amirkhella

Hi HN,

My name is Amir, and I'm the creator of UI Recipes.

I've created this product to solve the time consuming problem of trying to find the top UI patterns and latest design trends for solving a specific user task (eCommerce, search, lists, sign-ups, etc.).

I've also decided to take it one step further, and analyze those patterns and trends from a usability standpoint, then provide actionable guidelines in forms of if-then questions.

I send out a new UI recipe every Wednesday at 10 am.

My goal is to provide non-designers with weekly educational bits to learn design in 15 minutes or less, and to provide designers and product managers with a repository of validated UI design guidelines that they can use in their work.

We are also working on creating a searchable online repository of all those patterns and trends, downloadable UI kits with various design "ingredients", and a Sketch plugin to access those assets directly within the app.

Would love to hear your feedback, ideas and requests. You can also tweet us @uirecipes

My conclusion is that to have no regrets, you gotta act more, fear less, and ignore the status quo. After all, we only live once (until proven otherwise)

Creatng a downloadable product and selling it :)

I've recently updated Keynotopia templates to include Android ICS UI components for Keynote and PowerPoint (http://keynotopia.com/android-prototyping-templates/)

I think this is the most consistent UI for Android so far. It still feels a bit more like a "style guide" rather than "human interface guidelines", but it's a great step forward.

Kudos

The challenge is that we live in a culture that defines us by what we do and have. I get asked about what I do a few times a day. I spent a couple of weeks in Paris last Fall, and not once did anyone ask me that question. It's actually impolite to ask such question in France :)

I personally believe that the secret to success is doing. Whether I am failing or succeeding, I keep doing and improving what I am doing.

From a UI design perspective, I think this will alienate lots of existing Windows users, which might lead them to sticking with Win7 (XP anyone?) or moving on to OS X Lion (to which Win8 is surprisingly similar).

Microsoft is taking their phone UI and scaling it to the desktop, which is a big risk given how many people use that phone.

I give them credit for taking a risk, but IMO, this is the last nail in the coffin of Windows.

Apologies for the promo link at the end of the post. The story wasn't meant to promote the product.

>Maybe it's just that, once everyone knows the rules of the game, they are reasonably successful in communicating a tiny piece of information (a single number) to each other

It's possible, but highly unlikely that a group of people playing a game for the first time will all get that successful so fast. They weren't all hackers ;-)

>That's because he thought he was supposed to, not because it was necessarily something he would normally have done.

I had the same assumption you mentioned, that's why I had to field test it for validation.

Seriously, next time you wanna poke fun at someone who tells you he just sold his startup, tell him you sold your previous 3 startups and see what happens.

REF: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1713616

For those who requested the specific launch steps that I used in launching Keynotopia. Enjoy, share, and upvote.

And let me know if I missed anything.

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the next best time is right now ;)

True. Some problems are not painful enough for people to take out their wallets and pay to solve.

Yet it is the founder's responsibility to make sure the benefits of their ideas are measurable and outlined in a way that makes people take out their wallet and pay ;)

Thanks for the feedback. Will fix.

I found two simple (but not necessarily easy) paths: - Solve a problem that YOU are suffering from. Just make sure enough people have the same problem. - Use Google keyword search ;)

Actually my experience is almost the opposite. Raising the price of the product made more people buy. There is something to be said about price/value perception.

1) If by wide screen you mean requiring a horizontal scrollbar, the answer is no. I have yet to see a good UI that's wider than a single page. If you mean layouts that fill screen width, I've had some success there (Photo sharing/video sharing websites with grid content are good examples)

2) As little as possible. A typical reaction/animation time should not take more than 300 ms. The key is to test it on slow machines and connections, and optimize for that delay.

I can say from experience that it does. As long as you create a valuable, interesting (i.e. not boring) video, it will not only increase conversion but it will rank you higher on Google search results. Video headlines are also very important. Think about them as a free way to A/B test on YouTube without paying adsense money. Similar videos with different headlines lets you find out the right words to sell your product.

I don't have the exact numbers to share, but video converted at least 200 sales the past couple of months at Keynotopia.

"Just because they are the strong, doesn't mean they can't get their a55es kicked" :)

Help me put together a useful in-depth follow-up post by leaving a reply to this comment with a couple of questions that you'd like me to answer.

No plugin. Just their HTML script for each shopping cart item that I embed in product pages.

They manage sales through PP and GC, and they even hold delivery on eCheck payments until they are cleared.

I think eJunkie + Wordpress make a great duo for eCommerce platforms.

OneWeekApp looks pretty cool! I spent a couple of hours a day afterward to do testing, upgrade the templates, and improve copy.

I am more surprised by how much people are trying to reinvent the wheel every day. I think there are enough tools and APIs out there to build small useful products in less than a week.

I just got it installed and activated, and deactivated most plug-ins on the blog and website. Hopefully that will solve it.

Correct- The product itself has been created over time, as a byproduct of my day job. But it wasn't a product until I put together that MVP website.

That's exactly right. I really don't think I did anything new or special here. My biggest challenge was to stop thinking about it and do it.

:) No secrets here. I've been keeping a journal of the whole experiment, and can compile it into a couple of posts this weekend.

That's a very good point. I had some pricing variations in the beginning and the one I have now is at the sweet spot.

One of the most interesting moves was to add a company license (a friend suggested it and it took less than 10 minutes to add it. It sold several copies to date.

I am planning an update that should position the product at the right value/price point.

Sure. If enough folks want to dig into this much detail, I'd be happy to put together an in-depth write-up.

Working on creating a static HTML file for the post