I just rediscovered this post that I had tucked away in my Drafts folder that never saw the light of day. Since my original writing (last March), Etsy seems to have changed the very approach I was praising them for so perhaps it ultimately wasn’t succesful for them (you can see the new one here).
For the purposes of this post, I’m going to be referring to the old listing (screenshot above). In addition to the usual list of experience requirements, etc. Etsy added an interesting wrinkle to the UI Designer application process – they presented an interface puzzle as part of the process and challenged their potential candidates to show their ability to synthesize and design.
Personally, I found it to be just involved enough to weed out the scattershot resume folks, but not so involved that people would feel like they were doing spec work. It also has an additional side benefit of giving the interviewer and interviewee fertile ground for discussion, as well as providing a window into the way a person presents their work.
The fact that the puzzle has been removed from their listings leads me to believe it wasn’t too successful. I wonder if it proved to be too much for people and they were’t getting enough applicants. Either way, I applaud Etsy for trying to find new ways to uncover those qualities you look for in a UI/UX Designer that might not immediately reveal themselves during a standard interview process.
Love having the option to turn off the stalker map and really love the tone of the copy.
Check out what I just got today from our friends at Facebook. Not so fast Jupiter One!
Best quote from my friend Kevin: “Someone should tell them it’s not MySpace.” Ahh… remember when MySpace was relevant?
Unfortunately, I think we’re headed for more, not less, of this sort of behavior on Facebook.
Leave it to the Japanese to take something as mundane as the barcode and make an artform out of it.
Update: Check out this post filled with awesome barcodes that safoocat sent me via Flickr.
This reminded me of those super cool Japanese manhole covers from a while back:
These are great examples of how anything (even something as municipally boring as a manhole) can be made into something interesting with a little attention to design. Don’t be lazy.
Read more about the barcodes here and the manholes here.
Get Satisfaction is an awesome site devoted to providing a platform for companies, as well as the people who use their products, to provide (and share) support for their products. It’s a top notch approach to customer service that does a great job at leveraging current technology as well as current social community behavioral trends to build an ecosystem of support that builds upon itself.
Apart from just being a really crisply designed site overall, they do a few things exceptionally well. The one I wanted to call out here was the way they address what is plaguing a lot of us these days – social network fatigue and the cold start problem. They’ve found a very elegant way to allow their new users to use a social profile they might already have to serve as the foundation of their Get Satisfaction profile.
For more on the company, here’s a snippet from their About section. I highly recommend you check them out next time how find yourself in need of help with a product, or better yet, if you’re particularly passionate about something that others might need help with.
Get Satisfaction is a direct connection between people and companies that fosters problem-solving, promotes sharing, and builds up relationships. Thousands of companies use this neutral space to support customers, exchange ideas, and get feedback about their products and services. Get Satisfaction is open, transparent, and free. You’re free to ask, free to answer, and free to start a new conversation. Everyone is invited and encouraged to participate: companies, employees, customers — anyone with an opinion, an answer, or something to say.
