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!
Report
@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 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!
@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!
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 :)
Gem
Gem
Graviteer
Gem
Gem
Gem
Project Da Vinci
Gem
Project Da Vinci
Listen
Project Da Vinci
Poparazzi
Gem
Backchannel
Gem
Atlist
Gem