My web designer friends hated this idea. What do you think?

I like the idea. However, wouldn't a simple web app with a directory of these be sufficient?

Alright, so I'm a web designer of about 8 years. I really liked the first screen. I'd love to be able to slam a hotkey, query an image, and drag it over from your interface right on to my artboard. Most design apps can handle dropping files on them, and it's a pain in the ass to remember where the hell the "Place Image" file menu thing is for each different piece of design software. Drag on to my desktop is a given too, but maybe double-clicking could download to a folder I specify so I can easily and quickly load up a web project's image folder with the stock I need.

Same for gradients. Really cool. I'd want to use that in more than one way. First I'd want to be able to take a gradient and slap it into a design software which... is actually a f*@)#ing pain in the ass. Get this workflow:

So, I'm in Adobe Illustrator and I want to recreate a gradient I saw online and apply it to a square that I have on my artboard but I don't have hex/RGB color codes. The workflow is incredibly convoluted because you can't sample colors for a gradient with an eyedropper so it looks something like this:

http://recordit.co/k3BpxMGyMf (01:30 Screencast)

Essentially I need to paste two+ color codes to create a gradient. A tool that let me eyedrop multiple colors and then pastes in sequence would be lovely.

Would be equally useful for web development too.

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anyway, as your example continued and you clicked the ruler and the fonts... I started thinking your app is trying to do too much. There's a very good chance that at least one of the functionalities you suggested is already being done by a beautiful piece of software out there.

I'd rather download 3 pieces of software from you that do those 3 things very well, and very focused rather than download a tool that tries to do so much, and probably none of them at a market leading level.

Your screen measurements are going to have to be better than this: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pixelsnap

Color sampling better than this:
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/sip

Stock photo searching better than this:
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/stockmagic-for-mac-2

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I'd wager that you could exceed the experiences offered with these tools if you focused on one at a time, with the intention of being the best.

Installing and introducing software I might not use more than 10% of the features into my design workflow never feels appealing. I always figure there's an app out there purpose-built for that 10% feature that can do it better.

I like the idea. I am a beginning web designer, so I don't see as clearly the use cases and how it would fit in, but I like having resources on tap

I think the idea is great if you twist it a little bit. I'd want to add my favorite stock photos/gradients/palettes/icons and not just anything. Kind of like an asset library, and if it would also support drag and drop into sketch/folders/.. that would be awesome.

Adobe does something kinda similar in their apps with their library, which is usually a tab in the app. They've been trying hard to push it to the point where it's super annoying. I think they hope to sell some adobe stock through it.

I probably wouldn't use your tool. But my what I do is probably different from designers you talked to – i do a lot of video and print design and I often use or create fairly obscure images. I've never used sketch.

I like it. My first impression is that it’s incredibly useful. My second thought was whether I would change my existing workflow to accommodate this tool. It’s hard to say, but it’s worth evaluating a new tool’s “intrusiveness”. If a tool is minimally intrusive, adoption will be quite high (eg. Dropbox was just another folder in the computer). But if the tool requires me to change how I do things, it would definitely affect adoption.

As a designer I definitely think this could be useful - in terms of getting quality feedback on the idea, perhaps focusing on a specific use case example (building such-and-such kind of project) where it could come in handy would help.

If you're looking for a fellow designer to flesh this out a bit with, feel free to reach out!

I can understand why your friends were confused by the video, you don't have captions explaining what you are doing, or what the features of the app are. So when you click on the images button and it shows you pics, are those pics pulled from a folder on your computer, or are they previewed from a website? I guess a tool that can search all the best sites for resources would be cool because horizontal search engines aren't effective for when I'm specific about what I want.

Not sure I fully get what the product is. Will the toolbox float there, or is it something you activate? Is it your own apps only, or do you add third-party apps?

A similar product in results, is like Alfred or MacOS Spotlight. It's a toolbox where you write a "command" open/use a tool. I'd argue that this is a better solution than the floating toolbox.

Have you considered asking on a web design subreddit? You could be creative and instead of asking "do you need this!??", you can ask "is this a problem for anyone else? how do you currently solve it?"

Sketch plugin? I think there are some that have these features.