Programmer Meet Designer - Feedback needed

[kasrak]

Hey everyone,
2 days ago I launched http://programmermeetdesigner.com. It's a meeting place for programmers and designers. I want the opinions of web designers and programmers.

So -- what do you think of the idea, the design, the usability and the implementation? How can I make it better?

Thanks!

[The Little Guy]

You could downsize your background image by making it 1x248 - 5x248 this would save on your bandwidth.

nice simple design, I like it.

[kasrak]

Thanks, I just resized it and it went from ~20KB to ~5KB. I'm sure this will help when this site hopefully becomes more popular. =)

[Phalon]

awsome idea, I'm just wishing I knew about this site awhile ago.

[Mouse77e]

what abour Designer meets programmer? thats my view on the equasion...

otherwise i like the idea

Mouse

[kasrak]

Well, designers can ask for programmers and programmers can ask for designers.
It's too late to change the name now =).

Thanks for the feedback.

[kasrak]

Hi again! I just finished the second release of the site ( http://programmermeetdesigner.com ). Some of the changes are: new skin, friends list, entrepreneurs and content writers can join now too =)

What's your opinion on the new relase? Thanks!

[kasrak]

Sorrry about the triple post but I just finished release 3 (major update). Tons of new features, including:
* Sexy new skin (at least I think so)
* Skill level — filter out the jobs that are too hard/easy for you
* Now when you accept an offer, you can still see all the other offers
* Email updates: you can have "us" email you everyone a new message gets delivered to your inbox
* Fixed tagging system
* Better (read: works now) RSS feeds
* Multi-search: search for people looking for designers and entrepreneurs (example) at the same time.
* User search: find other users on the site
* A lot of bug fixes

Check it out (http://programmermeetdesigner.com) and tell me what you think!
Thanks.

[KDLA]

I love the color, and I'm not some weird reptile fanatic. Very nice!

KDLA

[kasrak]

Awesome! Great that you like the color (plus the fact that you're not some weird reptile fanatic.) =)

[putnamehere]

A Great Idea!
Followed by a great web site.
At the moment the design seems short term, if the website was 100x more popular than it is now i dont think it would suite this deisgn but thats nothing to worry about yet.

[Ness_du_Frat]

Great idea, great website, simple, easy to navigate, beautiful colors (greeeeeeennnn !!!! I love green, as you can guess)...
I've rarely been that enthousiastic about a new website, but this one is just great. Goes straight into my bookmarks.
Sorry, nothing negative to say, for once ^^

[Scubafee]

I really like it. Nice colours, good design.

[Terrorke]

Nice design.
I like the concept too!!

Great work

[scottdrake]

Overall, a good effort.

The welcome message is good because it helps user's understand what the site is. However, there is no deeper information on the site and the FAQ is kind of thin. That makes me question the credibility of the site and a bit shy about participating. I was wondering who was behind this, where are they, can I trust them? Those types of questions will keep people from participating so answering may be worthwhile.

I found the listings hard to search. I'm not going to click on 21 pages and I wanted to just go in and search for "usability" to see if anyone had asked for usability work. It didn't look obvious, I gave up after 30 seconds and quit.

I did not understand the tags portion on the home page. I clicked on one and it showed me a listing. If you're trying to provide a browse mechanism by task, I think it would be good. However, that's really hard to use and needs to be organized.

From a business standpoint, what sets this apart from e-lance, guru, etc.? Tell your story, state your competitive advantage. Why should I be here instead of there?

Good luck with it.

[kasrak]

Thanks for your feedback scottdrake.

I will try to get in an in-depth about page on there soon.

I'm not sure what you mean by searching being hard. Simply click "Search" and enter "usability" as your keyword. Is that really too hard?

As for the tag cloud, it (now) only shows tags with more than 1 listings associated with them on the front page. It looks less cluttered now. There is even a "usability" tag: http://programmermeetdesigner.com/listing/tags/138 =)

Thanks.

[scottdrake]

The sentence looks like it's required. I am neither a programmer or designer or entrepreneur nor am I seeking any of the above, nor do I know whether I want an on-going relationship or a one-time project.

I am currently just poking around the site seeing if I want to get involved. If those are not required, I would mark them as not required. I would probably move the keyword box to the top of the form, and mark everything else as optional.

I like the idea of the sentence, but it's difficult when people don't fit into those categories.

[The Little Guy]

I have found some links (I didn't click on them) that would open up my email client, I don't like those. You should make them go to an online form, and have them submitted that way. This could do 2 things
1. Speed up the email process
2. hide your email

[kasrak]

That's a good idea. I will definetly implement it if i have time before school starts.

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

impressive, *bookmarked*


ps: hope to see more of your work

[kasrak]

Thanks! I finished some updates today:
- Remember Me =)
- More email notifications
- BBCode to customize the look of your profile
- Multiple tag selection
- "You've made an offer" indicator
- customizable front page.

What do you think of the updates? Any more feature requests? Thanks!

[The Little Guy]

I got another Idea.

When the user searches, and say they click on looking for a programmer... A list below should/could show/appear of what programing languages they are searching for.

instead of just having designer, you should also have a graphics designer, because those two things are two completely different things.
- Designers, design the page and how it will look
- Graphics designers create the graphics of the page

[meinsla]

Awesome site man, I just hired a programmer to help me with some things last night. I haven't been able to find anywhere else to help me with this. Keep up the good work.

[invertedpanda]

I love it. My favorite part is your whitepsace usage - the code looks clean, even though you did use tables :P Still, the implementation wasn't bad at all.

Definitely going to keep an eye on the site - there are times where I would like to just assist someone in UI design, and don't want to mess with programming (and visa-versa).

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

I love it. My favorite part is your whitepsace usage - the code looks clean, even though you did use tables :P Still, the implementation wasn't bad at all.

Definitely going to keep an eye on the site - there are times where I would like to just assist someone in UI design, and don't want to mess with programming (and visa-versa).


well, i'd say that is pretty much tabular data, so the use of table for that part is legitimate.

On a semantical point of view, i'd suggest that you display the tags (the keyword kind of tags) as a list, and float them. They are after all a list of words, and should be written as such in the markup, the span thing is a bit ugly.

otherwise the site really rocks!

[kasrak]

Hi again!

What do you think of this redesign:
http://new.programmermeetdesigner.com

Thanks!