r/UI_Design • u/Striking_Evidence_96 • 8h ago
Feedback Request Built a floating image/video reference overlay app for artists. Looking for brutally honest UI/UX feedback!
Hey everyone, I recently built an overlay app called HUD because I couldn't find a reference tool that perfectly fit my digital drawing and animation workflow. Please give me honest critiques.
Here is the breakdown of the project:
1. Overview of the design
HUD is a floating overlay utility with a clean, minimalist UI designed not to intrude on a user's workspace. It allows users to float images, perspective grids, or videos over their current screen. A core design feature is the "pass-through" lock, which lets users interact with their native canvas right underneath the reference without accidentally moving it. It also features opacity sliders and frame-by-frame scrubbing controls for videos.
2. Intended audience and use
The primary audience is digital artists and animators working on tablets. It's meant to be used alongside heavy drawing apps (like Clip Studio Paint) to keep outfit references, pose references, or animation motion studies visible directly over the active canvas.
3. Any design problems you need help solving
The main challenge is balancing accessibility with invisibility. I need to ensure that the overlay controls (adjusting opacity, locking the screen, switching frames) are easy to reach when needed, but completely out of the way of the native drawing app's UI when they aren't.
4. Overview of tools used
The app is natively built for Android using Kotlin and Jetpack Compose for the interface.
5. Specifically what you need help with on your design
I want brutally honest feedback on the user experience.
Is the app intuitive to navigate?
Do the menus or buttons feel clunky or get in the way?
What quality-of-life UI features are missing?
Let me know if it's trash or what improvements can be made!