UX Insider: Product Hunt Roundup - E. 11

Hey, I'm Daniel from Duran, and together we explore what's working, what's not, and what we can learn from the latest launches on Product Hunt. Let's dive in. The first product is Simple AI, making AI simple. Well, as you can see, we have a bunch of Product Hunt badges here on top, like 4 of them in different categories. And then we have this option to book a demo, and these stars are actually moving after the pointer. That's cool. Sign up, log in. For some reason, we have a Slack button here on top. And let's go further down the website. This is the preview of the product. I assume this is kind of how it looks at this stage. Looks quite basic, I would say, for now. There is a lot of things going on here, but we will check it out in a minute. You can switch between features or highlights. Maybe some spacings at the top and the bottom would be nice. And also we have Book a Demo again here, which looks slightly different from this Book a Demo. Okay, let's sign up. We have a simple signup page, some highlights here on the left side. You can create your account with Google or Microsoft or email and the option to log in here on top. So let's create an account. Okay, looks like we have a bunch of questions that we have to fill in. Full name, organization, country, industry, and team. Let's start. This might give a bit more friction into the flow, but yeah, let's see what are the options. We have Simple AI Experience Center. With pre-built AI applications or Simple AI Studio where you can build from scratch. Let's start with the Simple AI Experience Center. And we have a video. I'm not a big fan of these, so I will just close it. Some steps for the onboarding, 4 of them actually. Create a dataset, create a knowledge base, build a tool, build an agent. So we have Home, but for some reason I ended up with Interact, which I'm not sure what that actually means. We have something to start with. We can click on this. We have the PDF. You can upload files. Let's just close this one. We want to create another one. I assume it's just— oh yeah, you have to go through these steps. Collection, structured data, structured data with linked files. See, if we click on create an agent, agent name, categories, you have to create a category. It opens on top. You have to name it and add a bit of a description. You can import agents. You have also favorite agents. Okay, let's go back to home. This works just if you click on the button. Doesn't work if you click on the card itself, though it hovers the whole thing. Sub-agents, you can add sub-agents if you want. You can also create it, which opens in another tab, and you can create another agent here. You can preview it. They also highlight what's the knowledge base that they use, which is nice. It will be helpful maybe if after they answer something to have some guidance on next steps, like what are some other questions. From what we tested AI tools with customers, usually the problem is not really knowing Either how to set them up, like the prompting part, or what to ask. And here in the beginning, we have these options. We have a bunch of suggestions of what you should ask or what you can ask. So the empty state in a way it's solved. But once you ask the question, then there is no much guidance anymore. You just have to ask and type it in. Then we also have web researcher tool and you know rulebook, which is the knowledge. You have everything here connected. I thought that these are three different agents, but they actually three. Completely different things. And these are the key components: agents, the assessed models, AI chain, knowledge base, which you already have here as well. Maybe some, some kind of guidance beside this part would be helpful. Like they have this to actually set up, which is great. And you have also this how to use, which is a documentation. What's a bit maybe not necessarily weird, but might worth thinking about is merging these 2 together. So you could start from Maybe this one and edit it on this side. Right now I have to switch between them. Design-wise, there are a bunch of stuff that can be improved. It goes across the whole width of the page. This might be hard to read in a way on larger screens because you just have to move your head quite a lot. And then this is a bit weird that it's not clickable on the whole area. It's like just a button, though everything works on the hover state. You also have these 2 here, which might be a bit confusing on what they actually do. Oh, there are more than— I'm not So one to three of seven. What's that? Four to six. So all these three changes, and this is another one. Okay. So given that these are two different sections, honestly, I just didn't saw this title. It might worth adding a bit more spacing here so it's broken down because otherwise it's quite easy to confuse them. So yeah, spacing-wise, there there are room for improvements as well. And if we go back to to this. And here, kind of the same thing. So there are some design stuff that it's like not that consistent. It might be quite easy to fix in a way. Like here you can just rework the spacings. There is a big difference between the weight of the icon and the weight of the font. And as you can see, the stroke, this is like very slim. It's probably 1 pixel or something like that. And the button is like bold or semi-bold. These are again small tweaks that can be done quite easily, I would say. There's, yes, some, some inconsistencies as well in hover As you can see here. Let's try to create an— oh, creating a project opens this. And what if we try these? So, everything has the same CTA. Let's go with UX, see what this tool can do. And we have some results regarding UX references and trends and so on. And we have outputs and results. I'm not sure what's with this thing. I thought that it's some kind of tab, but it's not. And you have the tracing, which just shows the code. Like the topic and the result and the JSON. I would say that splitting this thing in maybe sections might be helpful. Have maybe 2 or 3 agents here or even more, or like agents and marketplace for agents. And then these tools could be like a separate section and the knowledge base a separate section. It also depends on like kind of what's the normal flow of the user here and what they would look for. But other than that, Like here we have the agents, we have the processes. I would definitely improve on these aspects at least. And then there comes the flow in a way, like what is expected from the user to actually do. We have these 4 steps here. It's a good start, but probably adding a bit on top of this and helping them maybe in place, like, okay, I'm here, I create a dataset, then Then what? Yeah, let's try it out, see how it goes. I would need a bit more guidance, right? So, I uploaded this file, I have some details here, and then what should I do next? I can upload another file, that's true, and it goes back to this place, right? Eventually, let's try that one. Let's upload another file. So, we have 2 files. 2 files added, and now I just should close this, I assume. Yes, but it would be nice to, I don't know, have a button maybe here or somewhere or here And then, okay, we close this one. We have the dataset. And then I should go back to home. A bit too much back and forth, I would say. And basically I created this one, but it still stays here. And then we have this, create a knowledge base. Why that's not working? I have to use the underscore, but why? They actually could probably just replace the space with this. Okay, knowledge base. Type document search default. Let's go with default and create. And then I have to upload. Oh, I can import from the dataset. Okay, let's go with this. Okay, I can't do this. That was weird. So I can just do one. Okay, this one. It started to work. Confirm and import files. Okay. And I'm not sure what happened now. This is processing. And now what's the next step? I can just close this, I assume. We have this created. So we have the dataset created. And here I was allowed to use spaces. I have the knowledge base created here. I wasn't allowed to use spaces for some reason. Now I have to build a tool and how that works. So you can name it, you can select a category. I'm not sure what's that for. I'm definitely not the target audience for this. So It's an interesting tool, but like flow-wise and design-wise, there is a bit of work to do, I would say. But yeah, once you have it set up, it probably works fine. Nevertheless, I would still suggest on like mapping out some flows to understand how this tool should be used. There is like a lot of back and forth and flows that somehow almost like just break down in the middle or at some point. And then I have to figure out what's the next step and where I should go next. It would be nice to maybe blend the whole thing together and like have a flow that guides you, handholds you if you want, to go from one step to another step to another step and so on. Base44, turn your ideas into products in minutes. We have a bunch of these lately, so let's see how this works and if it's different from the other ones. Big input field here, video comparison between other AI platforms and Base44, then use cases and questions and careers. Okay, if you sign in, okay, we are straight in the product and this is what you get as the first thing. There are some ideas, so it's nice that you have some suggestions. You don't start straight from the blank. Okay, let's go with what would you build today? Let's go with personal finance. We are using Google Sheets for that actually. Nice to see progress on the side and you don't just have to wait and just see something at one point. You actually have progress on the side, which is cool. It's still working. And this is the expense tracker on the side. Oh, now it disappeared somewhere. We have workspace and we have a preview, but the preview is not really working. Oh, it's back now. And you can publish it. You can make changes here. Everything looks to work. So it comes straight with the workspace, I assume, right? Something like a backend. Okay. This is nice actually. We have it here, easy to find them. Otherwise, yeah, quite simple tool. In navigation, you don't have a lot of stuff, a lot of noise here and there, just what you need. Yeah, these icons are so big compared to the text itself. You can win free credits. And if you come back to this, I assume you can also make changes, right? Yeah, by typing, and you have visual edit as well. You could say maybe here what you can do, change colors and text. And it's a nice combination actually between typing in everything and having these options to make changes. Sometimes it's actually easier, at least for me, to make these changes by clicking on stuff instead of like writing about it. And I remember I tried out tools that didn't have this option to just click on something and make the changes. So you had to type it in and then it didn't really work or it came up in a different way than you expected and so on. But this is nice. Next, we have Supercut for screen recording. There are quite some tools for screen recording and screenshots and stuff like that. So yeah, let's see how this is different. This looks nice. The bento boxes and so on is widely used nowadays. But yeah, the website is simple. It's clean. A lot of tweets here to give a bit more social proof to this whole thing. Okay, let's sign up. Before signing up with Google, I have to accept terms. Okay. And we have the onboarding. So the onboarding is basically confirm the full name and then choose a workspace name. You have to record your first Supercut. So basically they walk you through the steps or the things that you have to do straight in the onboarding, which is quite cool. You can skip it to workspace, you can download the app, or you can install the Chrome extension. Let's go with the Chrome extension for now and automatically selected the right microphone, which a lot of times doesn't happen. You can go up to 4K. With the native app. This is how it works when you start recording. I'm just curious how the app itself looks. So it also has this small icon in the extension with the timer. So it's again a nice touch. And from there you can also stop this. Okay, so now it's finalizing the recording. Takes a bit of time though. It's working in the background now. It's done. Okay, so now it's done. And, and here it is, still uploading. Okay, so we have to wait a bit. Let's skip to workspace, see how the workspace looks in the meantime. Okay, we clear this. This is the video that I just recorded. And this is a bit weird, maybe just one plus or something here would be nice. But yeah, nothing Nothing that is broken or it's not working or anything like that. Okay, this is a nice reminder regarding videos and who and how can see your videos. And these are the videos that you watched. Okay, what's— what was the message there? So here it actually collects all the videos that you watch. This is nice. I'm not sure if Loom does this. Like, I know that I saw a lot of Loom videos and sometimes you just like kind of get lost into links and remembering the videos and finding them and so on. If I click on this, automatically starts to play or It's a different page. Still uploading. Okay. So yeah, it takes some time to upload though. The video was quite short, so I'm not sure why. More than 3 minutes. And you have analytics, which looks like this. Actually nice charts. And what are the other things that we have? So if we go back to this, we have the link, we have the analytics, rename, download, and delete. And I assume kind of that's it, right? Yeah, billing settings and so on. It's also quite nice that you can start it straight from the Chrome window instead of necessarily installing another tool and so on. Then we have Stripo, which is a drag-and-drop and HTML email template builder. Nice animation here on the top to see kind of how it works. Social proof on reviews and logos. Some of the highlights of the product. Nice examples and templates, always useful for these kind of products so you don't start with an empty state. AI assistant, obviously. There is a plugin as well and the footer. We can start for free, we can sign up, and they also have a demo editor. Let's sign up, see how the flow looks. We have to agree to privacy policy and we are in the product. You have a nice empty state prompting you to design your first email. No hover states on these templates. Pre-built ones are here. We have some basic templates which are Very simple ones. And there are these pre-built, nice-looking templates that can be either premium, either free. Let's go back here on the home. And then we have the subscription, the team, projects available. So it's like an overlook of the account. We have the messages that you can send, right? Oh yeah, to basically create and send your first campaign. And there is an AI hub as well. You can create messages with AI assistant. How I go? Oh, there is a small, small close button here, but Yeah, it might be nice to either keep the bar here, like the sidebar, either have an option to go back. There are some options here as well. Let's go and start with a basic template. They have these sections that you can play around with and style them and change, edit, and so on. We have images, you have to drag it there. You have structures, you can drag structures in here. Yes, it's very minimal, which is nice, but also sometimes it's confusing. Like, I used some of these tools. Oh, and you can drag this around, but where can you put it in other place? Oh, you can change the order. Okay, I used some of these tools, and basically when you clicked on text or image or whatever, something opened here, and then inside of that you had different options, and those are the elements that you can drag in. But I guess it's something quite easy to understand once you try it out once or twice. This is actually a nice product. The last one for today, it's Ariel Travel. You can plan a trip or you can ask Ariel. Okay, let's try to plan a trip. Oops, things quite moved around a bit because— so the buttons moving here disappears here. What if we click on the next one? And again, like, it's like the layout, it's just moving weirdly all over the place. And again here, this is a bit, I don't know, unpolished or weird. This whole thing should stay in place and just change this bottom part. And then what are the other stuff that you can do here? There is TikTok to trip. What's this? All TikToks. Okay, I'm not sure what's this. Let's select this one. This also to select here, this opens the TikTok itself. Okay, maybe this could be slightly bigger though. It's easier to select. Let's go with Europe. I'm based in Europe, so it would be probably a better option even if we don't plan to go. But yeah, you never know, maybe there are some cool ideas. Let's just select this one, Mallorca, for now. And then they plan this whole thing, and this is based on the itinerary from the TikTok video, I assume. And then you can create a trip from this. To help you plan, could you please share when you would like to go and how long you plan to stay? This input field blends in a bit too much with the background, and it might be a bit bigger. So this whole page could be slightly redesigned and improved. Now, like, I have this here, but I'm not sure if I can go back where I was or how. Let's Let's go with plan to go in May, stay for 3 days with my wife and daughter. And you have to select what you would be interested in. Let's go with cultural experiences and local cuisine and dining. We have loading here and we had loading at the bottom as well. And these are the recommendations. Let's go with generate trip with— and now I have to create an account. Didn't I already create an account? It's a bit weird. Okay, never mind. Let's create an account. Now they are generating the trip. There are 4 destinations. What's the view more? Something is loading here. It's nice how they transition, like the layout itself is not bad. It's nice how they transitioned from just a chat to this setup and now they're pulling everything inside of this. Okay, you have 4 destinations. You are here. View more is basically the itinerary for each day. I think I set 3 days and we have 8, so that's, I don't know, a bit weird. 8 nights, yeah. And you also have like the cost. It's in Romanian lei, but it's nice that you have a cost at the bottom. But yeah, I said 3-day family trip. I'm not sure how I ended up with 8. Travel inspired from there, book a trip, and then you can come here and like book everything. Yeah, and this is the final price for the entire trip. Let's go back to my trips. Oh, this opens here. And what if I click on this? Hey, I just deleted it. Oh, that's weird. I thought that I will just close this, but no, I deleted the whole thing. And how I can add it back? Yeah, I deleted the whole thing. Never mind. Let's try some other options. Ah, this is still weird. It would be nice maybe to have some filters here. Oh, now we have IG Reels and TikTok trips. Okay, let's go with Greece for now. And then they give you this generate with 3 destinations. And they kind of do the same thing, but with less questions, I assume. And we don't have the other details. One thing that might be useful is actually, in a way, asking for the number of people that will travel. Like, I just put that in as a detail, but I wasn't prompted towards that. Might be an important information, right, for planning. Also, this is a bit weird. When you hover on it, it kind of breaks in 2 lines. How I can close this? Not sure. You have to click here. You can expand and collapse. Interesting product, but would definitely need a bit of a polishing design-wise and flows-wise. And like not to have all those stuff moving around and pushing things around, letting people to delete the trips so easily and not having something to close this window. That's like you really know that it will close the window, not delete the trip. Alright, that's a wrap for today. Hopefully you found some interesting nuggets to improve on your own products. If you are into UX, products, and figuring out what works, subscribe and see you next time. Thanks!