YC Facelift: Flutter

Cute and fun. I'd try the app if it had this page. <p>As a working designer, there's a few things I love about this guy's approach:<p>* use real language, not lorem ipsum. Text is half of the design.<p>* branding is just as much about giving personality as it is choosing a visual treatment, like "playfully nerdy with Jedi references" here or "sleek VIP club" like with Exec. The people that ripped on last week's mocks don't get it - design is a conversation-starter. Don't like the exclusivity of the previous mocks? Cool, then let's hone in on what you do want and guess what, some stuff from previous iterations might carry over.<p>* go straight to high fidelity, none of this nonsense of wireframes and personas and other deliverables that many PMs and designers are obsessed with. If you want low fidelity to quickly brainstorm, it's what paper, whiteboards and Starbucks napkins were invented for.  <p>* speaking of high fidelity, don't be afraid to use real textures and take a stab at the logo too while you're at it. Designers that swear they love Swiss minimalist grids as their style usually turn out to be like the bad contestants on Top Chef that get weeded out early on because their style is "rustic". Riiiight, it's not because you don't have the knife skills to do Asian cuisine, sauce skills to do French, or baking skills to do desserts.<p>* and the thing I like the most is that he took the initiative to just put something out there. Even when you're working in-house, sometimes you have to grab ahold of the conversation and ship something real, something people can sink their teeth into instead of spinning out into orbit with conversation. It's also very common not to know what you do or don't like until you see some alternatives. Hey, it's called being human. <p>And trust me, you can cool it with the disrespect angle. None of the targets of these redesigns feel disrespected, since everyone's dying for design help and even just a few spare cycles from experienced pixel pushers. I tried an experiment of holding office hours for just one YC batch (S11, because I'm friends with Jason from Ridejoy) and my last two Saturdays have been booked completely solid. And Justin reached out to me a few weeks back about helping Exec's visual design and we haven't been able to get together, probably because of post-Demo Day craziness, so how happy do you think he was to see the free mocks from last week? Justin didn't ask for any shady spec work, some guy was just fired up to help out on his own dime. Right on.<p>(thankfully there's less naysayers on this thread so far compared to last week's one about Exec, just a boatload of feedback on possible alternatives. Yay HN, reminds me of the days of old :)<p>Like I said, love it. This is the quality of work I get paid to deliver and if I had to break into design or the SF startup scene all over again, I hope I'd be smart enough to do a series like this. It worked for Dustin Curtis with American Airlines, Metalab with Zappos and even 37signals did it way back in the day when they were a design shop. They did some unsolicited redesigns of FedEx and other brands that led to a lot of client work for them. I read Jason Fried saying somewhere that it was a smart move for them and didn't get why more designers don't do it.<p>[edit: added the paragraph about unsolicited designs not being disrespectful]

I would change the tagline at the top. "Welcome to the future." is <i>way</i> too generic. Maybe try "Wave hi to the future." or something like that. It makes the graphic to the left look like a giant hand wanting to give an iMac a high-five. Some specificity would be helpful.<p>Also, the CTA should give some indication of what will be expected out of you on the next page. I would say something about it being in alpha and how it's free.

Kyro - you rock. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to give Flutter a facelift. We appreciate it..

One thing that impresses me is how the OP has clearly learned from the feedback on the Exec design. Even if nothing comes out of his YC Facelift project, he'll become a much better designer for it.

Thanks for all the feedback, guys. I take it all to heart and it's all appreciated. Hopefully you'll like what's to come!

YC should hire this dude as their designer in residence. This and the Exec facelift he did last week are gorgeous.

I think this is a much better redesign than the Exec one - because it actually is a <i>re</i>design for the product as it stands - rather than a <i>new</i> design for a product with a substantially different message and positioning, which is what the Exec one read like to me.<p>Kyro is, from the post, a fan and a user of Flutter, which probably helped with that. The hardest design work to do is when you're a long way personally from the market the design is built for.<p>If I was wearing my design critique hat I'd be asking Kyro this though:<p>* Why is "Welcome to the future" - which tells you nothing about the product - pushed above the "Control iTunes and Spotify Using Gestures" sub - which does. The former is tone and mood setting device - why am I not picking up that tone and mood from the visual design? If I am is it necessary? What is it's purpose?<p>* Why move the video and social proof so far down the page - are they really less important?<p>* Is the navigation bar at the top really necessary? (home == your there. features == this page should convince, download == pretty darn obvious). Are there more useful things we can use that vertical space for? (see previous point)<p>* The logo is still a bit "meh" to my eyes - but I suspect Kyro already knows that and it wasn't the focus of the changes done.<p>* The background noise on the main image is a little bit strong to my eyes and pull the eye away from the content a bit<p>* Is the "Flutter in the news" headline necessary? If you take it away will the reader be confused?<p>* The move lines on the hand don't quite work. "Why is the hand sweating" was a comment from my partner :-)

I think the overall layout and color palette is great.<p>I'd like to suggest some improvements to the marketing message, however, since you've included that in the purview of your proposal this time.<p>I'm not crazy about the Jedi-themed language in the official copy, as it distracts from what the product actually does. My mind wants to be learning how the product works, not wondering how it cleverly relates to futurist mythology (as much as I am a fan). However, I think the Jedi themed testimonial is entirely appropriate, as it is of lower weight in the informational hierarchy and is an individual's statement, not the company's.<p>Lastly, the "Yes, master" blurb is not appropriate as official marketing copy, even if it is intended as an ironic reference to the Jedi master-apprentice relationship. It is too easy to mistake it for a reference to a master-slave relationship, which is not a good association in any respect. It's just not an issue you want to draw association with even in the slightest most oblique way. The lesson here is that all copy must be screened for any kind of irrelevant connotation.<p>I do like the direction in which you're going with the copy in the left hand column below the main section. That's starting to develop a fun, snappy voice, and the fish graphic is pleasantly quirky.<p>Lastly, to maximize the "throughput of information" about the product that one gets by just looking at the page "above the fold", I would make the main graphic more explanatory (possibly with little blurbs like you used for "yes, master"). The main graphic on their existing page <a href="https://flutter.io/signup" rel="nofollow">https://flutter.io/signup</a> was good in that regard.<p>Kudos to you doing these designs every week. I think it's a great exercise. Just remember that it's not just about the pixels, it's the total message and then of course the whole UX after you interact with the page.

dear Flutter people. i actually downloaded and installed your software because of his landing page. if i had just stumbled on your landing page the same may not be true, it doesn't feel nearly as professional.<p>that said, there is obviously more than just a landing page going on here (a blog post, a discussion, etc).<p>love the product!

Is it just me, or this guy should do this for a living? Like, we make sucky homepages, he improves, we never even need to talk to him.<p>Just take my money! (I'm kidding, I have no money)

Really like the redesign. Great, great work Kyro! My one feeling, as a non-designer and merely as a user, is that the product itself is so much fun, I wish there would have been a bit more of that vitality infused into the design. Just experientially, I feel like using the site should closely mirror the experience of using the product. So something a bit more dynamic, maybe in color or vibrancy, might have punched it up a notch. That's a small quibble. Overall, really solid.

I agree his designs are lovely. Flutter needs a redesign a bit less than Exec does, but his is an improvement nonetheless.<p>Main concerns with the current Flutter site: The video is front and center. I get why companies do that, and it's smart to make the video and have it there. But I almost never watch product videos until I'm already intrigued. Videos take waaaaay longer than reading, so a focus on intriguing me in a sentence or two first goes a long way to getting me to watch the video at all.<p>The second is that annoying little popup at the bottom. I can't stand those things, they're very distracting. Irrational level of turnoff for me.<p>On his redesign, one minor comment about copy. Probably can't make "Jedi" part of your official copy without triggering the Lucas machine. Having it in a testimonial is probably acceptable.<p>As a final thought, the name Flutter and the product are one of those rare natural matches. That's good stuff.

Maybe it's just me, but when I see a product that claims to do something seemingly impossible without explaining <i>how it works</i>, I tend to be highly suspicious that it doesn't, and I feel a little bit patronized. I think the main description should at least give a hint.<p>I see "webcam" mentioned in the testimonials now, but I would make it more prominent.

Great redesign. Now they should just add skip/forward/back + voice recognition, charge $5 for it and be happy :)

This isn't about the redesign, but I just downloaded Flutter and I can't find anywhere that lists all the controls... Does it just do Play/Pause? Can you skip songs?

Brilliant way to self-promote while also servicing the community. I love this approach, and the design.

I love this concept, 37signals way back in the day used to do these UX teardowns and rebuilds via <a href="http://37signals.com/better" rel="nofollow">http://37signals.com/better</a> and that had a lot to do w/building their rep for UX expertise<p>A couple of notes from conversion side:<p>a) Better - Your inclusion of a visually descriptive image is an improvement vs. pic of the girl - maybe as a keyframe since the vid is an important visual demo.<p>a) Draw - Original site compatible w/1024x768, your new one less so. Their audience is probably tech savvy and not @ 1024x768 but as a rule better safe than sorry and 1024 requires an element-economy that can sharpen your messaging anyways.<p>b) Worse - Your headline is more entertaining, but less on point. You've incorporate their original as a sub-headline but you'd be surprised how many people will simply overlook that.

I love the idea of the facelifts! Good job keeping to it!

Works. Awesome.<p>Gesture seems to be the next frontier.

These are great! Would love to see a screencast of your next facelift.