8 ms·

Show HN: Scoutzie, 444 best mobile designers for hire.

158 points by kirillzubovsky 14y ago

alexpenny 14y ago
Nice work! Now only if there were an equivalent for developers.
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  We'll consider it ;) I think Github and Stack come close, but there you still need to know what you're looking for. InterviewStreet does a good job at pre-filtering candidates. Non-the-less, we'll keep that in mind!
- BadassFractal 14y ago
  That'd be especially useful for when you're looking for consulting gigs and other temporary projects. I'd use it :)
- lilbear 14y ago
  What about Elance?
- hugorodgerbrown 14y ago
  Check out yunojuno.com. Similar, but different. I know the guys involved and they are hoping to build a community of freelance designers & developers, using peer recommendations as the glue. In project-led business (e.g. agencies), the 'Hollywood' model of bringing together the right team at at the right time _should_ prevail. That's what they are hoping to enable - giving power / control back to the freelancers themselves.
vj44 14y ago
Great job scoutzie!
frantzdy_romain 14y ago
Liking it :) Good work
vinhboy 14y ago
Every time I click "show more designers", it brings me back to the top. I think you forgot a "return false;"
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  Yep. See above, the trick with javascript:void worked. Thanks for the bud reporting!
mingfu 14y ago
Scoutzie is a mobile design website made with the design community in mind. IMO thats what makes them stand out.
mciarrocchi 14y ago
Great idea! I love this type of projects, and mobile is a great niche to work on nowadays. Some feedback: it's a bit annoying that the "Show more ???" ajax buttons send you everytime to the top of the page.
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  We fixed that. Thanks for letting us know!
bherms 14y ago
Looks cool. On the show more designers button, change the href from "#" to "javascript:void(0);"
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  Thanks! For some reason this worked fine all morning, but then of course I found a way to break it right before pushing. Thanks again!
- mtrimpe 14y ago
  Also, from the post signup confirmation mail you're redirected to Vinova.sg rather than Scoutzie when you click on 'Continue to our website.'
- pavingways 14y ago
  JS pseudo-protocol is bad practice
  - bherms 14y ago
    This is pretty much only due to IE6 problems with using it. Given that mostly everyone is finally dropping IE6, I don't see how it's a problem anymore.
dcope 14y ago
Looks neat, but clicking the "shuffle" button completely kills the back button.
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  Noted. Will look into that. Tnx!
jamesoey 14y ago
Nice job Scoutzie! It's a great way to connect high quality designers with companies and developers who need them.
BadassFractal 14y ago
Still not fully sure how the model works. You announce that your project needs a designer on this site and you get to pick a designer?
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  Designers get to pick you, should they consider the project worthy of their time/interest.
  - BadassFractal 14y ago
    Kirill, would a project hitching one of your designers as full-time co-founder be against some Scoutzie rules / be frowned upon?
    - kirillzubovsky 14y ago
      Hey, if you can convince one of those guys to join you, props to you. The designers on Scoutzie are really great so if one of them joins you, I bet your startup's going to benefit. Let me know how it works out?
- jimg 14y ago
  Yeah, the site is real pretty - but I have no idea what the site is offering. I understand dribble / 99designs / crowdspring .. but how exactly am I partnering with 444 designers? How does the interview process work? How long does the matching process typically take? How much is this gonna cost me (cheap, like 99 designs, or market rates?) Does this support the no-spec initiative?
  - jenntoda 14y ago
    We just happen to have 444 designers right now. We're a designers curated community where our designers invite other designers to join us based on their merits. Right now, we allow you to post a simple project request. It's like a job board. Except, since our site is curated and only our designers get to see it - your respondents will be from vetted designers, not just any random Joe who says he can draw. We made sure you get qualified leads - we leave you to move forward with the designer as the two of you agree to. We do not believe in asking anyone to work for free.
kyro 14y ago
Really nice. My only suggestion would be to show more designs above the fold – perhaps make the current image rotate with a few others. Do you say 444 because that's all you have signed up currently, or are you restricting it to that number? I think it'd be interesting to see what would happen if you did the latter, almost as if you were curating top talent, something like an agency. Imagine if 37signals kept the number of designers in each price bracket it represented on Sortfolio to only 20 or so. A part of me thinks those design firms would have gotten a lot more business than they would have otherwise.
- jenntoda 14y ago
  It's a designer curate designer approach. The number is not limited, but each new designer can only join by getting invited another designer already listed on Scoutzie. Instead of limiting the total number for the top 20, the bar is at "awesome": more than 444 designers can be awesome, each in their own right.
  - kyro 14y ago
    Ah, so like Dribbble. No doubt there are more than 20 awesome designers out there, but from a client's point of view, I would think the zero-sum nature of a top X list would do a bit more to ensure that the designers are worth their weight. Think of it like Billboard's Top 10/20/100. I'm not saying this model would be better, just that it would be interesting to see how this sort of presentation would influence a potential client's perception of quality.
    - jenntoda 14y ago
      Yes, like Dribbble, we trust our designers to spot designers' talent. But unlike Dribbble, we're not looking to build a popularity contest. Actually, let me ask here: how much does popularity of a designer matter to you in choosing a designer to join your team?
      - kyro 14y ago
        It depends... For a bootstrapping startup trying to ship: not much. For a brick and mortar business looking to help establish their web presence with a mobile app: quite a bit. And often times it's the latter category of clients that pay more. I'm just brainstorming here, not criticizing Scoutzie at all. You guys are off to a great start.
yakshaving 14y ago
Nice work Kirill - As a designer, you've really done a great job creating a site that I think people would want to actually use on a regular basis.
3ds 14y ago
If you have so many awesome mobile designers, maybe put one to work on your own site and create a responsive layout that works on a mobile device! This fixed width layout doesn't help prove your point.
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  Maybe you could get lost ;)
  - 3ds 14y ago
    It's valid constructive criticism. I realize that didn't come out right, but you should really work on that, it's not even all that complicated to get that page to display nicely with css mediaqueries
    - kirillzubovsky 14y ago
      You are right, this comment makes me sound like an ass. Sometimes HN traffic excitement overpowers language control. Let me elaborate on the MQ point. We do want media queries and it isn't too complicated, indeed. Like you correctly pointed out, we have some amazing designers on Scoutzie and many of them are familiar with responsive layouts. We could design a layout that looks great. More so, we could upgrade to the latest version of the Bootstrap and use their responsiveness to accomplish this goal. Having said that, we have been been changing something on the site on at least weekly basis, tweaking the layout, occasionally flipping it on its head. With that, I track analytics and I know the percentage of users that come from mobile and I can guesstimate their behavior on the site; it's very similar to the desktop users, not better, but not worse. So, maintaining a responsive layout right now just doesn't make as much sense for us, if you consider the time tradeoff. Furthermore, a responsive layout shouldn't just be smacked on top of the regular design. If we were to create a truly great experience on mobile, we should design it with mobile needs in mind. Just having object be smaller and wrap around is a good start, but I believe there is more to responsive design than that. For right now, we'd rather focus on making a better overall (desktop, for now) experience, and once we got it down, we'll go ahead and revamp the responsiveness.
superkinz 14y ago
It's a pretty looking website, you hired a good designer to help you skin it Kirill. Nice. What's the main difference between you and dribbble? They let you people message designers about projects too, no? Good luck!
yumraj 14y ago
Curious, what's your revenue model? Your terms mention Our basic service is free, and we offer paid upgrades for advanced features. So, do the designers need to pay a fee to be listed, when they receive a message from a client etc.?
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  There is no fee for designers to list their work. We plan to keep it as designer-friendly as possible.
gmurphy 14y ago
I'd really love it if someone could make it as as easy to buy design help as it is to buy stock photography. There is an astronomical difference between the effort required to buy tens of thousands of dollars worth of imagery, and the effort required to buy tens of thousands of dollars worth of someone's time. The former is a matter of a cart and credit card, the latter requires lengthy emails, contracts, legal approvals, timesheets, and all other sorts of mumbo jumbo and for most projects, is enough work that I often just don't bother. Though those roadblocks are there to protect both parties, I suspect that there's an artificially large delta between cost and risk.
- aaronblohowiak 14y ago
  >to buy design help as it is to buy stock photography Buying designs is easy. Buying commercial photographer's time is in the same ballpark as a designer's. "Design on tap" is something larger companies with a standing contract / retainer can have. If you reach out to a larger design firm in your area and establish a relationship, you can cultivate this sort of relationship.
  - gmurphy 14y ago
    My problem is that I already have (many) of those relationships, but because of these difficulty issues, I'm stuck in those relationships.
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  I am going to write a blog post about this one day. You are not the first person suggesting this, but once you start digging into what's involved, the variability is huge.
- rorrr 14y ago
  There are sites like 99designs - for a fixed price you get dozens (or hundreds) of designers working on your project, you pick the best one, and the author gets paid.
  - 14y ago
pearkes 14y ago
Please make the signup form[1] transmit passwords, emails and names over SSL. It appears you're using Heroku, check out the docs for how to do this here: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/ssl https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/ssl [1] http://www.scoutzie.com/signup http://www.scoutzie.com/signup
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  I do and will do. How bad is it?
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  Ha. got down voted for that response. I think it came out wrong. I mean to say that "we do {host on heroku} and we will {implement the ssl)". How bad is it, was meant as a "what are the implications?" question. I am going to work on answering questions properly next time. Thanks!
cemregr 14y ago
Would be great to see actual screenshots as opposed to blurred photos of hands holding iPhones showing screenshots.
dave1619 14y ago
You should really add some screens or a video demo of what you're supposed to do. I signed up but seems like I'm required to post a project. But what happens when I post a project? Do designers bid? How long? Or do they contact me? How? What's the process?
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  Dave, this is on our top priority to add. Thank you!
newobj 14y ago
If your business is based around mobile design, for gods sake give your site a mobile design!
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  Would you be so kind as to explain why it is important for us at this stage?
  - lilbear 14y ago
    It's not that hard to do. I just started coding two years ago and can make a responsive code layout with my eyes closed. If you are trying to sling mobile design, your website should be mobile as well. Kinda lose credit when you don't.
    - kirillzubovsky 14y ago
      Coding with your eyes closed is impressive. Non-the-less, you're not explaining why it is important for a mobile-focused site to have a responsive layout. Please explain, if you'd like me to take you seriously.
      - lilbear 14y ago
        I am looking at your site on an i phone and have to zoom around to navigate. It would be a lot easier to explore your website if it was mobile formatted. Using a framework like Skeleton, it takes pretty much the same time to code for responsive layout as it does for desktop. Example: http://www.mchavezi.com/behance/ http://www.mchavezi.com/behance/ Appriciate the debate;)
benblodgett 14y ago
I like this idea of collective, less-organized entities. I worked at a design agency for 3 years and found that every designer who came immediately started designing outside of their process. I think a system like this allows each individual designer the ability to implement their own process and creativity without management influence. I would urge you to take this to the next step and unify accounting. This would allow customers to feel as if they were hiring a traditional firm, and would relish in the idea of being able to select out of 444 designers and then work directly with them.
matan_a 14y ago
i'm curious because right after i registered, i received an email with the subject "Scouts: Please confirm subscription" which goes to a listserv and has a reply to: will -at- vinova.sg. What gives?
- benrequena 14y ago
  Yes. That seemed pretty deceptive to me too. Nowhere did I agree or appear to agree to signup for a listserv or newsletter. I probably would have, but the surprise email in my inbox makes me not trust this group now.
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  Hey matan, sorry about that. Somehow our test email got associated with the mail chimp. We'll need to fix that. Thanks for letting us know!
EternalFury 14y ago
So, $100 to get a chance to contract with a quality designer? Umm...
- benrequena 14y ago
  That was my first thought. I actually have a need to partner with a mobile developer on a project, but paying $100 for the chance to find someone who's personality, communication, experience, and rate are compatible is, well, Ummm...
  - kirillzubovsky 14y ago
    Actually, you guys can contact them directly. You could, however, post a project on the private shared board, in case you want to expose it to more than just the person you are going to contact. This way, you get the benefit of talking to the person you want, as well as (maybe) hearing from others who might like to talk to you.
EternalFury 14y ago
BTW, I think a site like this begs for another site offering the services of those who take Photoshop comps and turn them into actual iOS or Android UIs. Because, while Photoshop comps can be totally awesome, there is a humongous gap between them and an actual UI.
rmason 14y ago
They need to let you search by geographic area and also for verified customers to give validation to individual designers. Too few had samples of their work.
majorapps 14y ago
It would be great to know how much each designer charged.
- PufferBuffer 14y ago
  I second that!
MortenK 14y ago
Really bad attitude from both the founder, and the Scoutzie employee badmouthing 99 designs. If there's something to learn from this thread, it's how not to reply to criticism.
- benrequena 14y ago
  I was just going to post something similar. It's jaw-dropping to see the kinds of retorts that kirillzubovsky is giving. Even if the original comments are snarky in their own right, to quip back with "Maybe you could get lost", and "A little jealous, perhaps?", is absolutely brand killing not to mention disrespectful. If I were a mobile developer I would not want to be associated with this startup in any capacity.
  - mnicole 14y ago
    I was pretty stoked to wake up to the jealousy comment this morning. "Why would we make a mobile site for a site about mobile?" got me good too. What wonderful ways to respond to people you're trying to profit off of.
  - kirillzubovsky 14y ago
    Ben, you're spot on. I shouldn't be responding like that. As I explained to Nicole (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4262188 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4262188), I saw the original comment as an offense on the quality of Scoutzie-listed designers and I take any such offense very personally. We spend a lot of time talking to the designers, getting to know them, looking to understand how they work and what they want to get out of their design careers. When I see a negative comment about the site or about our user base , I see it as a negative comment about each one of our users. It hurts me because I see these users as real people, not just user ids. Now, I can see that 'mnicole' wasn't out to get us, and it was wrong of me to engage in a hostile manner myself. Unfortunately, as one comments irritates your skin, it's really easy to quickly overreact with others. I will get better at this. Lastly, thank you for giving the feedback.
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  Some comments were indeed uncalled for and I apologize for that. Please see below those comments for the followups. As per the 99designs, we are not badmouthing them at all. There are designers who are willing to do design at a chance they will not get paid and let's face it, most designers on 99designs don't get paid because only the winner takes the money. This is terrible for designers who put in the hours of work and then don't get reimbursed of it. This isn't always good for clients either. Given that each designer can only spend limited time (knowing they might (most likely won't) get paid). As a result, most designers end up with no $ in the pockets and clients end up with work that could be improved upon. All said, there are clients who use 99designs and there are designers who work on these projects. 99Designs as a company is doing well and we are happy for them. But, we don't have to support them because we prefer to encourage great design and to encourage great designers to be paid for their work.

158 points by kirillzubovsky 14y ago

alexpenny 14y ago

Nice work! Now only if there were an equivalent for developers.

kirillzubovsky 14y ago
We'll consider it ;) I think Github and Stack come close, but there you still need to know what you're looking for. InterviewStreet does a good job at pre-filtering candidates. Non-the-less, we'll keep that in mind!
BadassFractal 14y ago
That'd be especially useful for when you're looking for consulting gigs and other temporary projects. I'd use it :)
lilbear 14y ago
What about Elance?
hugorodgerbrown 14y ago
Check out yunojuno.com. Similar, but different. I know the guys involved and they are hoping to build a community of freelance designers & developers, using peer recommendations as the glue. In project-led business (e.g. agencies), the 'Hollywood' model of bringing together the right team at at the right time _should_ prevail. That's what they are hoping to enable - giving power / control back to the freelancers themselves.

vj44 14y ago

Great job scoutzie!

frantzdy_romain 14y ago

Liking it :) Good work

vinhboy 14y ago

Every time I click "show more designers", it brings me back to the top. I think you forgot a "return false;"

kirillzubovsky 14y ago
Yep. See above, the trick with javascript:void worked. Thanks for the bud reporting!

mingfu 14y ago

Scoutzie is a mobile design website made with the design community in mind. IMO thats what makes them stand out.

mciarrocchi 14y ago

Great idea! I love this type of projects, and mobile is a great niche to work on nowadays. Some feedback: it's a bit annoying that the "Show more ???" ajax buttons send you everytime to the top of the page.

kirillzubovsky 14y ago
We fixed that. Thanks for letting us know!

bherms 14y ago

Looks cool. On the show more designers button, change the href from "#" to "javascript:void(0);"

kirillzubovsky 14y ago
Thanks! For some reason this worked fine all morning, but then of course I found a way to break it right before pushing. Thanks again!
mtrimpe 14y ago
Also, from the post signup confirmation mail you're redirected to Vinova.sg rather than Scoutzie when you click on 'Continue to our website.'
pavingways 14y ago
JS pseudo-protocol is bad practice
- bherms 14y ago
  This is pretty much only due to IE6 problems with using it. Given that mostly everyone is finally dropping IE6, I don't see how it's a problem anymore.

dcope 14y ago

Looks neat, but clicking the "shuffle" button completely kills the back button.

kirillzubovsky 14y ago
Noted. Will look into that. Tnx!

jamesoey 14y ago

Nice job Scoutzie! It's a great way to connect high quality designers with companies and developers who need them.

BadassFractal 14y ago

Still not fully sure how the model works. You announce that your project needs a designer on this site and you get to pick a designer?

kirillzubovsky 14y ago
Designers get to pick you, should they consider the project worthy of their time/interest.
- BadassFractal 14y ago
  Kirill, would a project hitching one of your designers as full-time co-founder be against some Scoutzie rules / be frowned upon?
  - kirillzubovsky 14y ago
    Hey, if you can convince one of those guys to join you, props to you. The designers on Scoutzie are really great so if one of them joins you, I bet your startup's going to benefit. Let me know how it works out?
jimg 14y ago
Yeah, the site is real pretty - but I have no idea what the site is offering. I understand dribble / 99designs / crowdspring .. but how exactly am I partnering with 444 designers? How does the interview process work? How long does the matching process typically take? How much is this gonna cost me (cheap, like 99 designs, or market rates?) Does this support the no-spec initiative?
- jenntoda 14y ago
  We just happen to have 444 designers right now. We're a designers curated community where our designers invite other designers to join us based on their merits. Right now, we allow you to post a simple project request. It's like a job board. Except, since our site is curated and only our designers get to see it - your respondents will be from vetted designers, not just any random Joe who says he can draw. We made sure you get qualified leads - we leave you to move forward with the designer as the two of you agree to. We do not believe in asking anyone to work for free.

kyro 14y ago

Really nice. My only suggestion would be to show more designs above the fold – perhaps make the current image rotate with a few others. Do you say 444 because that's all you have signed up currently, or are you restricting it to that number? I think it'd be interesting to see what would happen if you did the latter, almost as if you were curating top talent, something like an agency. Imagine if 37signals kept the number of designers in each price bracket it represented on Sortfolio to only 20 or so. A part of me thinks those design firms would have gotten a lot more business than they would have otherwise.

jenntoda 14y ago
It's a designer curate designer approach. The number is not limited, but each new designer can only join by getting invited another designer already listed on Scoutzie. Instead of limiting the total number for the top 20, the bar is at "awesome": more than 444 designers can be awesome, each in their own right.
- kyro 14y ago
  Ah, so like Dribbble. No doubt there are more than 20 awesome designers out there, but from a client's point of view, I would think the zero-sum nature of a top X list would do a bit more to ensure that the designers are worth their weight. Think of it like Billboard's Top 10/20/100. I'm not saying this model would be better, just that it would be interesting to see how this sort of presentation would influence a potential client's perception of quality.
  - jenntoda 14y ago
    Yes, like Dribbble, we trust our designers to spot designers' talent. But unlike Dribbble, we're not looking to build a popularity contest. Actually, let me ask here: how much does popularity of a designer matter to you in choosing a designer to join your team?
    - kyro 14y ago
      It depends... For a bootstrapping startup trying to ship: not much. For a brick and mortar business looking to help establish their web presence with a mobile app: quite a bit. And often times it's the latter category of clients that pay more. I'm just brainstorming here, not criticizing Scoutzie at all. You guys are off to a great start.

yakshaving 14y ago

Nice work Kirill - As a designer, you've really done a great job creating a site that I think people would want to actually use on a regular basis.

3ds 14y ago

If you have so many awesome mobile designers, maybe put one to work on your own site and create a responsive layout that works on a mobile device! This fixed width layout doesn't help prove your point.

kirillzubovsky 14y ago
Maybe you could get lost ;)
- 3ds 14y ago
  It's valid constructive criticism. I realize that didn't come out right, but you should really work on that, it's not even all that complicated to get that page to display nicely with css mediaqueries
  - kirillzubovsky 14y ago
    You are right, this comment makes me sound like an ass. Sometimes HN traffic excitement overpowers language control. Let me elaborate on the MQ point. We do want media queries and it isn't too complicated, indeed. Like you correctly pointed out, we have some amazing designers on Scoutzie and many of them are familiar with responsive layouts. We could design a layout that looks great. More so, we could upgrade to the latest version of the Bootstrap and use their responsiveness to accomplish this goal. Having said that, we have been been changing something on the site on at least weekly basis, tweaking the layout, occasionally flipping it on its head. With that, I track analytics and I know the percentage of users that come from mobile and I can guesstimate their behavior on the site; it's very similar to the desktop users, not better, but not worse. So, maintaining a responsive layout right now just doesn't make as much sense for us, if you consider the time tradeoff. Furthermore, a responsive layout shouldn't just be smacked on top of the regular design. If we were to create a truly great experience on mobile, we should design it with mobile needs in mind. Just having object be smaller and wrap around is a good start, but I believe there is more to responsive design than that. For right now, we'd rather focus on making a better overall (desktop, for now) experience, and once we got it down, we'll go ahead and revamp the responsiveness.

superkinz 14y ago

It's a pretty looking website, you hired a good designer to help you skin it Kirill. Nice. What's the main difference between you and dribbble? They let you people message designers about projects too, no? Good luck!

yumraj 14y ago

Curious, what's your revenue model? Your terms mention Our basic service is free, and we offer paid upgrades for advanced features. So, do the designers need to pay a fee to be listed, when they receive a message from a client etc.?

kirillzubovsky 14y ago
There is no fee for designers to list their work. We plan to keep it as designer-friendly as possible.

gmurphy 14y ago

I'd really love it if someone could make it as as easy to buy design help as it is to buy stock photography. There is an astronomical difference between the effort required to buy tens of thousands of dollars worth of imagery, and the effort required to buy tens of thousands of dollars worth of someone's time. The former is a matter of a cart and credit card, the latter requires lengthy emails, contracts, legal approvals, timesheets, and all other sorts of mumbo jumbo and for most projects, is enough work that I often just don't bother. Though those roadblocks are there to protect both parties, I suspect that there's an artificially large delta between cost and risk.

aaronblohowiak 14y ago
>to buy design help as it is to buy stock photography Buying designs is easy. Buying commercial photographer's time is in the same ballpark as a designer's. "Design on tap" is something larger companies with a standing contract / retainer can have. If you reach out to a larger design firm in your area and establish a relationship, you can cultivate this sort of relationship.
- gmurphy 14y ago
  My problem is that I already have (many) of those relationships, but because of these difficulty issues, I'm stuck in those relationships.
kirillzubovsky 14y ago
I am going to write a blog post about this one day. You are not the first person suggesting this, but once you start digging into what's involved, the variability is huge.
rorrr 14y ago
There are sites like 99designs - for a fixed price you get dozens (or hundreds) of designers working on your project, you pick the best one, and the author gets paid.
- 14y ago

pearkes 14y ago

Please make the signup form[1] transmit passwords, emails and names over SSL. It appears you're using Heroku, check out the docs for how to do this here: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/ssl https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/ssl [1] http://www.scoutzie.com/signup http://www.scoutzie.com/signup

kirillzubovsky 14y ago
I do and will do. How bad is it?
kirillzubovsky 14y ago
Ha. got down voted for that response. I think it came out wrong. I mean to say that "we do {host on heroku} and we will {implement the ssl)". How bad is it, was meant as a "what are the implications?" question. I am going to work on answering questions properly next time. Thanks!

cemregr 14y ago

Would be great to see actual screenshots as opposed to blurred photos of hands holding iPhones showing screenshots.

dave1619 14y ago

You should really add some screens or a video demo of what you're supposed to do. I signed up but seems like I'm required to post a project. But what happens when I post a project? Do designers bid? How long? Or do they contact me? How? What's the process?

kirillzubovsky 14y ago
Dave, this is on our top priority to add. Thank you!

newobj 14y ago

If your business is based around mobile design, for gods sake give your site a mobile design!

kirillzubovsky 14y ago
Would you be so kind as to explain why it is important for us at this stage?
- lilbear 14y ago
  It's not that hard to do. I just started coding two years ago and can make a responsive code layout with my eyes closed. If you are trying to sling mobile design, your website should be mobile as well. Kinda lose credit when you don't.
  - kirillzubovsky 14y ago
    Coding with your eyes closed is impressive. Non-the-less, you're not explaining why it is important for a mobile-focused site to have a responsive layout. Please explain, if you'd like me to take you seriously.
    - lilbear 14y ago
      I am looking at your site on an i phone and have to zoom around to navigate. It would be a lot easier to explore your website if it was mobile formatted. Using a framework like Skeleton, it takes pretty much the same time to code for responsive layout as it does for desktop. Example: http://www.mchavezi.com/behance/ http://www.mchavezi.com/behance/ Appriciate the debate;)

benblodgett 14y ago

I like this idea of collective, less-organized entities. I worked at a design agency for 3 years and found that every designer who came immediately started designing outside of their process. I think a system like this allows each individual designer the ability to implement their own process and creativity without management influence. I would urge you to take this to the next step and unify accounting. This would allow customers to feel as if they were hiring a traditional firm, and would relish in the idea of being able to select out of 444 designers and then work directly with them.

matan_a 14y ago

i'm curious because right after i registered, i received an email with the subject "Scouts: Please confirm subscription" which goes to a listserv and has a reply to: will -at- vinova.sg. What gives?

benrequena 14y ago
Yes. That seemed pretty deceptive to me too. Nowhere did I agree or appear to agree to signup for a listserv or newsletter. I probably would have, but the surprise email in my inbox makes me not trust this group now.
kirillzubovsky 14y ago
Hey matan, sorry about that. Somehow our test email got associated with the mail chimp. We'll need to fix that. Thanks for letting us know!

EternalFury 14y ago

So, $100 to get a chance to contract with a quality designer? Umm...

benrequena 14y ago
That was my first thought. I actually have a need to partner with a mobile developer on a project, but paying $100 for the chance to find someone who's personality, communication, experience, and rate are compatible is, well, Ummm...
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  Actually, you guys can contact them directly. You could, however, post a project on the private shared board, in case you want to expose it to more than just the person you are going to contact. This way, you get the benefit of talking to the person you want, as well as (maybe) hearing from others who might like to talk to you.

EternalFury 14y ago

BTW, I think a site like this begs for another site offering the services of those who take Photoshop comps and turn them into actual iOS or Android UIs. Because, while Photoshop comps can be totally awesome, there is a humongous gap between them and an actual UI.

rmason 14y ago

They need to let you search by geographic area and also for verified customers to give validation to individual designers. Too few had samples of their work.

majorapps 14y ago

It would be great to know how much each designer charged.

PufferBuffer 14y ago
I second that!

MortenK 14y ago

Really bad attitude from both the founder, and the Scoutzie employee badmouthing 99 designs. If there's something to learn from this thread, it's how not to reply to criticism.

benrequena 14y ago
I was just going to post something similar. It's jaw-dropping to see the kinds of retorts that kirillzubovsky is giving. Even if the original comments are snarky in their own right, to quip back with "Maybe you could get lost", and "A little jealous, perhaps?", is absolutely brand killing not to mention disrespectful. If I were a mobile developer I would not want to be associated with this startup in any capacity.
- mnicole 14y ago
  I was pretty stoked to wake up to the jealousy comment this morning. "Why would we make a mobile site for a site about mobile?" got me good too. What wonderful ways to respond to people you're trying to profit off of.
- kirillzubovsky 14y ago
  Ben, you're spot on. I shouldn't be responding like that. As I explained to Nicole (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4262188 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4262188), I saw the original comment as an offense on the quality of Scoutzie-listed designers and I take any such offense very personally. We spend a lot of time talking to the designers, getting to know them, looking to understand how they work and what they want to get out of their design careers. When I see a negative comment about the site or about our user base , I see it as a negative comment about each one of our users. It hurts me because I see these users as real people, not just user ids. Now, I can see that 'mnicole' wasn't out to get us, and it was wrong of me to engage in a hostile manner myself. Unfortunately, as one comments irritates your skin, it's really easy to quickly overreact with others. I will get better at this. Lastly, thank you for giving the feedback.
kirillzubovsky 14y ago
Some comments were indeed uncalled for and I apologize for that. Please see below those comments for the followups. As per the 99designs, we are not badmouthing them at all. There are designers who are willing to do design at a chance they will not get paid and let's face it, most designers on 99designs don't get paid because only the winner takes the money. This is terrible for designers who put in the hours of work and then don't get reimbursed of it. This isn't always good for clients either. Given that each designer can only spend limited time (knowing they might (most likely won't) get paid). As a result, most designers end up with no $ in the pockets and clients end up with work that could be improved upon. All said, there are clients who use 99designs and there are designers who work on these projects. 99Designs as a company is doing well and we are happy for them. But, we don't have to support them because we prefer to encourage great design and to encourage great designers to be paid for their work.