Show HN: Grid – Multiplayer Creative Workspace | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Grid – Multiplayer Creative Workspace

buildwithgrid.com

43 pointsjoshleong23 comments

I've looked at the site (on mobile), read all the comments on this thread, and still have absolutely no idea what this is.

Seriously, wtf is it with sites that do not state front-and-centre what the damn product is?

I think its sort of like a shared/live (with collaborators) 'white board' type thing - kind of like if OmniGraffle/<insert your favourite wireframing/graphical mockup tool here> had realtime collaboration built-in... I think?

I tried something like this a while ago (don't remember the app name) with a (then) business partner. It was pretty terrible honestly - laggy, and work done on a retina screen went haywire on non-retina and vice-versa.

I like the idea (I'm not a designer but sometimes drawing is easier than explaining/writing, even for technical/non-visual things) but without any information to suggest it's purely p2p, or some way to self-host the backend, I'm not interested enough to dig further.

Looks like pretty folders for pictures with titles with a grid background. I'm not sure why it's so revolutionary all of a sudden. Maybe the UI is really slick?

I've been watching Josh iterate and build Grid over the last 2-3 years.

If I recall, Josh originally worked at Microsoft on the Excel team, and has a deep understanding of how tools can be construed into other use cases like project management and organization.

I bet it feels great to finally get this out the door and am looking forward to trying it.

I'm a little bit spaced out right now, but I have no clue what it does after watching the video.

I think... it's a collaborative mood board? Did I get it right? Hmm...

The use cases for Grid are pretty broad, we've seen people use it for a visual personal journal to storyboarding games and movies to architects planning projects with their clients.

It's light weight organization for visual thinkers that you can invite anyone too, and we've seen it used most heavily amongst those in the creative industry.

How about tackling one use case where Grid really excels and building up a really strong case and marketing material around that? Like one creative industry project. See https://basecamp.com/tour for an example of making a case study. People can be pretty imaginative about how they can apply a good tool, but right now we (first-timers) can't even see how it clearly works for one specific thing. You may be spreading yourself too thin before you have mindshare and losing people before we even get to see how great the technology is.

Yes, impossible to say what it is about.

The animations below the video are a little more helpful. Apparently you can import images from a number of sources and arrange them into categories.

But why they write "multi-player system"? Is is a game or a design tool?

I think I just preferred multiplayer over collaborative as a term, risking the misunderstanding. It's a design tool, it doesn't have a game-loop, but it is built on a game engine, and was intended to be more physical and provide more tangible feedback similar to games.

Yes. Videos like that need to show a clear use case that everyone can understand. There was a lot going on but none of it really made any sense.

Ideally 3 use cases, since one may not be relatable to enough people.

I'm guessing Evernote with a fun UI

I want to like this, but I have no idea what it is.

The site looks neat.

I get the concept. It seems very useful.

At first glance, I couldn't actually get it (I didn't know what it is suppose to do). I asked some of my friends by looking at the landing page, if they got it at first glance. They didn't as well.

Maybe I'm not following, but isn't this just a Tiling window Manager?

It's polished but this is an app looking for a problem to solve. Unfortunately by the time the problem space is discovered and understood, someone else will have developed something slightly better and more focused.

It looks like you're making its application so broad that you're hurting your chances. Unless you pick one problem, that exists right now, to solve I'm suspecting this isn't going to be a hit.

There is a lot of movement on the initial viewport: fullscreen background video, changing text to the left and the demo video. I found it a little hard to actually focus on any of those.

The about page made it more clear to me, what it actually is: http://www.buildwithgrid.com/about [has autoplay audio/video]

Super light grey text (almost white) on a white background. How are people supposed to read that.

http://i.imgur.com/J3qPrjV.png

The dancing robots are awesome.

Were do I register to try it?

We changed the URL from https://www.producthunt.com/tech/grid-3 to the actual site.

Thanks Dan

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