[HN Gopher] Launch HN: NextUX (YC S19) - Web UX editor and feedb...
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Launch HN: NextUX (YC S19) - Web UX editor and feedback tool for
product teams
Hey HN! I'm Andrew, a solo founder building a free, easy-to-use
visual editing app called NextUX (https://nextuxdesign.com/).
NextUX makes it easy to design your website or web app
collaboratively with your team. Hacking a design together in the
browser can be a much faster way to do this than making changes to
a pixel-perfect file using professional design applications. With
NextUX, you work on your design in your browser, then share
feedback and sketch options by capturing screenshots and adding
comments and markup on top. You then share your iterations through
a direct link. It is entirely browser-based, including an extension
that does the screen capturing: https://nextuxdesign.com/screen-
capture/. There's a video on that page showing some examples.
NextUX works with any existing website or web app and includes
simple tools to cut up your currrent design, rearrange it, and add
elements. You can also create designs from scratch and share them
with anyone. You can pick permissions to control who you share
with. And that's about it! I worked as a designer in Silicon
Valley for a decade at large tech companies and startups--most
notably as Flexport's first designer. Through this time, I've seen
how websites and apps evolve and how tools can help or hinder
development. Current design tools are overkill for quick fixes,
small features, and fast iterations. Digging through layers and
nested components of someone else's complex design file just to
explore a simple change takes too much time, even for experts.
Also, many design contributions are made by non-experts--people
without "design" in their title. PMs, engineers, founders, and
others have valuable ideas that should be articulated visually, but
instead get buried in long emails. Meanwhile the actual designs are
accessible only in expert editing programs. This is a tools
problem! I want to flatten the learning curve of design tools, so
everyone can visualize their ideas and share them with each other
directly. I originally went through YC in the summer of 2019 and
was encouraged to pivot after running into considerable roadblocks.
As the pandemic hit and the world locked down, I had a lot of time
to think about the issues I've encountered as a designer. During
this time, I helped dozens of startups by reviewing their UX and
providing advice. I learned a lot about how these companies
approached design and what I could build to help them. My goal is
to help teams create, collaborate, and communicate visually and
make it all much faster. I like to think of it as "scratch paper
for the web". Even with just 'scratch paper' you can get pretty
close to professional-quality designs, made stronger by the fact
that the entire team has been able to work on them. There are free
templates at https://nextuxdesign.com/free-resources/ that you can
duplicate and use, and which are good starting points for poking
around the product. They include a simple design system, web form
UI, and card design wireframe components. I will be updating this
page with more templates and resources over the coming months. Stay
tuned! I'd appreciate your feedback on the app, and invite you to
share your thoughts and experiences on how to streamline design
iteration and feedback. Thank you!
Author : coyleandrew
Score : 45 points
Date : 2021-05-28 16:46 UTC (6 hours ago)
| gault8121 wrote:
| We use Moqups (moqups.com) extensively for quick scratch-pad
| designs. Moqups includes commenting tools and collaboration. What
| are the benefits of NextUX over Moqups?
|
| The screenshot feature looks helpful, but taking screenshots
| isn't really a pain point for us as there are a ton of tools that
| do this for us and make it easy to drop into Moqups (including a
| Moqups chrome extension that does exactly this). If you say
| scrapped my entire site, took screenshots of everything, and gave
| me a digital copy to work off of, that would be interesting.
| Alternatively, if your design tools were directly embedded into
| the site, that would also be really interesting.
|
| These are both big asks, and they might not be feasible, but the
| more you can close the gap between taking an existing site and
| turning it into a design space, the more attractive a tool like
| this would be for our org.
| coyleandrew wrote:
| I appreciate your feedback! Thank you for sharing moqups. I
| haven't seen this tool before.
|
| There are a lot of tools that do similar things. I think of the
| categories as:
|
| *Design creation* * Figma https://www.figma.com/ * Sketch
| https://www.sketch.com/ * uizard https://uizard.io/ * Penpot
| https://penpot.app/ * UXPin https://www.uxpin.com/
|
| *Asset creation* * Canva https://www.canva.com/ * Crello
| https://crello.com/ * Creatopy https://www.creatopy.com/ *
| Spark https://spark.adobe.com/
|
| *Presentation creation* * Pitch https://pitch.com/ * Ludus
| https://ludus.one/
|
| *Digital Whiteboard* * Miro https://miro.com/ * Whimsical
| https://whimsical.com/ * Mural https://www.mural.co/
|
| *Prototyping* * Invision https://www.invisionapp.com/ * Marvel
| https://marvelapp.com/
|
| *Feedback* * Markup https://www.markup.io/ * Pastel
| https://usepastel.com/ * Contrast https://www.contrast.app/
|
| *Animation* * Jitter https://jitter.video/
|
| And that just scratches the surface.
|
| I've noticed that the apps listed above are often too
| prescriptive or too complicated. My goal is to create a simple
| tool that lets you quickly provide feedback and iterations on
| websites and web apps. I think of NextUX as similar to Loom but
| for design mockups.
|
| In my workflow, I typically include a NextUX link along with an
| exported image in my product management software (Trello). I
| describe the changes I made contextually with comments in the
| design. Often, the design looks hacked together and incomplete
| but it's just enough to communicate a change. My focus with
| NextUX is to make the iteration process faster.
| ranman wrote:
| Congrats on the launch. Looks great. I'm going to use this in a
| pilot project next week and see how it goes.
|
| How does this compare/contrast with something like figma?
|
| The intro video is really solid and shows off the features well.
| coyleandrew wrote:
| Thank you! I hope it works well in your pilot project.
|
| In my process, I often hack a design in my browser first,
| capture a full-page screenshot and continue to iterate in
| NextUX to visualize new ideas quickly. I built most of NextUX
| this way.
|
| Sometimes a new design can be articulated with a contextual
| comment on an existing design or a quick hacked together
| amalgamation of elements. I think good design is messy and
| evolving.
|
| I've noticed that I become a perfectionist in other design apps
| like Figma and the design begins to deviate from production as
| things develop. It can be quite frustrating!
|
| I remember many years ago using Fireworks, then Photoshop, then
| Sketch, and most recently Figma. With each platform I said, "I
| will never leave Fireworks" (2005-2008) "I will never leave
| Photoshop" (2009-2012) "I will never leave Sketch" (2013-2016)
| "I will never leave Figma" (2017-2020)
|
| But I think Figma is a great product and I think NextUX can
| compliment it in many ways. NextUX is great for quick feedback
| or design creation based on what's already in your browser.
| mrwnmonm wrote:
| Any chance to get a version for the users? Like an embedded
| widget that sends the notes to a dashboard?
|
| I don't like the current solutions.
| coyleandrew wrote:
| I like that idea! It could be a helpful way to gather feedback
| directly from your users and maybe could even function as a way
| to do support.
|
| Right now, the tool is focused on helping creators iterate and
| communicate feedback on website and web apps with their team.
|
| Ultimately, I want to create "the new digital scratch paper for
| the web." That vision would include both users and creators.
|
| Allowing users to contribute could bring user-centered and
| participatory design to a new level!
| YKreator wrote:
| In an ideal world the Figma UI Kit would always be synchronized
| with the online site (color style, fonts style,...) But we know
| that it is not that simple :-)
|
| The advantage of your solution would be to always be able to
| start from the already existing online version. But is it
| possible to create a UI kit with assets?
|
| Figma does a great job on managing components and state
| variables. And I already wished I could transform a screenshot
| into an element composed of several elements in Figma.
|
| Anyway it's a great idea and product.
| coyleandrew wrote:
| The original vision for NextUX was to convert your website or
| web app into vector elements so you can quickly make design
| changes.
|
| Since this is technically challenging, I focused on the next
| best thing, capturing a screenshot that can be cut up into
| pieces with the app.
|
| I still plan on allowing users to convert live or locally
| hosted websites and web apps into a design files that you can
| edit. Hopefully, I can launch something along these lines in a
| few months.
|
| I also would love to somehow use ML to provide suggestions
| based on design best practices.
|
| I've written a lot of content on common dos and don't of design
| on Medium. https://medium.com/@CoyleAndrew
|
| Some of my best articles include "Design better forms"
| https://medium.com/nextux/design-better-forms-96fadca0f49c,
| "Design better data tables" https://medium.com/nextux/design-
| better-data-tables-4ecc99d2..., "Form design for complex apps"
| https://medium.com/nextux/form-design-for-complex-
| applicatio..., and "Design better cards"
| https://medium.com/nextux/design-better-cards-c0d12ab581c4.
|
| I wonder if I can program these best practices to provide
| suggestions as you design. Kinda like grammerly for design.
|
| And some day, I'd love to build an app that builds designs
| automatically based on your thoughts and inspirations.
|
| I'd love your thoughts on implementing something like this.
|
| Thank you!
| jeremy_k wrote:
| Definitely going to check this out. Our company was just
| discussing how we wanted to go about coming up with some new
| designs for the app without a full time designer on board.
|
| Just to note, after I used the invite feature, the pop out
| closed, but when I re-opened it, the email was still in the
| field.
| coyleandrew wrote:
| Thanks for giving it a go and good catch on the email field. I
| hope NextUX helps your team come up with some good designs.
| Feel free to reach out to me if you would like my feedback on
| what you are building.
| ksvarma wrote:
| Hi Andrew: Great work and looking to try this out on many cases.
| As a PM, #1 problem is tweaks to existing design and simply re-
| arranging parts of it so I can share my quick review.. with this
| I dont have even to touch everything in the source, I could play
| in a test env or anywhere else. Awesome.
| coyleandrew wrote:
| I agree!
|
| I've often gotten sidetracked in design software so many times
| when all I needed to do was add a small update to the UI.
|
| The process goes something like... 1. Have an idea or
| requirement to add a small tweak or feature. 2. Find the
| original design file. 3. Figure out how the file is
| constructed. 4. Get frustrated because I notice unrelated
| inconsistencies. 5. Forget what I was originally doing. 6.
| Realize hours have past and I haven't accomplished the simple
| task yet.
|
| I am creating NextUX to make updates to designs faster and
| easier for more people.
|
| My process now looks like... 1. Have an idea or requirement to
| add a small tweak or feature. 2. Take screenshot(s), update the
| design, and add comments. 3. Share the iteration with the team
| in Trello or Jira.
|
| I hope NextUX enables non-designers to incorporate more visuals
| with their writing. It doesn't have to be pretty, but adding
| mockups to a spec doc, long email, or jira issue makes it so
| more obvious what is being proposed.
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