Aside from Dribbble, how do you all get feedback for your work? Do you have a forum online? People in your coworking space? Old friends from school? Do you do it via email? iMessage? IRL?

One big change after moving from agency to a small startup is that I feel a lot more silo'd and "secretive". Even though I'm in the same office as other designers, I haven't had the chance/it always felt weird to reach out to the other superbusy designers in Betaworks.

Dribbble? Ew.

@julius Dude, you site like 10ft away, just swing by. :)

Good topic! I feel a big part of being a designer (and growing/getting better) is showing your work, being ok people not liking it and being unafraid to experiment. It's kind of a shame that critique has fallen out of practice lots of places. My first few jobs it was an essential part of the process.

For me personally? I show things to my co-workers in person or over Skype. Lucky to have a good group there. I also have a handful of other designer pals I share with. They usually provide great feedback. Maybe start a Betaworks design show-n-tell?

I also go directly to our user base fairly often. With them you need to be a bit more directed when asking for feedback, but it's an option that often yields insightful results.

I've been less inclined to post things on Dribbble lately, simply because the audience has shifted away from what I do.

The focus (and more importantly what people like to give feedback on) is really illustration and gloss.

It's hardly even what I think of as graphic design anymore.

But beyond that, I don't feel it's all that good for quality feedback on a lot of things. For some projects (or parts of projects) it can be good if you can actually get people to engage with it (which is harder and harder if you're not presenting something amazing and polished) but I've noticed the value in this sense really disappearing from Dribbble, and others like it.

@Justin lol I gotta get you on gchat or something.

@Keith - Yes, we definitely give each other feedback within the company, and I have a few key design friends that I ping via gchat/AIM/fb, heavily using CloudApp, GrabBox, or LayerVault to share mocks, or using our staging servers to test things.

How do you approach asking the user base? Do you go through someone on your community team? Do you send emails? Call? Might be different since Desk has paying customers.

Has anyone used Behance's WIP? How's that? Adding Clement here since he works there and wondering if he has anecdotes about the uses.

@Julius - So yeah, good question re: user/customer feedback. I've done a few things.

When I started at Desk, for example, I solicited users to come talk to me about the product via Twitter, etc. I met a bunch of them, got their impressions, etc and got their email so that I could ping them from time to time. That's been a huge help. Building up a group of users to get feedback from is one of my #1 tips for designers. So helpful

I also do talk quite a bit to our community, sales and support teams. (Another tip!) They not only give good feedback themselves, they can introduce me to people who will.

Most of the feedback comes via Skype or email. But you can also look at services like verifyapp.com or usertesting.com

Some of the answers here are amazing. At Pulse we do a feedback session before finalizing the designs and implementing them. Of course some times we have a better perspectives after seeing things in action. Some thoughts in no particular order below:

1) I always aim to have a meeting before any feature is designed. Why are we doing this? What do we expect it to lead to? Are we killing any feature to balance complexity in app? I feel this is really important to how much of feedback you need once you are done designing.

2) I avoid doing multiple options especially when I already have a preference for one. Of course there are moments when I have no idea which of the two versions if better and hence the options.
......

3) I always ask people to be as blunt as possible when giving feedback. When they say this looks ok, I always ask them to choose between if they like it or hate it?

4) In case of either answer, my favorite question is WHY?
A: Why do you hate it?
B: Oh I don't think the users will click that button?
A: Why?
B: Oh it is too subtle?
A: Hmm. Is the button the primary action we want in this view?
B: Maybe not, but this is important too. No?

Now you have one important feedback and a choice as a designer to make. Note it down. Next person. Repeat.

5) I will be honest. I rarely ask users for feedback on a static design. We do test things with a beta set of users. And iterate accordingly.

6) I do reach out to designer friends for feedback

And almost always in person because I hate writing down descriptions of a design in an email, unless the other person is on the same frequency and just gets what I have designed and considered.

I've never been a fan of Dribbble. I think it does serve a purpose but as a design feedback tool is completely inappropriate. I don't expect relative strangers with no prior knowledge of the design context and requirements to be able to give valuable feedback.

I've worked at companies that aim at creating a culture where design is objective and can be critiqued and reviewed against those objectives. Oh course user testing helps show you where problems do exist but not necessarily why they exist or how to fix them.