Desinion is Launched!

Today is the much anticipated launch of Desinion. Four months ago Desinion didn’t exist. It didn’t even have a name, logo, or a single line of code to represent it and was simply an idea to solve a need in the design process. You could call it a passion project with potential; an experiment which might just work; a risk that might just be worth the investment. And now, after four months of hard-work and passion through design, strategy, coding and development. Desinion is here!

What is Desinion?

Desinion is a new and unique tool that assists two types of people involved in the design process: the first being those who play with pixels on screen and introduce ink to paper to create beautiful designs; and the second being those that have the responsibility of deciding the best design to use. In short Desinion is an online tool that helps designers and decision-makers gauge an audience’s reaction to their designs concepts and experimentations. Desinion helps designers and decision-makers find out which design concept resonates best with their intended target audience (and other audiences).

This then gives the designer the unforeseen responses and feedback, and therefore helps them see which of their design concepts resonates best with which audience.

Designers simply upload their design concepts to Desinion and ask the community a relevant question about the two options, thus allowing honest and direct answers. These answers are then broken down into demographically defined metrics that enable the designer to easily analyze the relevant statistics received for their design concepts. This then gives the designer the unforeseen responses and feedback, and therefore helps them see which of their design concepts resonates best with which audience.

The best way to get to know Desinion and what is does, is simply to sign up with a free account. Then dive in and start uploading your design concepts and see what the community has to say about your creations. Whilst at the same time you can browse through the existing design debates and gain some inspiration or provide your own educated feedback.

Where the idea came from?

The idea for Desinion came about, when I was briefed to work on an illustration project alongside a fellow designer. We both received the same creative brief, but we were having a series of tense disagreements about which style of illustration would be more relevant and appealing to the audience. We constantly went back to the brief, however we still had different interpretations of what that meant: I believed that the target audience in question – mature and technical savvy -would react better to sharp, crisp and technical illustrations; whereas my colleague believed that the audience would react more positively to illustrations which were more playful, flat-styled, with rounded corners. Our two conflicting opinions caused unnecessary tension which emanated to the final client presentation, in which the client had to make a ‘gut feeling’ decision as to which was more suitable.

We then decided to print the two design options onto a piece of paper and carry out a quick straw poll by passing it around the office. This would help us to see which design style our colleagues thought would be better suited to the target audience, and although my design style came out on top, I remember thinking to myself that there must be a better way to evaluate and test design styles. This led me to start to think about creating something to rectify this extremely common problem in the design process.

I wanted to create something which would be more direct, and that would be of benefit to the designer. Something which would assist the process of design. Something interesting which would provide the designer and the decision-maker with metrics, comments and statistics on their work.

I did my research to see what other design feedback sites existed, and found some amazing sites such as Dribbble, and Behance, which are a great source of inspiration for designers. I thought however that their feedback section was generally too tame, almost too nice. Most comments provided for the designs went along the lines of “Great work”, “Nice job”, “Love this”, and although these comments where fully deserved (as the work on these sites is of a very high standard), I wanted to create something which would be more direct, and that would be of benefit to the designer. Something which would assist the process of design. Something interesting which would provide the designer and the decision-maker with metrics, comments and statistics on their work. Something which designers could use in their client presentations to either prove a point, back up their original hunch or show an interesting insight on their designs. And so, from that the idea for Desinion was born.

From being a little idea in my head, to becoming reality

I instantly knew what I wanted to create. I wanted a place where designers could upload their design concepts and ask a question about them, just like you would if you were doing a straw poll around the office. The key area which would make this place interesting would be the statistics and analytical part. I knew that getting statistics and metrics on design concepts would firstly be fun, and secondly extremely interesting and useful for a designer. I know this from personal experience as, being a graphic designer myself, I love the thrill of putting my creations out there, online and in the public gallery, and seeing what type of reaction they receive. I loved the idea of presenting and receiving statistics on my design pieces, not only general statistics, but also statistics which you could break down and analyze. For the first time, as a designer you could see if your beautiful creations resonate better with a male or female audience; 20-30 year olds or 50-60 year olds; business owners or freelances. I knew that the statistical analysis part of Desinion would be the heartbeat and core of the service.

I also knew that design critique isn’t always about quick answers, it’s also a conversation. I didn’t want to take away the design conversation, so with that in mind I knew it would be important for designers and design enthusiasts to be able to make comments and elaborate further on their answers.

I also knew that design critique isn’t always about quick answers, it’s also a conversation. I didn’t want to take away the design conversation, so with that in mind I knew it would be important for designers and design enthusiasts to be able to make comments and elaborate further on their answers. So after the stats were set up, the next thing to create was Desinion Comments: a neat and tidy comments forum within the design debate. I love this feature; not only can users offer further insights into why they opted for one design over another, but also other Desinion users can agree or disagree with their comments and other comments that have been made. This means that the forum is self-regulating and therefore users can get a great sense of what is good feedback and what isn’t.

So, I hired an amazing developer (not easy to find), and we got to work building this thing!

After a few amazing months of design and development, we had built the basics of the product. Visitors could create accounts and upload their design concepts, and other users could offer their opinions through Desinion Comments (which would be converted into statistics). We were all set. A good for market prototype was complete. At this point we considered launching, but we didn’t, we decided to wait.

Waiting was a tough thing to do, as we were so excited about this product and could see the need for it in our everyday jobs. We just wanted to get the product out there. Our excitement about this product fuelled our creativity. We had a number of great features in mind that we wanted to develop. Features that would enhance the overall Desinion experience and add more value to the user. An example of this was a feature called Desinion Reports. This feature is an amazing way to bring all of the results of the design debate together. Designers can download official and conclusive reports on their designs, so next time they have to present their design concepts to their clients or decision-maker, they can come prepared with automatically generated concise analytical feedback and statistics on their designs.

We also created the functionality to create private debates, so that designers who are working with clients who may not want their design concepts to be publicly viewed, can get opinions and statistics privately, from a chosen group of people, easily achieved through password protection.

With all of these value adding features in place. We now feel that the time is right to launch Desinion. We have many more benefits that we are currently developing, but for now we hope that you enjoy the Desinion experience. We are confident that it will be an extremely beneficial tool that you can use regularly in your design and decision-making process.

Please sign up for Desinion and let me know your thoughts!

Sign up – www.desinion.com/user/pricing