Overview

Many amateur and enthusiast photographers use Instagram as a way to share their work, but don’t have a network for reliably getting actionable feedback for their work from peers or those more experienced than them. The pressure of Instagram to present a perfect, curated feed of images is a detriment to creativity and exploration, which are required to grow and develop a style as a photographer. OIA is a community of photographers focused on experimenting and learning together, in a space designed to encourage meaningful feedback and connections.

Goals

• Establish meaningful, long-lasting connections among members
• Give members the opportunity to become invested in each other and other’s work
• Members consistently receive actionable feedback on the work they post
  • 100% of posts receive at least one piece of actionable feedback
• Minimize trolling and unhelpful negative sentiment
  • Fewer than 5% of posts get flagged for trolling or negative behavior
• Maintain a high quality community
  • Greater than 90% of users satisfied with quality of community

Proposed functionality

Growing the community

The ability to join the community is extended via an invite system. Invites will be seeded to potential members initially by a trusted group. Members who join will also receive a fixed number of invites to give out as they choose. Members will be encouraged to leverage their existing social networks by posting that they have invites available, and for their followers to comment on the post with a link to their work in order to be considered for the invite. This method is designed to grow the network organically, and to maintain a high quality community.

Posting work

Cory, a member, has created a photo, and is wondering what people think of it. Cory posts the photo.

A group of 5-10 people are chosen algorithmically to review photo, anonymously. The reviewers don’t know who posted the photo and Cory doesn’t know who was selected to review the photo. The algorithm will optimize the set of reviewers to get timely, quality feedback.

After 24 hours, Cory gets a notification that his review is complete. All reviews submitted become visible to the entire group (Cory and all reviewers who submitted). Cory and the reviewer group have opportunity to follow up with further comments in a group chat.

Cory can thank and optionally tip any reviewer, which will be used as signal to prefer certain reviewers for future submissions.

Feedback format

When a member is selected for review, they will be notified via push notification or email. It should be clear that, although the photographer is anonymous, they have been selected specifically to review this work, and that they have 24 hours to complete the review.