Altering the Creativity of Shopping Experiences
Most people would think of shopping as an experience which you go to Wal-Mart, silence yourself, and pick up merchandise. Epinions.com is a shopping site with a purpose to make shopping a fun and creative means to shop by inviting the agents (users) to enter the site and give their feedback for millions of products and services similar to corresponding blog posts. Also, Epinions organizes its content in a manner which the images of merchandise are proportionate to the comments about them, which is creative and invites our creativity back. The fundamental detail of the website, such as the social interaction provides an open exchange for comment and criticism that you could not find in store or on another website like Craigslist or Amazon.
Epinions collapsed search bar takes up minimal space, allowing room for many other creative affordances such as invitations to give your personal opinion regardless of whether your opinion has to do with merchandise, top ten items on Epinions, and photo of “every day” people that sends the message that this site is open to everyone. The social interaction among people within the site is an extension of itself and goes hand in hand with being creative and artistic because a part of the agency is being returned to the agent through use of the website.
Since people are restricting their use to the Internet, they may become lazy, but at the stake of having a site like Epinions return legitimate merchandise and services through a sense of community. The “web of trust” is a phrase Epinions uses and coins its purpose to make shopping a creative and interactive activity which the agent holds some responsibility for contributing to the site’s creativity. Also, the website generates an emotional response because the user is supposed to be able to trust this website as a legitimate source of creativity. The use of bright colors, different buttons, and a thumbs up or thumbs down message board are a few of the creative attributes examined in my project.
The fact Epinions.com makes mundane activities interactive and fun is the amazing part about it. Also, “the web of trust” provides a sense of security about what purchases a consumer will make. The internet is a popular way to scam people and Epinions tries to prevent scammers from entering the “web of trust.” Overall my project will focus on the sites creativity and affordances and how they relate to social networking and sharing.
October 27, 2009 at 7:36 pm
“Also, Epinions organizes its content in a manner which the images of merchandise are proportionate to the comments about them, which is creative and invites our creativity back.”
I agree that that’s a nice touch from a design standpoint, but you’ll need to make sure the linkages are a lot more clear. Just because a picture is larger doesn’t mean that our creativity is being “invited back.” In fact, most of what I see her doesn’t seem to have much to do with creativity, or why creativity is important. If anything, you seem to (still) be talking about other stakes that are related to creativity, but still their own distinct ideas. Your second paragraph connects social connectivity to creativity, but what’s creative about a search bar? If social connectivity through searching is the issue, then make it the issue. Similarly, dealing with creativity and the idea of preventing scams are two very different stakes, and i don’t see how they need to be talked about at the same time.