Einen ungewohnt tiefen Einblick in den Shirtauswahlprozess bei Threadless gibt Rob Walkers aktuelle Consumed-Kolumne ("Mass Appeal") heute im New York Times Magazine:
"It’s a crowd-pleasing story, but there has always been more to Threadless than mere mobocracy.
For instance, it also offers a line of Select T-shirts, featuring the work of well-established designers like Cody Hudson.
The voting system is straightforward: users rate each submission on a 0-to-5 scale and offer comments that range from the constructive to the unprintable. (...)
While most winners have scores of 2.6 or higher, one recent batch included a design with a score of 2.0. That’s because the final decision about which T’s actually get made and sold has always involved a bit of nonpublic number crunching.
For example, Threadless looks at how many 0s and 5s a design gets; designs that inspire passionate disagreement often get printed because they tend to sell, Kalmikoff says. (...)
“We envisioned Threadless at first to be this level playing field, where everyone gets an equal shot,” Kalmikoff says. “But you start to realize that leaders and popularity and all those things are quite possibly an organic, natural part of any community.”
What Threadless has done is try to keep exploiting the benefits of those natural tendencies while avoiding their potential pitfalls. Even a design democracy needs a few checks and balances."
Die Kolumne dreht sich heute außerdem um die "Star"-Designer aus der Threadless-Community, die 16mal und öfter gewonnen haben.
Frühere Beiträge zum Thema:
Kommentare