mattrobs
Joined 13 years ago
Karma
209
Submissions
14
Member since
May 14
Recent submissions
Comment · 12 years ago
That's an excellent way to put it.
Comment · 12 years ago
Invision and similar apps like it, technically, do everything Red Pen does. But in doing everything, they become overwhelming to use. The clients I worked with on freelance struggled to understand Invision: the signup was lengthy and distracting, the mode switching confused them, they lost their place in the hierarchy— it required me to prod them to use it, and it produced shallow feedback. Conversely, I have a folder of Red Pen customer emails who report their clients produce significantly greater feedback.
This word's meaning has been hugely diluted but "experience" matters. If you're trying to communicate something, you want your message to come across as you intend. If you want someone to be honest with you, you want them to feel at ease. That's the difference. It's easy to give feedback on Red Pen.
Comment · 12 years ago
My co-founder @8apixel and I co-designed it (we make competing designs then choose/merge the best ideas.) We both shared in coding the front-end.
Coding front-end and animations is just searching google for examples + practice. I didn't find a shortcut, sadly! I fiddle with CSS animations until they match what I imagine them to be. Ceasar (http://matthewlein.com/ceaser/) is really good for getting kinetics right.
It's also a huge help when designers better than you give you feedback and suggestions; because they can picture a different finished product to you. During Red Pen's development I would share Red Pen with other designers who would give me feedback about Red Pen on Red Pen (whoa).
Back-end learning was harder because I came in (a year ago) with little Ruby or Rails knowledge. Why the Lucky Stiff's ebook on Ruby was inspirational (and it had cartoons cats!!). Rails for Zombies was a nice primer to Rails. The rest was Google. Knowing devs was a bonus because I could hire them to cover my arse (security audits and performance optimisation.)
Comment · 12 years ago
Email [email protected] and I will personally remind you in two weeks :D
Education discounts is something we've thought about. You've up-voted that thought for us.
Comment · 12 years ago
But it saved you 10px of precious reading space!
But, yes, valid feedback. It should be smarter.
Comment · 12 years ago
Yeah, we designed the pricing model based on what we would actually use as designers. I've always been able to spot arbitrary obstructions products throw up on purpose— and it never felt right.
Comment · 12 years ago
Hi HN. I'm Matt, the co-founder of Red Pen. I'm a designer who turned developer because I wanted to make Red Pen.
This is our big v2. Cool things you could try: the front page has an onboarding bot that simulates using the product; commenting on designs use Pusher and stream live; and I like to think I made it pretty damn fast.
Appreciate the feedback! (eh eh)
Comment · 13 years ago
You got it!
Comment · 13 years ago
v1.1. Thanks!
Comment · 13 years ago
Good spotting. I'll fix that.
Comment · 13 years ago
Thanks for that guys ;)