Bunny Blog

None of the Bunnies has ever directly been accused of being a hipster. But we’ve all been spotted in the Silverlake region from time to time and the funky chic aesthetic is something we enjoy and draw inspiration from. So in this season of mass-market consumerism, may I draw your attention to:

…which is (in case you’ve never heard of it) kind of like an Ebay but for handmade things.

Not only do I dig on Etsy’s smart use of the information age’s hyper-niche-driven economy, but I think some very clever and innovative people thought about information design and the user experience when they put the interface together.

Think about how you browse a craft store or some funky shop filled with handmade treasures vs. how you shop at say, Target. At Target, you tend to think about the broad category of mass-market consumer goods you are interested in buying and you head for that part of the store and you get your consumer product and you’re cool. Those kinds of places are not places you tug on your sweetheart’s arm as you walk past on a blustery fall day and say “let’s go poke around in there for a while and see what we turn up.”

At a crafts store or some other emporium of neato ephemera, you DO poke around and it’s a delightful process. Etsy’s done some thinking about ways to enable that sort of experience while sitting in front of your computer. So in addition to the typical category-and-keywords searches that are staples of online shopping and auction portals, they’ve given the spotlight to some alternative search methods.

So you can search by the color of the object you want (and there are lots of colors, so those looking to match something in a Trading Spaces-esquere decorating frenzy can be precise. You can browse through lists created by users, or likewise make your own list in a way that I liken to getting to create your own front-window display of the trinkets and marvels you think other people should take notice of.

There are even two versions of what they call time machines that organize and sort through objects uploaded recently. This sounds ordinary, but I recommend you try the interface, which is not always practical but at least a lot closer to browsing than scanning a list at ebay.

I think there are some issues with the interface. While it’s neat to pick up objects and fling them around or see explosions of color bubble up when scanning a field for a particular color you want to search, it does get in the way once I know what the hell it is I want to look for. But I give these people props for not simply throwing up a site that believes it only needs to differentiate itself via product. As the web becomes more ubiquitous for casual users it’s time we started thinking about this:

It’s not enough to differentiate yourself via product in a digital medium. It really needs to be about differentiating user experience as well.

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