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Comment by geuis | Hacker News Reader

I was super excited about this until I tapped "Draw Now". And then I was taken to an account sign-up screen. And then I folded my ipad case, and put it away. I guess you need an account to save your drawings, but since I just want to check it out and not go through the signup process, it was a wall to me.

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It is pretty much standard to have a deviant art account as a young up and coming designer/artist. I have yet to interview one that doesn't have one in fact.

Now if I only had some artistic ability.

Yet it is still misleading a visitor to that site as "Draw Now" actually means "Sign Up Now" in case you do not have a DeviantART account.

A very large portion of their potential userbase already has a deviantArt account.

It's annoying anyway because the button says 'Draw Now' I expect to 'Dive In' (as the subtext says). Instead, I have to fill in a obnoxiously long form, verify my email address, and go to the URL again. That's a strange definition of 'Now'.

It's an internal news article, so most people who read it can 'draw now'

It's not a new startup looking for traction. It's an existing community adding a new offering to their user base. The usual "registration wall" critique doesn't apply.

I also didn't register even though I wanted to Dive In ...

They're a company so their goal is (among other things) to make money which they do (among other things) by charging for premium membership. Assuming there's a business case for this (very cool) tool, the question is: will they make more money by allowing people to try the tool before signing up?

Seeing how the tool requires certain amounts 'points' for some of the brushes to be available, this would make the benefit of a premium account even more clear after toying with the tool.

So, to sum it up: for me, not being able to try out the tool immediately is a small frustration. Presumably, for other people without Deviant accounts this is also annoying. I believe, as argued above that they might be able to make more money if they let people play with the tool first. Regardless, that might not be their goal at all.

>Assuming there's a business case for this (very cool) tool

I'm in dA and I see a lot of people there who don't have access to expensive tools like photoshop, So I think they built this to enable more users to submit art. I don't know how it benefits dA, but as a user I just love it!

Here's another drawing app (fd: it's mine) with no walls: http://draw.to

Certainly not for the same crowd as Muro (which is great, BTW) but maybe someone here will find it useful! It's just a place to share quick, ad-hoc drawings. Here's some examples:

http://draw.to/D1RIoJ7 http://draw.to/D1rYAK4 http://draw.to/D1bbQo6 http://draw.to/D1OKqoA

May I refer you to my project Colorillo http://colorillo.com/ ? Also drawing with HTML5 Canvas but with real-time collaboration--though no art brushes (yet).

works w/o registration

http://muro.deviantart.com/

Try now!

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