BackStage at RB

Fanfriggintastic!

I kinda like how this makes the groups their own “bubblesite”... loads of little tweaks, but I can see straight through to the concept here, and at the risk of being lambasted again on the interweb as “someone who has no design experience” (LOL) I would like to say again that its a smart design. Sure, there’s usability issues, and some clunky things to sort out, but it addresses what I want to know about my groups. Plus, there is critical hierarchy here with the Featured works taking front and centre, and the Recent works more of a feed. My biggest issue as a group host is rule compliance, so that no-one dominates the group homepage. This first draft makes that issue largely moot.

BTW, its massively brave of you to let your customers in at this point of the design process. I know its a way to get some usability feedback without doing the workshops, but you sure gotta have a thick skin!

I think the new look is a big improvement.

As a group host, what I sorely lack is navigational tools.
Moving from one member to another with a button.
Finding someone in the group when I need them (sort order).
Customised Rejection/Acceptance Messages (yes, that’s in bold because it has been asked for since groups started.
Nested forums (I can’t understand why we haven’t these in all forums anyway – is it difficult?)

But above all this – there are far far far too many groups. Based on your purpose statement – that they are meant as mini-communities, how can one achieve this with 1000+ groups? It’s insane. Squirrels with Black Tails Group. Squirrels with Striped Tails Group. And so on.

I would also like to see a differentiation between ‘groups’ and galleries. Some groups (two that I host for example) are pure art galleries. I would like to be able to promote them, and treat them as galleries – curated. Having these galleries, as opposed to ‘groups’ also gives you a managed (curated) system for purchase searches. If a buyer wants a landscape, they head over to the Landscape Gallery. A sub-gallery may be Australian Landscapes.

And the bonus is – you don’t have to rely on dodgy tagging for searches, nor do you need to pay anyone to sort out all the art on the site for you.

love that slideshow!.. love being able to see the works individually in bigger size, yet stay within the group !.. looks good. so far.

Oooh – I like Mark’s Gallery idea…

The curated gallery idea is a great one and we’ve been toying with it for a while. The one thing we haven’t solved is making them sufficiently different from a group that the average browser is not confused. Does each group have a curated gallery – so that content in a group does become second class?

Easy.
Don’t think of them as groups. Leave groups (much reduced in volume) as mini-communities, with their galleries.

Think of these new things replacing ‘categories’ on most art sites. Found on the home page, or the ‘art’ page, they are nested – as the example I gave. Click on what you are interested in, and be transported to a fully managed, curated gallery of the subject/genre.

It looks nice and should make it easier to find work in the groups.

looks great cant wait to see it up and running

You could replace the popular page with the curated galleries page :)

Looks pretty good Peter, maybe a little over large images etc., but you’ll probably fix.

Like it! – nothing much to add apart from hopefully more collaboration and promotional tools will help to encourage people to engage more with the groups they belong to.

Also loving the coherent and ‘flat’ theme emerging.

I like it and I think it would work well.

1) As a group user I want to send a bubblemail to my host from the group page. Now I must go to their overview and then send a BM
2) As a host I would appreciate a sort function by people and by title and by date!
3)In general, it would be great to see the features on the work details, date and group.
4) I would appreciate very much if I could sort the groups to which I am a member. It would make submission a lot easier!
BUT … you make a great job and I thank you for that !!!!

It looks really awesome!!!!

As a group member, the ability to elect not to receive nuisance bulk b’mail from selected (not all) group mods would be a handy feature.

LOVE IT!!! The fact that all the “facts” of the group can be found easily on one page is wonderful!!! I like that as a host I can put useful information on there and the members don’t receive a bunch of bubblemail. I volunteer to “test” it if you need.

Looks good!!! I would also like to have a way to see what pieces of work we have in the group also.

whilst i agree there needs to be an overhaul of groups,and the new improvements look great! i beg to differ on just the appearance and control of bmails .. forgive me for my honesty but its all i know! ... there are to many groups and more seem to pop up on a regular basis, and as far as i can see its all hosts and popular people favoring and featuring the exact same people, alot with worthy artwork seem to miss out!
What’s important to you with groups? interaction with members and a show of wonderful artwork, regardless of whom has created or captured it
What’s missing the most right now? interaction in forums
How do you use groups and how would you like to use them _honestly, i deleted myself from most groups as they seem unfare, whilst i appreciate it is and has always been an i scratch your back you scratch mine world.. there are alot of wonderful images and creations that miss out because they dont fit the regime … my 2 cents!

Splendiferous ides sweetheART ;} happy hippy hugglez

As a host I would love to see a search engine to find a specific member; when we feature members we have to wade through pages and pages to find where the member we wish to feature is located with their feature button.
The challenges work well but there is no tool to do contests for any kind of work except image related items.
Group bubble mail that is independent of my personal bubble mail; I would like to be able to allow members to vote to choose featured images and members (without having my mail flooded) rather than having to make the choice myself. I try to choose impartially but it is only human nature to have preferences. I keep a spread sheet so I know at a glance that a member has or has not been featured before and how many times, however this is a lot of extra work. It helps me allowing me as host to not choose the same photographer every time. I would feature every two weeks instead of each week if I had a tool to allow members the ability to vote to choose their favorite image to feature. This however bring up the issue of features being selected by unscrupulous members who stack the vote system with multiple accounts and soliciting votes like they are dong now in challenges and I can see no way to solve that problem.

Hawt.

looks great guys…as a host of 3, if you could make it easier to find the pics to feature – it would be brilliant… i recently ran a frog camouflage challenge and it took me bloody HOURS to find the pics!!! – if we could perhaps right click the pics from the challenge result to feature – or somehow launch a Feature All button through the results, would be brilliant! (i put aside at least an hour to feature and announce challenge results in my groups and most of that is taken up with searching for the pics to feature and unfeature) – but i love the new layout you are working with – looks extremely slick! Well done guys! – and it will be great when you incorporate group news messages on the front page, to save pestering group bubblemails too(which still could be made optional tho) – and yes i agree i’d like to step up some ‘interaction’ in the forums as well… thanks again guys ♥

can’t wait for the improved changes!

The front part looks very good. Here are some ideas that could make life easier for hosts (I am not a host myself but I am in a lot groups and thus see a lot of hosts Bmails). They could be addressed by the overhaul.

For example:
- in the people section of the groups add a find user option
- set a maximum for the total images in a group based on first in first out. Prevents hosts having to delete pages of images.
- set a maximum for the total featured images in a group based on first in first out
- when viewing images in a group a button to go to the next image in the group
- have a find option that would be limited to the group
- based on the above have a find by user option so users are able to find images they put in the group
- if there is a per day maximum for users to enter images into a group let the system check how many were entered the last 24 hours.
- by hosts rejected images should be flagged by the system so when they are entered again a hosts can easily see that it was rejected before

I like Mark’s idea of a curated gallery. I wonder if it would be possible to highlight the best work in a group (several pages (with a limit) of Featured work) and show that as a curated gallery visible to buyers. People not logged in RB would only see that section of the group.
Other suggestions:
- Limit the number of groups to remove duplicates.
- Categorize group in main categories and sub categories

PS give us a larger comment window…...

I like this!! Looks promising for sure!
Will the new set up make it easier to “Unfeature” work?? I dont know if I am doing it the hard way or not… ? But if pressed it can be the easy option(and unfair) to select from the most recent works, then miss out on the older stuff, only because trolling through it all to unfeature them is very timeconsuming!
Thats all – I think it looks great!! Well done!

Brilliant… but be sure to leave the cat page in:)

you guys are going to have to make things testable for IE, hate it as you may, a lot of us do use it, its looking good from what i can see
please add in there when hosts create a new thread in the host’s forum, those hosts get a feed in their activity monitor
looking good so far

I’m with converting the world!!

I love the look of this – don’t really have much else to add .. you’re doing just fine without me!!

PPS – that is a cool tshirt smack bang in the middle! /grin

I think it’s great! The only think I can think of from a group member’s point of view, would be the ability for users to find their work easily into the group. When there is a 10 or 20 artworks limit, and that you have been a member for months it’s sometimes impossible to remember which ones are there. The only solution at present is to leave and rejoin the group…

Forgive me if this has already been addressed and I haven’t seen it, but something that would be really helpful to me is the ability to see what images have been featured in the past…it would help me not to accidentally feature something again (oops!) and to get an overall idea of who has had lots of features.

On another note, I too greatly appreciate your openness and desire for input. I firmly believe that this principle will take redbubble to places far beyond where it could otherwise go! Good wisdom you’re acting upon!

The preview looks very interesting. And I like many ideas here, especially Mark’s galleries idea! I’m in many groups, and one idea I would like to see, that on the challenge tab, that it’ll show us which challenges we have entered in, because there re so many that I lose track of which one I’ve entered entries into. I have to go back to each challenge to look for my images to see if I’m in or not.
Otherwise, keep up all the great works! And thank you all for giving us the chance to give our inputs. I’m looking forward to the new RB.

This look is much better than what is currently in place. I like it. I like it alot.

Absolutely brilliant.

I think that this looks GREAT!!! I am going to give you huge KUDOS!!! There are a few things that I would like to see take place (from a host perspective), the possibility of sorting group members alphabetically rather than by the date they joined the group. This would make it so much easier to find them to feature them. Also, and easier way to remove work from the group. Currently we can only remove work one piece at a time. At Freedom to Shine we added clickable tag buttons to our main page to make the work easier to find and they are broken down by category. We have a forum thread that lists all the tags so that the members can see what to use on their work. This almost eliminates the need to delete work from the group, but there comes a point when to much is just to much!
Keep up the amazing work that you all do, and please oh please somebody get poor Xavier a hair cut!!

Yes please sort members alphabetically and sort groups in the same way on our edit pages…other wise everything looks fantastic…can’t wait to see it in place…

Thank you so much for these proposed changes!

Here’s my wishlist:

1. Group hosts allowed to write personalized message when image is rejected
2. When viewing a group, have a link that would show all of my images already submitted to that group
3. When viewing, have a link to move to next image
4. Group search feature for hosts (i.e. find member, image, etc.)
5. The system will automatically cut-off entries based on group host(s) determination of these numbers (per day / per group maximums)

The curated gallery idea is a great one and we’ve been toying with it for a while. The one thing we haven’t solved is making them sufficiently different from a group that the average browser is not confused. Does each group have a curated gallery – so that content in a group does become second class?

I too am a fan of the curated gallery idea being separated from the groups. How I could see it being utilised is that the curated galleries are (sub)category and genre specific, with one gallery per subject niche (not the multiple groups as present). I could see this being more buyer friendly.

The groups then being more the community as opposed to the “public face”, with more groups focussing on geographical areas for meet-ups or different genres for the trading of ideas etc.

I know it would mean a total overhaul to groups as we know it but maybe that is necessary to provide a more buyer friendly gallery area that can be accessed straight from within redbubble without having to know 1001 bubblesites for different groups.

My 2¢ worth

Oh, y’all are gonna hate me. =)

The top portion, from Group Name to Featued Works is fantastic. The only crit I have is that the thumbnails for featured works could be smaller (70×70 or maybe 75×75). Actually, ALL the thumbnails could be that size. My moniter’s rez is 1440×900 and those just look huge.

Okay, here’s where I start my usual. Sorry. =)

I’d move ‘About Groups’ up to where ‘Challenges’ is located. Leave ‘Latest Discussions’ as is, and move ‘Meet Your Hosts’ over under it.

Break up the distribution of thumbnails and text on the right hand column.

You have Featured Works, so put ‘Challenges’ under it. Put ‘Featured Members’ thumbnails next down, but perhaps 2 rows of six each, instead of three rows of three?

Have ‘Group News’ under that and ‘Latest Members under it. Perhaps cut the Group news down to just three lines? And matching the Latest Members thumbnails to the same tabling as the Featured Members.

If you do that, you just might have some space there at the bottom to put in some Host only viewable links for like ‘send mail to all members’, etc.

I think I’m catching a glimmer of the idea of why it’s laid out the way you have it, but it seems that ‘important’ group info should be separated from ‘important to members or important to catch attention and get new members’ info, if that makes any sense.

That pale green? Sorry, but UGH. That’s an ugly color to be displaying images on.

You could move ‘Discussions over to the right hand column, and move the ‘host only’ viewable links to the bottom of the left. I don’t think any of us would mind scrolling down for that stuff – it would insure that we give at least a cursory glance to all the info on the page, which could be helpful in open submission groups.

Oh, and that curated gallery idea? Why not make it easily obvious those are different by giving their pages black or darker gray backgrounds? Most online art looks much better displayed on a darker background than a lighter one.

Other hosts have already mentioned things I’d also like to see added to our ‘host tool set’.

Summing it up…I don’t hate the new page, but just think it needs a little tidying up and switching around. I do like having all that information on the group overview page. =)

Oh, and I did install Firefox to have a look, but Gary’s right. You guys are going to have to make it testable in IE for these sneak previews, too. =)

This is a major improvement!!

lol it would probably be easier for you guys to work with IE..lol

Looks nice … i somewhat feel that featured members should get more attention … currently they are far below.

Also you should show all group hosts at once.

Group news …. and group forum threads (latest discussions) and Meet your Hosts should be somewhat side by side. ...

Automatic slideshow (like gamespot) of featured images should go on to give importance to all featured images.

Latest / recent members and latest/recent uploads should be somewhat side by side.

About the group should not be twice … its only taking up the space … currently its at top and its at bottom left … better show group rules. May be you can keep read more button at group header to read full group details and also the rules.

I will answer your specific questions after little thaught process.

Nice … I checked Community tab, My bubble tabs and home tab too … nice extras.

Looks great!

It looks great!

-I don’t know how is going to work the featured works…question:

Which image is going to show up in the big image when the group page is opened?
Is it going to be random or the same image is going to pop up when the group page is opened?
I would like to give the same exposure for all of them.

-I like React idea…Description on the top and botton left the rules of the group it is a good idea…

I think there’s far too many groups. At least make all the group rules the same. Add camera info/don’t add camera info. Add location/don’t add location/ 2 works per day or 1 work per day… you know what I mean.

Looks pretty good! I like the layout, and that there is more info available to the user.

I’m not sure about this whole “galleries”/”groups” separation, because so many of the groups I am in are already curated. So, what, I’d have to submit the same work to a curated group and a curated gallery? If people are already concerned about a popularity hierarchy here, doesn’t seem like the gallery thing would really help. From a marketing viewpoint, I could see having several categories that are clickable from the art page, and a few main galleries from there, but I could also see that they could limit what visitors are exposed to. I have a lot of pretty uncategorizable work!

I like it!

You guys ROCK—great idea…and thank you for letting us in on it now…....!!!!!!!

I think this looks like a great idea, thanks well done.

I like it – and I love the gallery idea.

It would be good to have somewhere to easily see which of our works are in which group without having to look at them all individually to find out. This is particularly important when entering work into a group challenge.

looks great already. can’t wait to see more.

I think it looks grreat but it’s lacking one important thing that members have been screaming about for ages.

I agree with squirrell that It needs a link for members to be able to see which works they already have in the group to make it easier to remove group submissions and add new one’s to groups with a limit on the number of images allowed per member.

As group hosts/moderators alot of us actually open each listing that is waiting for approval or rejection into the group. It would save a hell of a lot of time if there were an accept reject area that would appear at the top of the listing while we’re viewing it in the moderation area so we don’t have to go forward and back each time (especially for those with slower connections).
I’m not sure if that’s an unrealistic request in terms of writing the code in the software… but if not… I think all group hosts/moderators would love you for it!!

l like this

I agree the group concept needs a thoughtful transition. Groups should support the RB concept of encouraging all forms of art, encouraging the freedom to explore new art forms, and the forums as a place to discuss art, and learn techniques to improve oneself as an artist.

Right now some groups are functioning at the will of a moderator(s), not at the consensus of the membership of the group’s membership. Moderation should encourage the basic principles of RB in encouraging all art, and artistic freedom as well as encouraging artist.

I think you need to rethink the whole concept of “featuring” selected works. Some might consider this radical, but I say this because of what has happened with how “features” are allotted. This has divide the group membership into the haves and the have not’s (some feel included, some feel excluded) thus instead of uniting the group into an open sharing forum amongst all members which encourages art and artistic freedom to explore and grow (which it should be). It’s become a power tool by some moderators to impose their artistic likes or dislikes, and it encourages feelings of unfairness in the members whose work is not featured or rejected because it is unique or forward looking. I think it would be far better to have a revolving feed that alternates all the recent entries into the group (say for the last week or month) so that all work entered could be viewed much like a slide show that changes every 30 minutes or so. That way every group member would get their time on the homepage and no one feels left out, and no potential for abuse.

Challenges are a good “marketing tool to encourage viewers to page thru images”, but again they appear to be used differently by different group moderators (some good, some bad) with little to no oversight by RB to ensure that the group is working towards the RB goals. I’ve even seen one moderator who made up rules so the art that was consisting being voted on as best was excluded from the group, so that mediocre art could have a chance of winning a challenge (this is in my option group moderation gone amuck).

So in redesigning groups I hope one would consider the RB principles, and how to encourage art and artists of all types and discourage exclusionary practices, rules intended on exclusion, and dictatorships vs. group consensus by members in open forums. I also think RB needs to make one set of generic rules for all groups to follow and not different rules for each group based on one person’s opinion.

Managing Art in Groups:
Managing Art in Groups today is very difficult. Each group should have a page of members and if you click on a member all their work in that group should come up (not just taking you to their site page). Better sort capabilities are needed as well, and image management tools to ease the work of a group’s moderator. Today there is no way to know what work is in what group by member name thus it’s hard to manage both by moderators and artist alike. Like time stamping pictures entered into a group so that they could be aged out of the group at certain points automatically. This could also be used to display recent entries.

Marketing:
RB should look at ways to encourage traffic and marketing of works in different ways. Perhaps bulk discounted sales offered to stores and galleries carrying RB products, which increases sales volumes to both RB and the Artists. Ways to do periodic discount sales. Perhaps internet art shows in concert with shows going on around the country (adverting the site), or setting up a display booth at local art shows where local members get together and staff a RB sponsored booth. (I think you could start a whole separate topic on Improving Marketing.

I think the new look is fantastic!! I only have one thing to add—at the top of the page there is an overview, which is great, and at the bottom there is the “About” section which includes the rules for submission.

I’d really like to see the rules for submission at the TOP of the group page. I’m a new member of Redbubble, have joined maybe 10-12 groups and I still forget the difference between some of them (the rules). So I have to go to the group page and scroll down to the bottom, then click on “see group rules” (if not spelled out on that first page) to find out what I can submit. I’m always afraid I’m going to submit the wrong things, or too many images.

I’d think having the rules at the top of the page would help the hosts, too—maybe they’d have to do less reminding of what is allowed/not allowed, etc. :)

Sorry for the double post here, but I also agree that there are too many groups. :)

Please can groups have the ability to search items within it – eg, find all gorilla images in the priate groups.

I don’t think all groups should have a forum – some hosts are not really all that enthusiastic about running a forum. It shouldn’t be mandatory, just like acceptance certain types of art isn’t mandatory.

priate should have read primate :)

Two things I would like to see in the groups…

An ability to set up a poll – ie to vote on challenges or other things for the members. they can be serious or fun. It’s easily done in blogs, so I would imagine it wouldn’t be too hard to set up within Redubble. Deviantart has this function for all members.

The ability to do a search for a member within the people pages of the group. I’ve just spent hte last hour trying to unfeature someone by having to scroll through 1853 people. I missed her so till haven’t found her. It would be great if you could have a ‘search members’ box to make it easier to find people to feature/unfeature without scrolling through everyone. If this is already there – please let me know!!!

Cheers
Robyn

How about more focus to the recent works on the front page? I think the works are the most important think in the groups in my opinion.

I think the change sounds great. As a Groups member and not a moderator.
I would like to see a “random” strip somewhere on the groups page. That way some of the “older” earlier submitted works get a small sort of feature on the main page as well. Sometimes, with the bigger groups,it can take a while to get through all the images if you want to have a browse.

this sounds really good… an important thing is changing the order of featured works as well…
But custom rejection messages PLEASE! That is the one thing which really needs an overhaul here – this will make moderating a thousand times easier particularly for some groups with awkward guidelines.
looks promising though!

I think this looks pretty good. Most of the others have covered additions I would like – and customised rejections in particular.
Also, link to RB’s guidelines automatically on each Home page.

I am troubled that the developers now appear to be writing in Latin, however…...... ;)

One more thing…...

I take on board the fact that some believe there are too many groups. However some groups are so wide that they cover a broad range of art and then everyone joins and work gets lost.

For example (and please dont think I am picking on you) the Black and White Group covers potentially every type of B&W image. So of course smaller sub groups will start up – nudes, portraits etc so that types of B&W works don’t get lost in an understandably huge group.

How to address this?

how about a map on the front page which has an alphabetical list of broad generes of Art: B&W, animals, people, flowers, Landscapes, sunset/rise etc. Then you clikc on what you are broadly interested in and there are the Groups in which you might find the type of art you are looking for.

So you might click on the B&W art and then you find a list of groups for that type of work. Some groups might appear in more than one genre eg B&W animals might be listed in B&W art and under Animal Art.

That way you can cater for for those buyers who like to browse and those who know what they want and just want to find it quick.

Maybe groups could have tags so they come up on the right pages of the map?

Does this make sense? Or is it me now talking Latin…........ :)

I would like to see colour coding so you get a quicker idea of what you are looking at with groups
Photography
mixed media / everything
Digital art
Painting
writing
Tees
or coloured dots added like the red bubble dots to your artwork you put up

rough guide to help sort the volume of images out

can i just once again reiterate this just because i obsess over it…
custom rejections custom rejections custom rejections please! :)
sorta tag searching like in our own profiles would be useful inside groups.
Also, no more featured banners. please?

Again this is all focused on visual art and nothing for the writters here. How about giving some thought to how to better display and handle their work on the feature pages and in challenges as well.

Curated Galleries Idea:
For the idea of curated galleries, my question is who is qualified to curate the gallery here on RB (hopefully not the same people managing groups today, otherwise it will mearly turn into another exclusion of art not liked by one person). I thought the idea of RB was to encourage all levels of artists. This curated gallery seems like a way to elevate some and discriminate against others.

Things needed in groups:
Better search mechanisms – the search mechanism you have doesn’t recognize partial words so unless you know the whole group name, it doesn’t find any thing. You also need a Search by member name, and their works alone. It would help with management of works and with the abiity to find all art by that member.

Tags don’t work right and are inconsistent. The should be coma separated, not space separated so you could tag some thing like “Power Boats” and not have it list two things {Power) and then (Boat ) as separate tags. Also why can’t the software automatically tag all images when loading them up with the artists member name, and a date of entry, and the group names checked, That way you could use those tags to sort by and find work in groups (solving one of the problems stated above),

I would like to see the groups show all the art entered not just featured art. Or at least give a member the option to turn on one or the other at their choice. As your building all these profile options, how about that for this page as well. Right now the show all work button doesn’t work, you have to go to the tags on top (if you know it’s even there). It took me a week to figure out how to see all the work being entered in the group.

I don’t mind having alot of groups as it ensures their is something for anyone. However I do think more group oversite is needed to ensure moderators are not abusing their moderation position. I’ve seen too many acting like art critics instead of acting as group facilitaors of the groups objectives.

Love the way this looks & feels so far. My only request, which has been mentioned already, is to make it easier to find group members or challenge winner/place art so it can be featured, rather than wading through pages & pages, or asking for the art to be removed & resubmitted. Just a smallish request! cheers!

Just been to see the ‘proposed’ new group page and TOTALLY HATE IT!!!!!!!!!!
It makes RB MUCH more like the many super gigantic photo sites already around! To have only 1 ‘featured work’ showing and then to have to ‘scroll’ through more work vastly decreases the visiblity of work!!!!! And to expect hosts to ‘comment’ on what it was that made them ‘pick’ each feature is LUDICROUS!!!!! How much time and though will they have to commit to put so much of what is ‘instinctive’ into words?????
I also agree with Proust re the ‘curated galleries’ idea! it’s stupid and unworkable. 1 of the current ‘so called’ curated gallery groups has just recently changed their eligibility criteria so ridiculously that they lost MANY members. As Proust said – who is qualified to decide what kind of work gets into a ‘curated gallery’ in the first place? Restricting that decision by photographic techniques used is absurd and an idea such as this will only foster resentment and alienation re perceived elitism and ‘cliques’. ‘Cliques’ obviously exist already on a site like this – please don’t do anything to foster them, as I don’t know where I could go to replace RB as it is now.

You will have removed everything I like about the groups… and the reason I came to this site would be gone if the current layout is not revised. It resembles all those crappy photography sites I signed up for and then lost interest in in a day before I settled down here.

A lot of my friends left deviantart for here! And I assure you if this change to the groups happens as it appears on the demo site… a lot of them will be going back!

I’m a group host (the only one for that group) and I do not care for this new design. I don’t have time to write something about each image I select to be featured. Moderating, featuring, and running challenges are time consuming enough as it is, especially for a volunteer postion. I try not to feature the same people all the time, and if possible, give everyone a chance to be featured. Some people are just more talented than others and end up featured more often. Some images submitted are very poor quality and therefore do not get selected. I choose features based on the quality of the image – composition, color, clarity, etc.

I think the new page is too busy, and I don’t like the small thumbnails. I have IE so it probably doesn’t look quite right, but I still don’t like it. It also reminds me of another photo website that many members left to come over here.

Things I would like to see, as many have already said:

1. custom rejection messages
2. be able to sort members so I don’t have to search through pages and pages
3. easier way to find images in the group that win challenges, again so I don’t have to search for them – someone said something about them being automatically featured which would be great
4. as Proust said – better tags and search options

i think that it would be a lot more helpful if the goup would would be similar to the regular redbubble site, but like you said it suppose create a space for a smaller collection of people united by a common interest. so it will have “featured\ popular\ recent” so that it will allow to feature more than a 8 images per week, and the older featured works would still be there.

I am a host for 7 groups. I absolutely adore the current group layout and I would not change it for anything! It’s organized, it makes sense, the controls are easy and people are familiar with where everything goes. If you move everything around people will no longer take the time to view it! The new layout is so jumbled I didn’t even want to take the time to read all of it.

I will no longer be active in groups if that becomes the new group layout.
I already dislike our new message center layout.

This is why websites go down the drain. When they start having a larger amount of members and they think “Lets upgrade, make it shiny and new!” But no, that’s generally a bad idea. Occasional upgrades and moderation are to be expected and over time members can get used to it. But DO NOT just jump right in and start changing everything. We have a new message center layout and it’s so confusing I don’t even feel comfortable taking the time to look at everything now.

In marketing what have we learned?
Routine is good. When people like a product or a service, etc… it’s because they feel comfortable with it. They trust it. When you change it, make it look completely different or give it a new name. It doesn’t matter if it’s the same product. People wont buy it anymore because it becomes foreign and unfamiliar to them.

This will be the same case with redbubble…

I know you aren’t doing the coding and I dont want to insult person doing it but…
You said in this journal:
I think the group overview page should:
- Be visually attractive;
but I think its horrendously unattractive in the preview, it needs to be simplistic or the ART doesn’t look as good!
- Highlight the work in the group;
another fail at your own criteria…there isn’t even enough work showing in the original group layout, scrolling through features and having to comment as to why i featured it is NOT ok with me, I don’t like how it looks, and its more work! (I run 6 groups)
- Show important group messages (i.e. group news);
this could have easily fit under or above the hosts in the current layout, and I DONT want my forums used, so why am I being forced to have them on my front page? Imagine the spam that will start once forums are drawn attention to
- Highlight activity in the group
great idea but now people will go around faving everything in sight just so they can get a little exposure, and they’ll start leaving shallow comments like “cool”
- Make it easy to find the recent activity in a group;
the only “recent activity” that matters is the new images… and the challenges!

why don’t you want your forums used Marie? i didn’t think spamming was really a problem on rb…

First, Backstage, I’d like to thank you for providing a peek of what is to come. Unfortunately, I think it’s a step in the wrong direction. The preview is simply trying to do too much and be too many things.

The group page needs to do one thing and do it well: highlight the group art. Build on and around that.

If there was anything “broken” about the group experience it would have to be the challenge software. It’s terrible to host (no option to limit work only from the group?), terrible to monitor (hosts have no tally of all votes and flagging of duplicate accounts (no IP tracking?), and terrible for voters when they scroll through 100+ images with no easy way to compare (other than spawning new windows) or jump backwards…

It would be nice to be able to draw more distinction to featured art and artists, but your preview is pure information overload.

As Proust alludes, writers are second hand citizens at RB. This is slightly off topic, but the text engine is woefully inadequate to do any justice to prose or poetry. RB should also consider rethinking how they visualize written work, because the current method evokes an urge to click elsewhere.

These are the issues in the current set up that I would like addressed/fixed/tweaked in the new set up:
1. Please, Please, Please! ability to effectively communicate w/ my group members. The multi-Bmails were a pain in the butt. The current Forum Group News is ineffective; people aren’t catching on and think that nothing is happening in the group & I’m having to Bmail them individually to tell them a challenge is open, etc.. Activity has fallen since the initial My Bubble changes. Something better has to get info from the group to the individual, like maybe a big flashing florescent-green dot at the top of “My Bubble” with the number of Group News waiting for them. Also no way to tell if I have opened a Group News or not.
2. give a name to the place where art is submitted to the group. I think in the prototype, it’s called Current Uploads. Why not Group Gallery?
3. be able to feature a piece of work or artist in the challenges. I quit as host running challenges in one group that had 900+ members and 1,200+ pages of art. I don’t have all day to go looking for something to feature.
4. Option to write own template rejection (I hate that word; can it be changed to disqualify?) Also rejection options in challenges to be sent to the artist.
5. I would like the ability to control the open/closing of challenges. I can do that with the initial open, but not to close entries, open for voting & close completely. The current set up doesn’t work for me to close entries on April 30 and open voting on May 1 and then close the challenge on May 7. The “1 week”, “2 weeks” deal is too vague. Give me an “on/off” button!
6. I would like to see how the voting is going overall. Right now, I can only see the last 6 votes cast. I would like to monitor a running count.
7. I would like to see voting results first before they go “live” Currently, voting results are auto-posted, sometimes before I get to see them. I have people Bmailing about results before I get to Bmail them.
5. I like to know how many people are in the group. Bmail used to give me that number. Now I have to count them up.
For those who think I am a control freak, I’m not. It’s about management. and having good (tech) tools to be an effective manager.