UI - don’t buy UI, use a component based design system like Material, Chakra, Tailwind etc. You can theme these with your brand colours. Use a logo generator to spin up a quick brand (I recently used https://designs.ai/logomaker/).
UX - your customer needs to find the value in your product quickly to see the value (low investment vs. High return). Otherwise it will fail. If you’re bootstrapping, then you should try wearing a UX hat while you’re indie hacking your way to revenue 😀.
You have two options which don’t cost 💲💲💲 …
Fake it/take it
Copy an existing UX pattern that another successful product uses if the product has a similar mental model e.g. writing a tweet, checking out, searching, finding a location etc. Once you have a working idea, run some use tests to ensure you have the right mental model…
Rapid prototyping
Grab some paper and pens and sketch out your UI on individual pieces of paper (you can download templates of phone screens to print off). Run your family and friends through a series of challenges to see if they can accomplish the tasks by tapping the paper UIs. You’d be surprised how many tiny improvements you can make without even touching a computer.
I used to have a very strong stance that if the problem is worth solving, people would put up with the worst UI to use your product.
Thing is, the base experience for the platforms you are building now are so much better that if you saw the version of facebook/instagram/whatever that took off, most people would likely not even give it a second look.
Today I think the way at looking UX & visual design are so ingrained in the product that they should just be lumped together from a customer perspective as "experience". With that in mind, the way you'd probably want to trade off on those items depending on what the customer expects: What are other products that the customer is used to in this category like, how much can design & experience be a differentiator, are there any requirements around design specifically, would being plain-looking or difficult to learn impact your acquisition & activation, etc.
UI - don’t buy UI, use a component based design system like Material, Chakra, Tailwind etc. You can theme these with your brand colours. Use a logo generator to spin up a quick brand (I recently used https://designs.ai/logomaker/).
UX - your customer needs to find the value in your product quickly to see the value (low investment vs. High return). Otherwise it will fail. If you’re bootstrapping, then you should try wearing a UX hat while you’re indie hacking your way to revenue 😀.
You have two options which don’t cost 💲💲💲 …
Fake it/take it
Copy an existing UX pattern that another successful product uses if the product has a similar mental model e.g. writing a tweet, checking out, searching, finding a location etc. Once you have a working idea, run some use tests to ensure you have the right mental model…
Rapid prototyping
Grab some paper and pens and sketch out your UI on individual pieces of paper (you can download templates of phone screens to print off). Run your family and friends through a series of challenges to see if they can accomplish the tasks by tapping the paper UIs. You’d be surprised how many tiny improvements you can make without even touching a computer.
Once tested, use one of the frameworks I mentioned or if you want to spend up development reference this article on code frameworks https://www.indiehackers.com/post/off-the-shelf-saas-frontend-d708a78c63. Start testing with some target audience. Iterate based on their feedback.
Alternatively, if you’re a no-coder, platform’s like Bubble etc should cover your immediate needs for UI implementation.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
I used to have a very strong stance that if the problem is worth solving, people would put up with the worst UI to use your product.
Thing is, the base experience for the platforms you are building now are so much better that if you saw the version of facebook/instagram/whatever that took off, most people would likely not even give it a second look.
Today I think the way at looking UX & visual design are so ingrained in the product that they should just be lumped together from a customer perspective as "experience". With that in mind, the way you'd probably want to trade off on those items depending on what the customer expects: What are other products that the customer is used to in this category like, how much can design & experience be a differentiator, are there any requirements around design specifically, would being plain-looking or difficult to learn impact your acquisition & activation, etc.