What are product design communities?

Communities for industrial designers, UX designers, and product design professionals. You will find communities for critique and feedback, job hunting, and tool discussion across Discord and Slack, with some long-running independent forums serving the industrial design side of the profession.

Where do most product design communities live?

Reddit is the most common platform in this report (56% of 9 listings).

Are most of these communities free?

100% are free to join. The rest require payment, an application, or both.

How big is a typical product design community?

Among listings with public size data, the average is 67K members and the median is 22K. The median is usually the better signal for a typical group because a few large ones inflate the average.

What do these communities usually include?

Forum is the most common (78%). Others that show up often include job board, live chat, and newsletter.

How does Hive Index collect this data?

Listings are submitted by community builders and researchers, reviewed for relevance, and updated with platform, feature, member, review, and traffic data where available.

Where can I see the full list?

The full directory is on Hive Index's Product Design topic page, where you can filter by platform, size, features, and more.

Product Design Communities Report: Stats, Platforms,...

Executive Summary

We analyzed 9 product design communities listed on Hive Index to understand where people gather, what these groups offer, and which communities attract the most interest.

The big picture: In this smaller sample, product design listings cluster on Reddit, while a few large groups pull member averages up.

Source: Hive Index community database · Updated 2023-07-19

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Communities: 9
Platforms: 5
Avg members: 67K
Median members: 22K

Where Product Design Communities Are Hosted

Reddit
5(56%)
Independent Platforms
1(11%)
Discord
1(11%)
Slack
1(11%)
X / Twitter
1(11%)

Format mix

Forum / feed-based
6(67%)
Chat communities
2(22%)
Other platforms
1(11%)

Forum / feed-based is most common (67%), but chat communities is also well represented (22%).

Reddit leads (56% of listings).

Audience Size & Access

Community size

Tiny
<20 members
0(0%)
Small
20-100 members
1(11%)
Medium
100-1,000 members
0(0%)
Large
1,000-10,000 members
2(22%)
Huge
10,000-100,000 members
4(44%)
Massive
100,000-1M members
2(22%)
Gigantic
1M+ members
0(0%)

Free vs paid

The average is much higher than the median (67K vs 22K), which usually means a few large groups are pulling the average up.

How Product Design Differs From Other Categories

Product Design is more free-to-join than typical Hive Index topics.

Metric	Product Design	Hive Index average
Free to join	100%	85%
Median members	22K	25K
Average members	67K	669K
Paid or apply-to-join	0%	15%
Live chat	22%	38%
Discord share	11%	16%

Feature Mix

Common features appear in at least 15% of listings.

Common Features

Forum
78%
Job Board
33%
Live Chat
22%
Newsletter
22%

Niche Features

Member Perks
11%
Online/Offline Events
11%

Forum appears on 78% of listings.

What Visitors Click

Outbound clicks / mo: 29

Platform supply vs. clicks

Platform	Communities	Share of communities	Outbound clicks	Share of clicks
Reddit	5	56%	2	7%
Independent Platforms	1	11%	1	3%
Discord	1	11%	25	86%
Slack	1	11%	1	3%

Share is calculated within this topic.

Discord gets 86% of clicks but only 11% of listings, so visitors click it more than you'd expect from supply alone.

Most-clicked formats

Chat communities
26(90%)
Forum / feed-based
3(10%)

Most-clicked features

Job Board
26(90%)
Live Chat
26(90%)
Newsletter
26(90%)
Member Perks
25(86%)
Online/Offline Events
25(86%)
Forum
3(10%)

Most-clicked size ranges

Huge
27(93%)
Massive
1(3%)
Small
1(3%)

Top-clicked listings

Design Buddies
25(86%)
r/product_design
2(7%)
Core77
1(3%)

Most clicks go to chat communities and forum / feed-based communities.

Trends

Founded year

1995

2008

2009

2010

2012

2014

2020

2023

1 community has no founding year on file.

Most listed groups were founded around 1995.

Methodology & FAQ

Methodology

This report uses communities in the Hive Index database tagged as Product Design. We exclude removed or suppressed listings. Member counts, traffic, features, reviews, and ratings may vary by source and are updated periodically.

•We only have a handful of listings so far, so treat these numbers as directional.
•Last updated 2023-07-19

FAQ

: Communities for industrial designers, UX designers, and product design professionals. You will find communities for critique and feedback, job hunting, and tool discussion across Discord and Slack, with some long-running independent forums serving the industrial design side of the profession.
: Reddit is the most common platform in this report (56% of 9 listings).
: 100% are free to join. The rest require payment, an application, or both.
: Among listings with public size data, the average is 67K members and the median is 22K. The median is usually the better signal for a typical group because a few large ones inflate the average.
: Forum is the most common (78%). Others that show up often include job board, live chat, and newsletter.
: Listings are submitted by community builders and researchers, reviewed for relevance, and updated with platform, feature, member, review, and traffic data where available.
: The full directory is on Hive Index's Product Design topic page, where you can filter by platform, size, features, and more.

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All Product Design communities

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