Hi Everyone!

Our names are Josh and Johnny. We created CritWalls.com, a platform for visual collaboration, and we're trying to make it available for schools everywhere.

First, think about how often you and your team work hands-on with print-outs, inspiration boards and critique walls. How do you do this online? For years, we would email our teams dozens of images or PDFs, and then everyone would respond with lists of bullet points and essays. We were constantly overwhelmed with hundreds of email threads discussing a half dozen projects. Skype, screen-share and PowerPoint presentations have become common ways to present our work, but we still needed something to collaborate on building the ideas and carrying the conversations beyond the presentation.

Our Solution 

And so, we built CritWalls. It is an online platform designed to bring back that interaction of sharing, presenting, and critiquing visual materials. It is an engaging environment where users can interact with image files and PDFs on a virtual ‘wall,’ pinpoint discussions and critiques, make sketches with drawing tools, and record audio messages – all in real-time. And best of all, it's built to be shared, FREE. So, before you go on, you should go to CritWalls.com, try it out, and create some walls to share with your friends, colleagues, or clients. 

Check out a few walls (instantly) with our View-Only links below, along with some ideas on how people are using CritWalls:

• For designers, it is a natural way to present and discuss a product line without wasting an entire day on Powerpoint presentations. 
• For product managers, it is the centralized place to keep track of a project's development progress, visually.
• Freelancers and agencies can collaborate with their clients on storyboards, advertisements, designs, web designs, photos, or pretty much anything visual. 
• For the managers, clients, and business-side stakeholders, CritWalls is where everyone on the team goes to have visual discussions (without having to learn Photoshop). 

Our Goal

We want to put together a set of features dedicated to the place where the idea of CritWalls was born - in schools. 

In fact, CritWalls can be perfect for schools, especially in art, design, and creative classes that work with hands-on, visual materials. Today, before every class, students spend a lot of money printing out each assignment on poster boards. During class, everyone takes turns presenting and discussing each other's work. After class, the projects are taken down and the walls are cleared to make room for the next group. No conversations are recorded, all presentations are lost, and a lot of money has been spent. 

And so, we started dreaming. What if they used CritWalls? Schools can bring their classrooms online so that everyone can discuss each other's work, in and out of the classroom. They can access all of their projects, use it for file-sharing, and collaborate together on group work. And what if they used their classroom's projector? Students and instructors can simply upload their work, arrange them as if they would arrange their printouts in the classroom, and then present. After class, nothing is lost and all comments are saved, and the best part is - students can continue the conversation after class meetings, creating small networks of supporting groups. They can also share their projects with anyone they want and even get feedback from friends, family, clients, or anyone online. 

Schools can also use CritWalls to finally create online courses that facilitate the same level of group interaction, sharing, and critiquing as on-campus courses. In addition, CritWalls will save each student thousands of dollars since they won’t have to print every assignment on poster boards. And, it’ll be great for the environment.

Kickstarter + CritWalls

When we found out about Kickstarter, our dreams rekindled. For more than a year, the two of us have dedicated our lives personally, professionally, and financially to create everything that CritWalls is today. We've been able to do everything ourselves except programming, and so we need your help to raise the funds to pay the developers to build this set of features. We want to offer school admin integration, with custom URL addresses and custom-branded pages (instead of the CritWalls logo). We want to add more file-type compatibilities for different types of classes. We want to create a presentation mode that allows a presenter to record their movements and audio. Much like having textbooks on tablets, we’d love to expand CritWalls onto a mobile application for students and their portfolios and presentations. 

Our goal is to raise the funds to get this set of features developed by the time Fall semester starts. Please check us out, help us spread the word, and let us know if you have any questions or ideas! 

Check out our Facebook, G+, or Twitter, or shoot an email to me and Johnny at Support@CritWalls.com. Thanks everyone!!