David Emery Online

Ambient Inspiration

5 April 2010

I’m a heavy user of tabs in whatever browser I call home – Safari at the moment. There’s always a bunch of sites that I keep open all the time: Google Reader (using Helvetireader of course), this site, the visitor logs for this site, the server stats for this site (I may be sharing too much here…), my Flickr stats, Facebook & Last.fm. They can be split up nicely into: News, Blog+Stats & Social Networks.

In the last couple of months I’ve added another site into that last category, which slots in very nicely right next to Flickr: Dribbble.

So what is Dribbble? In short, it is to design and creativity as Twitter is to a blog post; as a member of the site, you upload little snippets of what you’re working on, limited to a 400×300 pixel canvas. That’s actually pretty much it; everything else has a vague twitter-ish feel around it so you can follow people, have followers and all that jazz. It’s simple, and all the better for it.

It’s just come out of a lengthy beta period so now non-drafted players (it uses basketball as a hook to hang all of the interface metaphors around, which is a nice touch) can see what people are posting. In a (if you ask me) brilliant move though they haven’t opened it up so everyone can join; it still rocks the same invites system it did pre-launch.

Artificial constraints are key to the Dribbble experience and it’s all the better for it. Obviously there’s the canvas size limitation (which means you can post work-in-progress things without giving away too much, for example), but also they limit they amount of shots (images) you can post per month – the inference being to make every pixel count. That naturally extends out to members; by keeping with an invitation system – and an invitation system that makes it clear who invited who at that – it keeps the quality up, and puts the quality control in the hands of the users.

That ‘quality’ is probably the most important factor of Dribbble, and the reason why it’s joined the stalwart list of sites I always keep open. It’s like having a little stream of beautiful creativity you can dip into every time you feel the need. Obviously you can tailor it by following people you already know and respect (and that’s perfect for a quick creativity fix), but I find both the ‘Popular‘ (which lists the most popular shots) and ‘Everyone‘ (which shows everything) feeds intoxicatingly addictive.

It’s such a brilliant way to be inspired.

I’ve written before on the topic of Ambient Interactivity and this seems to tap into a similar strain; Ambient Inspiration. A stream of little nuggets of creativity flowing past your browser, just ripe for sparking off your own interesting ideas.

So, with that all said I do have a couple of invites (UPDATE: all gone!) I can share with you but as in the spirit of the above they’re not going to go to just anyone; if you want one, post a link in the comments below to your work. If you make the grade, it’ll be yours.

P.S. Here’s my Dribbble page.