Show HN: On-demand feedback from curated designers | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: On-demand feedback from curated designers

pixelfold.com

As someone who has been looking for exactly this, I'm super disappointed.

1) There is very, very little explanation as to what's actually going on here. I don't know what the point of me signing up is. What do I get access to when I sign up? What sort of process am I going to have to go through? Are there marketers on the other end of this? What's the catch?

2) Animations, animations, animations.

a) Your splash video is super distracting. Way too much movement and flash.

b) Your fade-ins on your scrolling animations on your homepage are so slow, I scroll right by them or have to stop and wait.

c) Your front-end framework is, unfortunately, painfully obvious. Seeing gears for a few seconds on every... single... page... load...

d) Trying to load your designers portfolio pages was no fun. 105 requests for 19.2MB of content.

This site doesn't give me tremendous hope for the designers you acquire, or hope for your service, at the moment. Sorry.

The idea sounds great. But, for me, you need more info and a way better website regarding design if you're going to tout that you've curated the designers.

randomdrake thanks for your feedback! There are definitely some performance/design issues that we need to fix. Regarding the sign up process: If you sign up as a designer, your application is going to be reviewed by the community and if you are accepted you'll be able to get feedback requests, job offers or contract works on pixelfold. If you sign up as a person that hires designers you'll be able to request those jobs from the designers in the community.

This is what happens when communities fail to make a distinction between visual design and interaction design. There's relatively strong visual design here, but as you've discovered, that's not worth much in the absence of actual communication.

It would be really helpful to see some examples of feedback. Are they going to pull stuff into photoshop and say "actually do this?" or "Tweak this CSS to say this" Or am I going to get back "This page is too busy. I don't understand what's happening." The first is highly valuable to me, maybe (but probably not) worth how much you charge. The second isn't worth much at all.

That really depends on the designer that is giving feedback. Some people might edit some things on Photoshop, others might send you some hand drawn mockups or just write you some notes on your designs. You can always set the conditions upfront with the designer before paying him for feedback.

If this is something where I pay $50 for a quality designer to spend 20 minutes writing a couple of paragraphs of feedback on a design, it would be interesting to me.

However, from the landing page I have no idea if this is the sort of thing you're offering.

Same here, I was excited for about 30 seconds. I'm a designer and developer myself, and I'm 95% finished a new project, but I'm stumped with a few design aspects. I've been working on them on and off for months, and these few parts of the design don't measure up to my standards. I feel like I need a fresh set of eyes to review things, and I can't ask my users because they're not designers.

I thought I could select a few designers on this site, submit screenshots of my WIP with notes about the areas I'm questioning, spend $50 or $100, and get feedback. When I say feedback, just some brief suggestions, some photoshop scribbles over my work, and links to other work that might offer some inspiration for what I'm trying to achieve. Most importantly, quality designers helping to point me in the right direction.

How this would ideally work in my mind...

I create a request for feedback, and select the designers I'd like to invite (perhaps 10). I choose the amount to invest, say $100. It basically starts a discussion, and any of these 10 designers can jump in, write feedback, post images, talk back and forth, etc. This lasts maybe a couple of days, some designers participate, some don't bother, and in the end, I choose how to split the money between them. So, maybe I give one person $40, and three people $20. Now, that doesn't sound like much, but they could easily give feedback on a dozen requests a day and make a few hundred.

Seems like a win/win situation. It's great for designers because it gives them a break from their typical work, and it's social, giving them a chance to network and chat with other designers in these feedback discussions. Only problem, you'll likely have 1,000 designers trying to signup to provide feedback, and only a few dozen people posting requests.

Throwaway0812 thanks for the suggestions! The "group feedback" feature seems an interesting idea. Since we don't have that feature implemented I would suggest that you find a good designer and ask him for feedback. I am sure that with your budget you can get some helpful feedback.

How does this work exactly, because I can't find any info along with a number of other people in this topic.

1. Pricing. Do I specify a price? Does the designer give a quote when I ask them for feedback? What's a typical price range? How are payments handled?

2. What's the turnaround time? Should I see feedback in 24 hours? 1 week?

3. What can we expect for feedback? Is there some kind of tiered system, so I'll receive X for $50 and Y for $100? If not, are there any examples of what I'll receive? I wouldn't want to pay $100 for someone to write a short paragraph of generic feedback I could expect anyone off the street to provide in 5 minutes.

1. If you Sign Up and click "Get Feedback" on the designer's profile page, you will see some notes the designer left about his pricing. Then you put together the materials needed for the feedback request (images/notes) and offer a price based on the designer's guidelines. If the designer accepts your request, you'll get charged once the designer delivers the feedback.

2. You should agree on that with the designer when you are requesting the feedback.

3. It really depends on the designer. Some people might tweak your designs on Photoshop/Illustrator, others might send you hand drawn mockups or just notes. Our designers have been curated by the community, based on the quality of their previous work and so you should expect insightful feedback. Also if you're looking for something specific, like Photoshop edits for instance, you should mention that when requesting the feedback.

Thanks for the response, but you really need some examples. That's the only thing holding me back at the moment. Pay a bunch of the designers to give feedback on pixelfold, and let's see what they come up with, how much time they put into the feedback, whether they focus on recommending pretty design changes, or if they make an effort to understand the business and suggest edits to increase signups and revenue.

drcode this is exactly the kind of use case that we envisioned in the beginning when we came up with the idea for paid feedback. You submit the request and the designer writes you back some notes or sends you some mockups of how you could improve your current design.

I am doing this. With 10 years of UX design experience, I'll mark up your screenshots for $50 each and provide actionable feedback on ways to improve the aesthetics and usability of your website or app. Contact me at dustin dot kirk (at) gmail dot com

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7505054

And the top comment is still valid - PixelFold appears to be a selection of designers from the Dribbble's front page and/or with large Dribbble follower count. If you have ever spent any time of D, you know that stuff that floats to the top is not exactly a real-life material, but shots specifically crafted to gather the likes. For example, Oykun guy is good, but half of his shots absolutely and utterly glance past UX in favor of the visuals. As such, his feedback is not something that I'd be interested in, leave alone paying for.

tl;dr - PixelFold's problem is not with the idea, it's with establishing credibility of those providing the feedback.

So, do I pay for this? Is it free? Is the idea that I could possibly hire the designer eventually, and therefore it's worth it for them?

The premise is that you might not have money to hire a top designer, but you have enough to ask him for feedback. If you liked the designer's work/feedback you can always make him a job offer through Pixelfold (although that's not mandatory)

how much does the feedback cost? i can't find any prices, or even ballbark figures, anywhere on the site.

It's usually the designer that sets up the prices for feedback. To see it you must click the "Get Feedback" button on the designer's profile page.

http://imgur.com/ZqFRysC

This is how I see the site in a 1024x1080 window without scrolling a bit.

TBH, this trend of animating content from a non-visible state needs to end, it's a serious UX disease that is replicating day by day in different sites, especially landing pages.

Somewhat related: If you're looking for feedback from great designers in the context of improving your own design skills, head over to http://trydesignlab.com to check out our online design course that includes one-on-one mentorship.

Strange that there are no examples at all, or any mention of the type of feedback one would get it. Is it standardised or can each designer just spew 1 line generic statements if they want? And another give you an essay. Just gave it a shot anyway. Will see what happens.

As I mentioned in the comment above it really depends on the designer, but you should expect some constructive and thorough feedback :)

You need to check your copy. It's "i" after "e" except after "c".

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