to pay attention to details when using other people's software; and I don't just mean on the UI side. Pay attention at the company behind the app, how they prioritize features, and how they handle unsexy, menial tasks such as recurring billing, support, and how they integrate that into their work, the software itself.
I strongly believe that you can't be just a UI designer. I mean, you can be to a certain point, but you need to know all of the ins and outs of what it takes to take a product to market in order to be one of the few superstars who we all look up to and learn from. You need to be aware of the entire process, have insight into the business decisions that need to be made, so that you can paint a whole picture.
You get to see a more complete picture of projects you work on. You mature a lot as a person, and develop various skills you wouldn't otherwise. It toughens you up, that's for sure.
My main intention was to warn you that it — more often than not — actually means doing more than one job. Both physically and mentally.
I guess the reason I chose to do this is that I get nervous when I'm not in control, and I still like to be in touch with what I set out to do in life; which is to be a good interface designer.
Best of luck to you.
I am personally in the situation that you want to be in, and to be honest it's the hardest thing I've had to do in my life (this is obviously personal).
Having meetings with customers after X hours of design work in front of a screen is hard.
Sitting down to design for X hours after dealing with an endless stream of information you need to process and be aware of, before lunch is hard.
Worrying about payroll is hard.
Delivering good design/code is hard.
What I'm trying to say is these things are hard enough on their own, and I find myself overwhelmed often. And I'm not trying to dissuade you from giving it a go, I'm just trying to paint a clear picture for you, so you know how it is.
If you think you'll be able to divide your managing hours vs. your production hours — you're deluding yourself. It's a mess and as the saying goes: when it rains, it pours.
The main difficulty with balancing these two roles is time management, and stress caused by having to manage when you'd rather be producing and vice versa.
So, it's interesting, it keeps you on your toes, it beats working in a coal mine, but it's still hard work.
It has personally made me discover that I much prefer working with people that I do sitting in front of a computer all day, so I'm working on transitioning myself from a designer role, to a manager role.
It usually goes like this:
1. Hey my friend, where are you from? — So that he can set an initial price for you. None of the items ever have prices on them because of this. If say you're from Russia or Germany and the like you'll get the big initial price, if you're from Serbia like me, you'll probably get a smile.
2. Let's say you are from Germany, and were looking at a shirt, he'll tell you €40. — You simply can't allow yourself to buy it at this price, neither is he expecting you to (although I'm sure that happens). At this point he just wants you to pile up the stuff you like from the store.
3. When you're done, he'll sit you down for "the deal". Now's the time to haggle, and you should have been thinking of ways to cut the price while you were picking up the clothes. He'll probably give you a small discount "for bulk" that you should dismiss at once, and aim for at least 30% off of everything (50% is standard somewhere, some parts is less), and don't be afraid to return some things you don't want to buy.
So yeah, if you want some schooling in direct sales, go to Turkey (Alanya is very nice) and go shopping. Be prepared to come back with many knock–off Armani shirts and sweaters.
This is very interesting indeed. I wouldn't mind paying for an OS X app that would take care of this problem (the setting up on each machine).
Be human, tell other people to fuck off when they are bothering you. End of story.
I find the lack of verbal communication skills among programmers/techies their biggest disability. Learn to talk to other people, you might notice the world will become a much easier place to function in.
Disclaimer: I was super-shy when I was younger, so I know what I'm talking about. I never went to these kinds of lengths to avoid talking to people though, this is crazy.
That's why you need a cofounder; when you start wondering about things like this, you need someone to slap some sense back into you.
We share an office with a couple other companies, but the lease is at our company's name, and we always pay for everything and people pay us back.
Since some companies are three people, and some folks here are freelancers they aren't all due the same amount; i.e. there is 10 of us, but my company pays for 2/10 because there's two of us using the office.
Maybe adding this feature would open up your service to more users with our problem users. (We are using a shared Google spreadsheet.)
In your analysis of your competitors, for Workflowy you said that it's confusing to have many nested lists (I'm paraphrasing here), but the thing is—I find WorkFlowy way more logical than your service. The nesting is a visual guide for the user, letting them know where they are within the tree.
At first I couldn't figure our how to check items off, but then I noticed the little tiny “x” to the right, dangerously close to the “>>”. Feel free to beef that one up, and space these two out. Also, apparently I can't check off the last item in the list? That's strange, but it might be a bug.
Lastly, I love the help overlay, nice!
In our case we will try our best to push out at least the private beta of a Web app we have been working on for a couple of months in-house. We have a working, semi-functional alpha already which we are using internally, but we're really hoping for a more completed feature set for the private beta.
My main concern is reducing interface design as a craft (I view it as an artsy craft, not crafty art) to stitching together elements other people have designed that have proven to work well and thus are popular. It is not what we do and we are in trouble if people start perceiving it that way, and unfortunately that is exactly the kind of behavior that is encouraged on Dribble — show as much eye–candy as possible in a 400 × 300 rectangle so you get to hang out with the popular kids. Sorry, but I won't have it.