October 10, 2026 · 8 min read · Building in public
Building Art Journal in Public: Ratings, Shared Artworks, and What the Numbers Actually Say
What shipped since August, how people actually use it, and the things I got wrong along the way.
Every image in this post comes from someone in our seed community, the people who joined early, posted before there was much to see, and kept telling me what felt off. I wanted this update to look like them, not like a product screenshot.
It's been about seven months since Art Journal opened its doors. This is an honest look at what I've built since late August, what the numbers say, and what I'm learning from the gap between the two.
What shipped since August
1. An impact rating, from 1 to 10
Every moment can now carry a small dotted meter: how much did this artwork move you? Not whether it's good, but what it did to you. Each level has a word attached, from a quiet glance to “made me pause” to “stayed with me”.
2. Artwork pages, built from museum collections
Moments now connect to real artworks, artists and places. I imported open-access works from the Met, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Rijksmuseum, Europeana and DigitalNZ, and each artwork page comes with a few gentle prompts to help you reflect when you're standing in front of it. Today 95% of moments are linked to an artwork page.
3. One artwork, many people
When two people write about the same work, the feed used to show two near-identical cards. Now they stack into one tile showing how many moments it has and the average rating, and tapping it opens the artwork page where every reflection reads like a review you can expand.
This was the first artwork to get two moments from two different people, and it's the reason the stacked tiles exist.
4. Artists and places in Discover
Discover now has four views in one row: Moments, Artwork, Artists and Places. You can browse 165 artists and 140 venues that someone in the community has actually stood in front of.
5. Quieter work: search engines
Artwork pages are in the sitemap now, and new ones are sent to Bing straight away when they're published. Nobody will notice this, and it's probably the change most likely to bring new people in.
The numbers, without the spin
175 people have signed up. 81 of them, a little under half, have saved at least one moment. Together they've saved 348 moments, and 80% of those are public, which still surprises me for something I pitched as a personal journal.
- Mar146
- Apr65
- May17
- Jun9
- Jul16
- Aug43
- Sep23
- Oct16*
* October so far (10 days).
March was launch month: 146 moments and 45 sign-ups. By June we were down to 9 moments for the whole month. August came back to 43, mostly thanks to new people finding the artwork pages. 36 people were active in the last 30 days, and 18 in the last week.
Did anyone actually use the rating?
This was the feature I was most nervous about. In March I wrote that Art Journal was “not to rate art, not to judge it”. Then in August I added a rating. So I owe you an explanation, and some data.
Since it launched on August 28, 28 of 46 new moments (61%) were rated, even though it's optional. What I didn't expect: people went back and rated 63 older moments too. Their old moments meant enough to them to go back and say so.
Average: 6.6. Nobody has used 1 or 2 yet.
Two things jump out. Nobody uses 1 or 2, which makes sense, because you don't write about art that left no mark. And the scale bunches up at 4 and at 8. My guess is people read it as “interesting” versus “this stayed with me”, and the levels in between need better words.
The honest caveat: those 91 ratings come from just 18 people. It's a strong signal from a small group, not proof.
What I'm learning
A launch spike is not a habit
March felt like proof. June felt like failure. Neither was true. People don't see art every week, so a museum journal will always come in waves, around trips, exhibitions and weekends. I stopped measuring this weekly and started asking whether people come back after their next museum visit.
Signing up is easy. The first moment is the real door.
Less than half the people who join ever save a moment. That gap matters more than any feature I could add. The artwork pages help, since starting from a known artwork is far less intimidating than a blank page, but the first-moment experience is still my biggest problem.
Likes are easy, words are hard
There are 665 likes and 56 comments, roughly 12 to 1. People are happy to say “I see you”, but much less often “here's what I think”. That's fine for a quiet space, but it means the conversation I imagined isn't happening yet.
Sometimes I build for the community I hope to have
The stacked tiles solve a problem that, today, exists for exactly three artworks. By any sensible product logic I built it too early. I did it anyway, because the moment two strangers write about the same sculpture is the whole point of this place, and I wanted it to feel special when it happens.
Not everything lands
The “when did you see it” date, which I thought would matter for remembering old exhibitions, has been filled in on 17 moments out of 348. That tells me something. It stays for now, but it won't get more space on the screen.
What's next
Making the first moment easier, giving the middle of the impact scale better words, and finding small ways to turn a like into a sentence. And probably a few things I haven't thought of yet, because most of what's on this list came from you.
To the seed community: thank you for posting before it made sense to. This place looks the way it does because of your eyes.
Save your next art moment
Next time something stops you in a museum, on a street, or on your fridge: take a photo, write one sentence, and rate how much it moved you.
Start your Art Journal