Show HN: My 10 Hour Winter Break Project Mixmatic | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: My 10 Hour Winter Break Project Mixmatic

mixmatic.co

18 pointsdshipper20 comments

Interesting site. I lost interest in Spotify but I can see the novelty of a site like this.

But... your example URL makes it pretty easy to guess at other people's mixes... so not very private. Not that you claim it to be private. But if I was sending a mix to someone and typed in a special message for them, I would not really want random people to read it. Some sort of URL hash would at least make it harder to guess.

Really I'd love to know why you stopped using Spotify (just out of curiosity).

Good point about the mixes, I may change that in the future but this isn't looking like it's gonna be a long term project so there might be marginal return on the time invested. Thanks for the feedback!

Nothing in particular lost me with Spotify... I just went back to playing from my own library. I didn't really dig the UI and controls so it didn't become my default player.

Seems to be the season for mixtapes, found another one on HN recently http://muxx.it

I love this and the parent site, an awesome project for 10 hours. But it all makes me miss the simplicity of muxtape: http://muxtape.com/story

I put together a usablity review of mixmatic.co using moustach.io. I hope you find this useful.

http://moustach.io/welcome/e/reviewed/ozH9eZmzRYuRB5bycNJYb-...

Good luck.

Thanks I love it!

I don't use (and never have, but I suspect it's like Grooveshark) Spotify so this question might be stupid. What advantage does this have over just sending an email with a URL to a Spotify playlist?

Good question :) you could certainly do that - this is more just a cooler, more visually appealing way of sharing a playlist with a friend that's made specifically for that purpose.

First question: Why get co and not a com?

Second question: i like the design given the time constraints. What design tools did you use? Any tips on getting a good design quickly?

1. The .com was taken and I really liked Mixmatic as the name.

2. Thanks! I've been really concentrating on my design skills recently. Biggest tip to get good quickly: copy other designs and do it a lot. The design for this site leans heavily on the Instagram homepage. You just need to find another site that captures the feeling you're trying to create with your product and then put your own spin on it. Also looking up how books are laid out especially Renaissaincs era layouts that use the Golden Ratio like the Van der Graaf canon are very helpful. Email me I'd be glad to Skype some time.

There's no magic bullet. Everything's hard at first. But if you do it enough it gets easier.

Awesome answer! Thanks. Next, I literaly code css in notepad, any tips on tools and things to speed up design work? A quick list of what you use?

No problem! I use Photoshop to mock things up and then code everything in SASS in TextMate. Pretty basic setup but it works for me.

Why does this have to be locked into spotify? Why not create a playlist with any other service? It's just a URL anyway.

That's true I guess it's just to make it so that when you click the message it opens the spotify app but this definitely doesn't need to be specifically tied to it.

Neat! Minor suggestion - link to an example playlist. There's also a minor grammar error in the text ("gives us").

Example added and typo corrected. Thanks for the feedback :)

I would put the example on the frontpage and make it larger.

Ok thanks for the feedback. Do you think there's too low of an incentive to click through to the compose page without one?

Yes. I have no idea there's an example on the next page so I'm lost before I even think about clicking. First thing I thought about when I landed on the homepage was "What is this for?" "What will the final product look like before I go through any trouble."

Without the example starting me dead in the face I would've lost interest. I only clicked around because this was on HN and I wanted to explore so I could give constructive feedback.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com