Thanks, I'm really glad you thought it was awesome. Sorry for the questions but I think you could have some really useful feedback. What do you mean by user testing? what would you find particularly useful?
I've been told to do a bug replay feature to record exactly what a user tried to do and what went wrong.
Not sure if I'm going to build this yet, but I was looking into building a tool that let product designers/managers easily ask customers/user testers to record themselves trying to complete various tasks on a website.
e.g. "go to amazon.com and add an item to your wishlist"
I wanted to see if it was possible to make it so the tester didn't have to install/download anything. It is possible in modern browsers with WebRTC, but it's kinda clunky and doesn't work on mobile/Safari. A "cloud browser" was a solution I looked into a bit, but it seemed too complex for me to try implement on my own, which is why I'm excited to see this exist. Again, I'm not sure I'll end up working on this, so my feedback probably isn't useful, but I'm happy to give it anyway.
Another possible use case is recording for customer support (I run screenjar.com which uses WebRTC for this), but the main issue for this use case is customers would have to log in on the cloud browser which isn't ideal in terms of usability as well as security.
Thanks for those ideas, that's super useful. And Screenjar looks awesome! The not working on mobile issue is a reason I wanted to build this so it can be delivered everywhere.
About sessions:
How would clients feel about providing a "login link" for their support customers to login (that is single use and wouldn't expose credentials), and could even be tied to whitelisted IPs for the service?
I've thought about this as well, I don't know if there's an easy solution to get around having people login. Of course if they already have an specific extension installed you could "transfer" the session cookies to the remote browser, but again this is not great for security-appearance. It's easy enough to discard the credentials or provide guarantees they are redacted from recordings but I suppose it depends on how clients and their customers view it.
The "login link" makes sense, it would just require more upfront work/dev time from clients. I honestly don't know much about what people would be willing to put up with as Screenjar is super early-stage. I'm just excited that this exists as it's another option to explore when coming across these types of use cases.
Nice work - just purchased. I’ve built a couple of simple extensions before and it always takes me an hour or so to remember how it all works. Hopefully this speeds that process up a bit. Good luck!
Awesome, thank you! That's exactly the reason I originally built them, I found myself going back to old projects constantly or looking up how to define the manifest, use the Chrome APIs, or integrate React into an extension again. If you have any suggestions for additional starting points, I'd love to hear them!
I made this tiny tool that lets you request screen recordings from users or teammates with them having to install an extension or download anything.
It's very much an MVP, but I think it can be useful for requesting design feedback or asking people for a bit more context around bugs. It works in Chrome & Firefox
I run https://pageflows.com and have been living off it full time for a little over a year.
The business makes a bit more than what I was earning a few years ago as a junior developer in London, so it's not a huge amount of money, but it's enough.
It's a fairly boring business to run and not as predictable or sexy as some sort of micro saas, but it's I'm happy with how things have been so far. Happy to answer any questions you have.
This is great! I assume most of your customers will be businesses, so why not offer a bulk "@domain" subscription for $999 (lifetime) so that anyone in the business can use it without restriction. Restrict the other packages to personal use and you should be able to drive up your income.
Nice project! I keep onboarding screenshots for most Sass/web apps I use to get inspiration later for my own projects so I definitely find this very useful (bookmarked!).
How do you monetize the project? I can't see any paid plans in the public website
I've commended to a response below with the business model, but yeah I've just started trialling a freemium model yesterday so need to update the rest of the site with clearer pricing plans etc.
Until yesterday there was no freemium access, it was just paid up-front to access all the content. $39 per quarter or $99 per year.
Your use case is kinda where the idea came from, most product people do something similar. The hard part is adding enough relevant content on Page Flows for enough people!
Very interesting idea, I didn't notice kind of need for designers until now. When I code for a game, I also check for other games, it might be too opinionated but they also have some common experience at their navigation and I find it quite helpful.
Honest question, doesn't this creep people out? I mean, I'm obviously not the target market but I find it awkward enough when sites pop up those "Hi I'm <name>, how can I help you?" chat windows even though I know they're just a script. I can't imagine how I'd feel if I'd bought something a while back from a site and I got a personalized video from the person running it.
(Then again I did buy a Klein bottle a few years back and it came with basically a photo commentary of it being shipped and that was absolutely awesome, so...)
So, how exactly does this work? You get a notification that a customer has triggered your bonjoro, and then you record a video and send it to them via email?
I was just curious to know your number - it's an interesting data point. I have experimented with pricing, but not enough, so it's something I have to do at some point.
Thanks! I started a related newsletter a few years ago that has good reach (https://uimovement.com) and that drives some traffic. SEO is also a decent source, plus some content marketing and word of mouth.
I've recently started experimenting with ways to grow the traffic above the base level, but it's slow going tbh.
One of my pet peeves are websites that use "ease-in" or "ease" transitions. IMO "ease-out" is always the way to go. I hate waiting for things to go full speed
If low skilled jobs paid the same as engineering jobs, I’d still prefer to invest my time into learning to become an engineer as the work is more interesting. I assume this would be the case with enough others too.
With that being said, the gap in pay betweeen low and high skilled jobs is unlikely to ever be 0, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be reduced in a way that would benefit all of us.
I’ll kick this off. I got accepted with Page Flows, which is a library of user flow videos to inspire product managers and UX designers (https://pageflows.com). Excited to hear about what others are working on!
Hey HN. While this tool is mainly for UX designers and product managers, quite a few of the customers are product-focussed developers.
It's a growing library of user flow videos and screenshots of popular products. It's useful when you're designing a new flow and are stuck or need some inspiration.
I personally like it when people share their side project's revenue numbers, so I'll share mine. The first sale was in mid-February. Here's what the revenue has looked like since:
Total revenue: $3,618
Feb - $1,182
March - $754
April - $638
May so far - $1,044
I'd love to hear feedback from more developers as to whether this is something you'd find useful.
