Dribbble is the fastest growing and biggest design community out there. It’s invite-only and grows by 100 people every single day. There are a lot of new designers joining the platform every day to seek inspiration, clients, and feedback for their work. But that last aspect is really hard to get, and it starts with the day they join.

Great shot! Awesome Work. I like this, check out my gallery too!

This is the type of comment you can see on almost any shot on Dribbble. Obviously some designs are too good and don’t need valuable comments or feedback. But what about other designs? Those that are lacking basic principles of design or lacking good direction? They get the exact same comments as those great designs, but what’s the reason?

It’s simple: People see Dribbble comments as a simple way to make themselves more visible.

What they do not realize…

At some point, we need to recognize that all these designers are the future of the industry. If we’re going to support poor or subpar designs, it’s going to hurt everyone. Obviously, if you have talent you will shine anyways, and you’ll simply be able to follow your own direction without worrying to much about what others tell you. But what about everyone else? Those who need to be helped? This is where we, and design veterans especially, can have an impact in helping these people and the overall community.

Dribbble wasn’t built for feedback

Comments on Dribbble are not the best way to give feedback. If you want to give feedback, make sure that you do it in a clear way so people can understand exactly what you mean.

Make sure it all has a final point, make it short, and give them concrete examples on what they can improve. I try to do this almost every single day…but I think that it’s not enough. We need to move this to another level…

Potential solution for all of this!

What if there was a way we could fix this problem? Maybe we can add another level for giving feedback to people. What is really missing is the ability to give visual feedback to designers so that they can improve their work.

Introducing Dribbble give feedback button

Introducing The Dribbble “Give Feedback” Button

What if we add a simple feedback button that triggers a simple screen where users can submit points (notes) and draw over the design in order to give clear and straight to the point feedback?

Here are some potential details:

Designers would need to enable this feature on their work.
Only PRO designers would be able to give feedback
The number of feedbacks given per piece of work would be limited

Features

After the user presses the button, they would be allowed to publish notes or draw over images with a super simple brush, and it would be fully integrated into the system. Notes would allow a limited amount of characters and would allow you to insert some CSS.

After you feel confident in your feedback, you can submit it and it will be posted below every other comment, with the exception that users can click on it and view your feedback, but now new comments are done inside of the feedback element. Also, it would be great to allow people to @mention pieces of feedback so you can easily refer to them.

Potential Gamification

There are a lot of questions around this concept, but there are many potential solutions. Maybe this can work with an anti-gamification rule where after you reach certain amount of feedback submissions, the option is disabled. In this case, we would need to be able to make sure that pieces of feedback aren’t fake and are actually valuable (maybe the designer would need to approve them).

Profile Badge

In addition, users who provide feedback get a “mentor” badge on their profile. When someone clicks on the badge, it takes them to all of your submitted pieces of feedback, giving them a much higher degree of clarity on whether you’re capable of giving good feedback and what your communication skills look like. Giving & getting feedback is one of the most important things in our industry.

Looking forward

All of this is just a quick idea I came up with during my recent trip to Prague, I hope you enjoy this and maybe take it to another level. But at the very least, let’s all try to give more real feedback on Dribbble, especially to newcomers. And keep pushing, everyone! :)

I’m the lead product designer at Toptal, where we recently launched Toptal Designers and are currently building an amazing community of designers from around the world, focusing for the moment on UI designers, UX designers, visual designers, and interaction designers. One of our main priorities is creating top-notch feedback channels within our community.