The future of creative work online - Welcome to the new Scoutzie (YC S12) | Hacker News Reader

The future of creative work online - Welcome to the new Scoutzie (YC S12)

blog.scoutzie.com

55 pointsjenntoda29 comments

The founders may want to drink their own champagne, and hire a designer for their own site. The bizarre gray textured box that expands upon hovering over the dropdown was an immediate turn off within seconds of visiting the site.

Any design related platform should expect an inordinate amount of aesthetic & UX criticism, so I don't think this comment is out of line.

To offer something constructive, I would suggest developing an overall theme to the thumbnails (e.g. tight cropping on a detail, bringing in the color palette). This will give the homepage a higher level of aesthetic consistency. Your homepage is the most vital marketing piece in regards to convincing high quality talent to get on board.

Thanks for the note and the constructive suggestion. We will continue to improve. One pixel at a time. :)

This is awesome! When Scoutzie first launched, I thought "Why does this have to be limited to mobile designers?" - so it's really great to see that it has now expanded into more areas.

Right now, there is not one "marketplace" where a business owner can go to find the best designers, especially for websites. Without knowing their options, I've seen many businesses settle for a) a crappy site by their local yellow pages outfit b) the first result for "[my city] web designer" c) one of those do-it-yourself site builders or d) no website at all. A centralized directory of vetted designers makes a lot of sense for easier discovery.

One other thing that would make sense is an Airbnb-style rating system, so designers can start earning a verifiable reputation based on prior work that originated through Scoutzie.

Thanks Vlad, glad you're sharing our view. Indeed, why wasn't a centralized verified repository available before ? :) As per the reputation system, we've began with the most critical features to verify identify and build trust where clients also need to uphold their reputation - stay tuned for more!

Isn't that what Dribbble and Zerply do?

Yes. Yes it is.

And 99designs?

I used them and had a really bad experience. Our designer was very bad - not Scoutzie's fault necessarily. However, their refund is actually around 70%. They do not refund their pretty big Scoutzie fee. Their customer support is also pretty arrogant..

What is the fee? I couldn't find any reference on the site, easily.

My initial concern with Scoutzie was that there was no way to verify that these "mobile designers" had actually tried and tested their designs in production vs. using a PSD device template; no app store links, no product websites. I think that this is an important aspect of calling yourself a mobile designer because you're dealing with physical interactions on a tangible interface. I also made some suggestions to the UI and general "categories" designers would find themselves in. Despite what I felt was constructive criticism by someone in the field, I've actually avoided commenting in Scoutzie threads since then because Kirill thought it appropriate to respond to me by telling me I was just jealous I didn't get in because I was a bad designer.

He later apologized, but I bring this up only because the quality curation aspect previously spoken to is non-existent, even though that was supposed to be a selling point and something that set them apart from their competitors. I was excited about this because I feel that every other site in this market is oversaturated and makes it more difficult to connect designers to gigs. To the same point, both iterations of the website have been awful both in design and usability, losing my trust in the founders' abilities to curate to begin with.

Now that it seems anyone of any talent or skillset are allowed in, I don't see how it's any different than Dribbble, Behance, Coroflot, Zerply, 99designs, or even personal portfolios. I fail to see value in this site over any of the aforementioned, especially because you're taking part of my potential income (and planning on airing my personal rates) in the process. What is the benefit here?

Actually, we are not "airing" your personal rates and instead ask the client to start a proposal with a range they are willing to spend. This way you can judge whether this is a client that would interest you or not. Beyond just the money, we also ask that clients provide as much relevant about information about themselves , much like designers do. That includes their prior experience, and most importantly, social verifications. When the proposal is sent from the client to you, if you feel that a client cannot explain his/her product well enough, or is not willing to share enough information about themselves, you don't have to continue on the project.

Scoutzie is not for everyone, and we don't hold it against you if you choose not to participate. We do, however, aim to provide as much value to our members as we can, working to bring out the features they have requested. I understand that sometimes we make mistakes and we try to correct them. We cannot please everyone, but I know for a fact that we had a great number of successful project, which means clients and designers who were happy with the outcome.

I can assure that you we will work tireless to continue improving the experience and to ensure that our community is happy.

Thanks for the response! Those features make a lot more sense as to why I'd use it. Do you guys have a roadmap online?

Not at the moment, but it's not a bad idea. Having a list features available + upcoming would be helpful to keep everyone up to date!

Scoutzie is a great company to work with. Our project that went through Scoutzie hit some snags for many reasons which were completely outside of Scoutzie's control. Scoutzie promptly offered us a refund of the full amount remaining in escrow and declined our attempts at giving them back the fee portion of the refund. After the resolution of our Scoutzie contract the designer ended up signing a contract directly with us for this project which was of a much broader scope then our original project on Scoutzie. We continued the project and have produced a great product that I hope to share soon.

The Scoutzie founders were very nice and understanding people to work with throughout the whole process and I'm sure this new product will be a success.

PS: I'm glad the site works fine without Javascript enabled.

Thanks for the kind words and we are glad everything worked out. Come again :)

PS: I'm glad the site works fine without Javascript enabled.

Who does this and why? Do you like browsing the web where 80% of website's functionality is broken because you think its a good idea to browse with JavaScript disabled. Makes no sense.

Mostly for this https://panopticlick.eff.org/

18.28 (nojs) vs 21.45 (w/js) bits of identifying information using Chrome.

> Who does this and why?

I'm one of them. I do this because of malicious adverts and because of tracking systems. These cost privacy, but also real money (a well-publicized exampple is ordering airline tickets)

> Do you like browsing the web where 80% of website's functionality is broken because you think its a good idea to browse with JavaScript disabled. Makes no sense.

I agree, it wouldn't make sense if people liked broken websites, and I'm pretty sure that they don't. But I think what you mean is that I should enable JS because it is in wide use. For me, that is not a good enough reason.

As a former web application developer, I do believe that most of those websites could do fine without JS!

With 'malicious adverts' I mean malware being spread via advertisement systems. These tend to use JS, Flash, Java and such.

One of the better things I could do for my reputation is avoid associating it with something called "Scoutzie".

That's not a very constructive comment. Do you really believe that the word 'Scoutzie' has the potential to actually damage your reputation? How?

With the kind of people that I work with, yes. It's a silly name that evokes the image of a toy for children.

congrats, scoutzie. bug report here.

chrome, mountain lion. clicking back/forward button gives a page of json

1. go to home page 2. select iphone 3. on iphone page, select ipad 4. go back twice (to homepage) 5. click forward 6. page of json

this happens in other cases too, like just going back. but above is totally reproducible on my setup

I like the idea. It'd be great to see more designers in the mix, but I suppose that will happen over time.

I like it, but I wish there was a way to see what kind of hourly rates they charge.

(one of Scoutzie founders here). We will be releasing more search and filter features that will allow you to refine your options on multiple criterion, including budget. Coming soon! :) For now, you can submit a proposal, stating your available budget, which allows designers to quickly judge whether you fit into their ballpark range.

Doesn't that reduce sales?

Elaborate? We are big believes in quality, which is applicable for both designers and clients. When you find a happy match, you end up with a better quality outcome, which in the long run leads to more projects. Same goes for the client; if you match well with a designer, you end up being a better client, which leads to long term engagement, and therefore high quality designs on many products to come.

Rentacoder had open bidding, which led to bidding wars, which led to failed projects. So they moved to sealed bidding (by the workers) to prevent price wars.

Open pricing may drive out all but the most aggressive talent.

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