HN Explorer

Offer HN: free design work.

65 points by sahillavingia ↗ HN
Inspired by http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1826828 I decided to see if HN would be open to the idea of a weekly "giveaway" for around 5 or so design hours [1]. And the idea seemed to go over well, so I've decided to do it.

The first one is today. Just comment with a link to your project/company. After around 24 hours I'll pick the post with the most upvotes and send them an email.

In return for the design hours, I'd love to write a blogpost with a before/after and about the overall process.

I think it'll be fun. :)

[1] - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1827654

59 comments

[ 6.2 ms ] story [ 179 ms ] thread
csomar
I'm building an HTML5 Video Player. I would be interested in a nice and custom carcass for it. (That is the buttons, progress bar, volume...)
perucoder
http://maziesoftware.com/

Please help! I'm always hard on my own designs but I dont think my current one is good at all. My product is a meeting management web app.

neilkod
http://www.mymomjust.com and http://www.mydadjust.com. Using hadoop/pig, I searched through my 620-million strong twitter archive for all tweets containing "My Mom/Dad Just....." The results are hilarious. It's just a single-page site and could be some low-hanging design fruit.
mikeklaas
I think your site already looks quite good. Just clean up the about bar (remove underlines, vertical center text, add more space between each item)
neilkod
um how? Dammit Jim I'm a data nerd, not a UI designer! This is why I threw my hat into the competition ;)
manveru
mydadjust.com has <title>My Mom Just...</title>
neilkod
thanks! Copy/paste fail! Fixed it.
mattmiller
http://www.agentshowroom.com

It is a Facebook app that lets Realtors shows their listings. I have tried to make it presentable, but I usually end up doing tasks that are more fun and let the design suffer. Thanks!

michaelfairley
http://remembersaurus.com - My recently launched webapp, and also my first attempt at making something look decent on the web.
philfreo
Hey we're doing some really similar stuff at Quizlet.com (small startup but over 1 million registered users), let me know if you want to chat.

http://quizlet.com/

gradschool
Very cool site. I can't remember the link, but I read a while back about a researcher who discovered that the optimum way to memorize using flash cards is if a learner who answers incorrectly is shown the correct answer and then asked again after a number of other questions just at the point where the correction is on the threshold of slipping out of his short term memory. This length of time has to be optimized for each learner by some sort of adaptive algorithm. Have you considered doing anything like that, or do you already?
philfreo
You're talking about SRS (Spaced Repetition - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition_software). We don't technically do SRS (yet -- although we're thinking about it).

But our "Learn" mode does keep track of what you know and what you don't know, and keeps asking you the terms you have trouble with until you know them all.

Hit me up by email if you have any more feedback for me - would love to keep improving the product.

klbarry
I work in sustainable fashion. We have a designer, but he is busy with other projects. I would love an infographic to help me put the facts on the fashion industry and pollution/waste etc in an easy to read and visually interesting format for lay people.
pamelaravasio
Hi Klbarry,

there are a couple of option you might want to look at: 1) There are 2 books that have numerous stats like the one you probably looking for. One is "Travels of a t-shirt in the Global Economy" by Pietra Rivoli, the other is "Sustainable Fashion and Textiles" by Kate Fletcher.

2) I've written a blog post some time back for which I've researched data that you probably just could pop into a info graphic to make it visual. Here's the link: http://shirahime.ch/2010/03/wardrobe-undressed-why-the-fashi...

Under the same blog you'll find also book reviews of the two aforementioned books if you need a in more depth idea of what they offer.

Cheers, Pamela --- http://shirahime.ch

kareemm
cool post :)

we just redesigned http://www.easycalapp.com - a frustration-free booking calendar for solo entrepreneurs - but we need a sales page.

ronnier
The blue is really strong, but other than that, I think it looks fine.
kareemm
yeah i'm pretty happy with the homepage, but we're about to flip the switch on billing and need a sales page w/ a pricing matrix, etc.
JimEngland
Quick thing to fix:

When the page loads in my browser (1366x768 resolution), it automatically scrolls me down the page a bit, enough so that I cannot see the EasyCal logo without scrolling back up.

This is because of the auto-focus on the email address text field under "Interested in using Easy Cal?". Maybe remove that and only apply it when "I want to try it!" is clicked?

kareemm
good idea, i just fixed it, thanks :)
prpon
Kareem, I may not be the intended audience for your webapp but I couldn't figure out what the term 'booking' calendar meant. May be you could put up a few situations when someone would use your app to help understand your app better.
kareemm
a booking calendar is something a hair stylist / massage therapist / esthetician / etc can use to let their customers book appointments online instead of phoning / emailing / texting them.
andrewacove
http://www.getaquirk.com/ Ties your social network accounts (FB, Twitter, 4SQ) to a QR code. Scan to connect.

Main focus is on getting users past the home page to sign up for the service. What's there still doesn't do a good enough job convincing the users why they should sign up.

The next problem is getting users to actually connect through the service. Channeling users to download a scanner app and download their QR code is probably the next major step.

lyime
http://mugasha.com We make it really easy to listen to long DJ sets. Best place for listening to electronic dance music.
anujv
I have used you guys before, pretty good site, well designed. It would be cool to see more social integration with your site. I like hypem.com (for listening to music) because of its integration with for instance, last.fm. Really spurs for discussion and brings me back to the site to listen to music.
lyime
Hey, Thanks! We are working on improving the social component of Mugasha right now. Should be live in the next 2 weeks.
rolandal
Mugasha is an awesome way to browse and sift through sets!
daleathan
Hello Sahil,

Excellent offer, I hope you have fun creating and blogging about the process.

I would like to suggest creating a logo for the Gramps project [1] (a Genealogy Program) which I just found a few days ago and in a reply to me one the developers mentioned that they have "No real official logo."[2] and from the looks of the project they could use a new wiki template[3].

Please consider upvoting to help improve the project.

[1] - http://gramps-project.org/ [2] - http://goo.gl/JDN1 [3] - http://www.gramps-project.org/wiki

nowarninglabel
http://www.staticbuzz.com/ - Implementation of Q&A site model, done in the Drupal cms. Bonus, if this is picked, I'll make your design into a theme and contribute it back to drupal.org where the ArrayShift install profile is still in need of a good default theme. (*Note: The is site is hardly used, but I've actually used it many times to showcase what Drupal can do)
SkyMarshal
Africa Nutrition Society - http://answeb.org/

I'm doing pro-bono work for them to move their flat html to a CMS so the people running the organization can update news, events, calendar, etc. on their own without need for tech support, but am still just evaluating CMS's and hosts (probably gonna be Django-cms or Vosao on GAE for the amazing price point).

Their flat html site was designed by a company in UK, but is not as modern looking as it could be, and the information architecture is busy imho. They don't have all the content available for it yet either, but had to make it public for their annual African Nutritional Epidemiology conference in early October. It's also all table-based, and converting the non-tabular elements to div/span something I'd like to do, but getting it converted over to a CMS is a higher priority.

I've got my hands full getting the backend up and running and would love to have a review by a pro web designer. In addition to being able to blog about it, I'd be happy to include 'Design by Sahillavingia' at the bottom and introduce you (via email at least) to the organization principals.

sahillavingia
You "win." I'll be contacting you... now. :)

EDIT: I can't find an email address on your profile, could you email me (in prof.)? Thanks!

SkyMarshal
Great, thanks Sahil, added my email address to profile comments and just emailed you.

Thanks also to everyone who upvoted, much appreciated!

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anthonyc
CityReporter - http://plus1lab.com/about-cityreporter

It's a service for state and local governments to improve their customer service relationship with their citizens. It implements the Open311 GeoReport v2 API, meaning the data is open and Free.

We could really use a nice theme for the web administration interface! I have no idea if that fits within your 5 allotted hours though.