@eriktorenberg First, it's important to have a product that's actually useful to build a community around.
The most important thing I learned is that we must get the community involved in everything we do on the site and engage them for feedback. For example, I post the designs of Ocean to Ocean (lulz) to help get everyone involved. Reaching out via email has been important too. Also, we make an effort to highlight the most value members of the community here: http://ocean.ink/user/featured. Most of the critiques on Ocean comes from a small set of repeat critics.. I'm doing my best to pamper these people :).
I'm just getting started with understanding how to build a community though. Hopefully you can advise me on this :D!
Thanks so much for the hunt @erikfinman!
Here's some backstory on Ocean... When I first started out as a designer I lived in the ##design IRC channel. Whenever I just moved one small thing, I would post a screenshot to the chat. Most of the time people would ignore it but some of the time people would say, ‘oh, this part sucks, you need to move it’. That informed everything I know about design and is my inspiration for creating Ocean. I'd love your feedback on the site!
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@henryboldi I'm not a designer by any means but I would love to tag along and offer my average Joe feedback to designers. Great concept and idea to receive legitimate feedback for free!
@henryboldi I love the concept, Henry. Finally I can get critiques from designers who understand how frustrating it is getting feedback from non-designer friends.
I used to be a huge fan of Deviantart, back in the day when they had a great community and amazing content. Since their quality went to sh!t i have been looking for a new community for design feedback. Will def check it out!
What are some differences from Behance and Dribbble?
@shapob Just to name a few differences: pinpoint feedback, sorted by most recent, rep system, beginner friendly, your profile will focus on your critiques instead of the work you shared
Looks pretty awesome! Love how fast my post received feedback! It's great to see designers actually discussing with each other.
Some feedback:
- It's not entirely clear what the fish icon means next to posts and usernames. After using the site for a while, I'm assuming the fish next to username means how many comments they've posted? Still not sure the one next to the thumbnails mean though.
- Clickable links in descriptions would be helpful, if you have links to a live version of the mock, etc.
- Would be very helpful to be able to edit the description after posting.
- It'd be great to see avatars next to comments (other than just the original commenter's avatar).
@danlev Thanks so much for the feedback!
Fishies are the rep system on Ocean. You get one fishie for every upvote you get on one of your comments. I will be sure to make this more clear :D.
I used Ocean for an updated design of my website (http://ocean.ink/p/show/546284a3...) and I got some AMAZING feedback! I was immediately sold!
I think it's really cool that Ocean has a community of designers that actively comment on people's designs. Which, I think, is the most unique part of Ocean!
It's interesting: my initial reaction is that I would pay for expert reviews of my design mockups.
So a free-to-join community is a great value proposition :)
My favorite thing about Ocean is that it looks very welcoming for new-comers and novice designers too. Other design communities like Behance and Dribbble can be quite intimidating.
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