You should check out Baqqer[0]. It's a great community of makers building, sharing, selling, and crowdfunding together. The idea is to shorten the feedback loop while building community around products people actually want.
You can also create private projects if you want to work on something stealthy with people. :)
I would worry that such a narrow focus (open source interface design) might not be enough to sustain an active community. It might work as long as you don't mind low traffic. It sounds more like a topic for a thread or subforum on a larger forum to me, though.
I think that the problem isn't getting the right software/design (anyone can do that). The problem is getting the right community and mods to keep it going once you've started.
I'm all for this. Let's see what we can setup. Reddit's /r/design and /r/webdesign aren't very compelling and usually completely packed up with "28 great lens flares" type spam.
Somewhere where we can have a real chat about all aspects of design would be amazing.
For makers, inventors, and developers there is Baqqer[0]. Baqqer's focus isn't just on the self, but also creating an open and transparent product while building the supportive community that goes into making a product successful.
Good point. At the moment it's mostly software focused, but the technical aspect is definitely not the hardest part of getting something like this started in a community, and a major goal of our project is to share our experience and help with the content and community building side. Thanks for the feedback, it's really helpful.
In my experience, the thing about these communities is that unless it's invite-only, they end up being filled with wantrepreneurs, which drives away the entrepreneurs because of the signal to noise ratio i.r.t. valuable discussion.
But I agree. I wish I had a network of other founders I could talk to about some things. So I vibe with your mission, but not the idea.
If you are serious, I would love to take you up on that offer. I am currently working on a prototype for my gameing-related startup, and could really do with some design expertise. My email is in my profile if you would like to get in touch.
With regards to the initial idea of your post, I am afraid I agree with pedalpete - while HN has some level of interest in UX, perhaps a UX-specific community would reach a higher number of potentially interested people. Great idea though - once complete, being able to show the reasoning behind each iteration of the design would be an invaluable resource.
Thanks :-) Yes, I agree. Building a community is probably the hardest part. Perhaps a bit more focus might help in the proposition? For example, pre-set design challenges for readers to submit ideas in addition to open submissions.
I'd like to see more companies bootstrapping with help from their communities they build that see real value in their products. Building a transparent and open product with community feedback around things that work is the core of what we're trying to facilitate with Baqqer (https://baqqer.com/). I believe this builds strong, robust products that aren't built in a silo and launched without an audience.
Reminds me of GetSatisfaction, in the sense that they are setting up an ad hoc community around someone else's product in hopes that the product creator blesses it as the official community.
An invite only for designers because the barrier to entry is so low it makes sense.
Not sure that would work or is as helpful in this case. The community seems more friendly than most and the general goals of many are to learn something new, powerful and fun. If you build a community around those themes I think it will attract the right crowd.
Communities are generally pretty bad at product design though. Having a BDFL that has ears open but a straight cannon. We're trying to do that here.
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