Comments on: 4 Reasons Pattern Tap Sucks

By: Dapo Olaopa

Dapo Olaopa — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:32:52 +0000

I love the way the criticism of PT was given and responded to. It’s the sharing of ideas & opinions like this that make things better in the long run. Nobody’s perfect, keep up the good work. Both of you.

By: Matthew Smith

Matthew Smith — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:16:02 +0000

Thanks for the feedback yall! I’ll keep that in mind as I work toward some redesign.

By: Paul Godfrey

Paul Godfrey — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:25:01 +0000

A mix between patterntap and imgspark.com would be the ultimate tool. I think whats missing from PT is a nice little firefox plugin for grabbing patterns and an easy way for you to keep a personal pattern collection (w/ tags etc.)

I for one appreciate the high bar that is set for design acceptance and that is the primary reason I keep coming back. I will however agree that there has a considerate amount of repetition and some very small sets.

By: chelsea@hirechelsea.com

chelsea@hirechelsea.com — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:07:26 +0000

Thanks for the responses. I appreciate the good design as well as quality that PatternTap has. It is very important to raise the bar, especially as the industry gets more and more competitive. I have returned several times. The more I come back to the site, the smaller the sets seemed to feel and the more I noticed repetition.

Part of the initial appeal of PatternTap is the idea that they are user contributed, and that I can contribute relatively easily. So how can we leverage community without sacrificing quality?

• Ratings (as suggested by Daniel)
• User Taps are separate than the main tap. This would allow me to use PatternTap as a tool as well as a resource. Users can upload their own taps for public viewing, but images have to be approved to be a part of the main set.
• Tags. If you allow users to contribute tags only, you wont change the taps and can keep the structure. Searching by tags that users have created gives the content more flexibility.

I look forward to seeing more cool things and will be sure to submit by comments to the Customer Service and Support Center.

By: Matthew Smith

Matthew Smith — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:30:41 +0000

@Boag, who are you agreeing with? @Daniel, Thanks. Lets talk about your ideas via email or phone

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:59:20 +0000

“They lead you to believe you can contribute patterns. (You can but only once they are “moderated”)”

When I first started using it, I thought this was lame, but I find since they starting letting users contribute moderated patterns – the selection has been 1) lacking the amount of high-quality designs and 2) too many patterns to sift through to find the good ones.

Maybe a user-rating would benefit this site so that the high-rated designs are near the top?

By: Boag

Boag — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:54:02 +0000

i agree

By: matthew smith

matthew smith — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:48:20 +0000

Hi Chelsea,
Wow. Strong opinions! I like it. These are some of the issues I’d like to solve in the next go around. I’m sorry to hear that unlike the 5000+ other users out there, you decided not to use Pattern Tap. However, since it was a two man self funded project, I’m not surprised to find that I disappointed a few people, it’s inevitable.

Some of your critique has defense. If I opened up the submission to anyone, we’d have a wide open gallery like weheartit.com or something like scrnshots.com, which I simply don’t want. Other users made it clear in our recent survey that they LOVE the quality of design, and that the high bar is one of the things that keeps them coming back. However, perhaps there is a middle ground?

If you’d be interested in helping me think through some of those issues and giving me some insight into how I can manage a both/and strategy in this manner, I’d love to hear from you. Either email me directly, or hop on http://getsatisfaction.com/patterntap

Thanks!