the Designer Pages blog

We recently met with Michele Caniato, Executive Vice President at Material ConneXion. What a wonderful gentleman and additionally what an amazing collection of materials. If Designer Pages is an online playground of products in architecture and design, Material ConneXion is truly its physical counterpart. One could lose himself to no end browsing, touching, smelling, and feeling all these innovative materials.

As Michele elegantly marked our distinctions, he’s a brick concept while we’re a click concept. Of course what he meant was Material ConneXion provides an unmatched physical library, while Designer Pages hopes to fulfill a social media approach. I wonder if there could ever be a synergy?

Anyways, why are we so interested in a click? Yesterday we were speaking at RVA (one of my favorite architecture firms in New York City), and a designer asked me if we’d consider integrating higher product research into this application. I of course understand the motivations for such a question…in the world of architecture, innovation is paramount and access to rich content is a must. I entirely agree with this position and believe product suppliers are capable to provide this information over time.

But more importantly, I want to harness the wisdom of our crowd: according to our users, what products are important and worth viewing? This is the voice I am most interested in bringing to market. And to capture this pulse, the application tracks every click and every action.

When you search ‘chairs’ how do we know what product to return first in the results? It’s a relevancy algorithm influenced by how many other people have also searched ‘chairs’ and continued forward to click a product, save a product, or add a product to a workspace. That’s the beauty of collective intelligence and we intend to expand our platform to further tap into our community of trendsetters.

Lastly, while we’re on the exciting subject of the click… a good friend of mine – a local New York City good doer whose known as SpiffyTeg – sent me a note asking that I click to help breast cancer. Apparently, sponsors have agreed to contribute funds to free mammogram clinics in exchange for the advertisements and exposure. Because we’re a community of goodhearted people and this is an important cause, I thought we might all help. After all, a click is a small price to pay to help…