What is the Live Design Feed, and does the voting data affect Challenge submission scores?

The Live Design Feed is a new feature that we’ve recently added to the main navigation of Minted.com. The Live Design Feed shows a moving stream of new submissions to Minted Challenges. The purpose of the feed is to bring Minted’s crowdsourcing model and community of independent artists to the forefront, and allow customers to experience Minted in a fun and dynamic way. We included the voting mechanism in the Live Design Feed so that customers can actively engage with the page.

To answer the second part of the question, no, the voting data in the Live Design Feed does not affect Challenge submission scores. Any votes cast in the Live Design Feed will not be included in Minted’s current Challenge voting process and will not affect artists’ final scores.

Because Minted’s voting process is such an important part of our business model, we are very careful about protecting the information. Our voting process includes an algorithm that strips out biased votes. Before we would ever consider incorporating the Live Design Feed voting data into our algorithm, we would first carefully observe and validate the source for a period of time. Also please note that, as is the case with a number of new features on Minted.com, we may consider changing the location of the Live Design Feed icon from the top navigation to another site locale.

You can currently access the Live Design Feed on the Minted homepage in two places: in the upper right-hand navigation and also in the module with the “ARRIVING NOW” headline.