A weakness of user group interviews is that the opinions given may differ from those expressed without others present. A common occurrence is findings are skewed because one or two vocal participants end up dominating the conversation. Most people tend to keep their opinions to themselves and just nod in agreement.
However, put a group of people online and discord and disagreement are all but guaranteed. Even the most well meaning initiatives find loud, vociferous critics. That’s how I discovered Sharpen.design. In a Quora post looking for design challenges, someone completely put down Daily UI while touting Sharpen.design.
For this individual, Daily UI placed too few constraints and results were only alluring but ultimately useless designs. Sharpen.design imposes the media and client, which apparently makes it infinitely superior.
While I could understand this shortcoming of Daily UI, I also saw its strong points that Sharpen neglects. Daily UI’s strength comes in creating accountability, through its daily exercises and call for sharing work with peers. Also, for those wanting to practice designing UI elements, the projects are more pertinent.
Instead of choosing one or the other, however, I decided to merge the ideas together. I would follow Daily UI’s prompts to guide me and keep me accountable, but also add in prompts found on Sharpen.design to add some interesting constraints.
For me, it’s not about finding the best tool and choosing one over another. The key is figuring out the pains and frustrations and coming up with a solution, often hybrid, that addresses those issues.
Check out Daily UI designs on Dribbble or Sharpen.design visuals on Twitter.