Group Name and Members
Arts and Crafts
Julia Bomalaski, Logan Davis, Amy Feinstein, Deborah Turner, Evan Wilson
Website Type
We have chosen to focus on sites that offer instructions to create different types of arts and crafts. Examples include:
Pinterest Arts & Crafts from Cayton Children’s Museum
Happiness is Homemade 50+ Quick & Easy Kid Crafts
Jerry’s Artarama Free Art Instruction Videos
Why We’re Interested
There are so many different directions we could have gone when it comes to arts and crafts on the web – biographical and portfolio sites from fine artists, e-commerce sites for buying arts and crafts, instructions on how to make crafts, and more. While we found all of these sites interesting, we ended up choosing to focus on instructional sites because of their high potential for interactivity.
There is still quite a bit of variety when it comes to instructional arts and crafts sites. Some are aimed at parents or teachers of young children, some focus their attention on teen and adult hobbyists, and some are designed for professionals to share techniques. People coming to use these sites will have differing levels of computer and website navigation skills, so it will be interesting to see how usable, functional, and accessible they are.
It will also be interesting to compare sites that differ in their pricing structures. Some make their instructions and templates freely available to anyone who comes to the site, while some require users to create a free account, and others restrict access to those who pay a fee.
The size of a site (and accordingly, the number of people who run or are admins on a particular site), can also greatly affect usability. A site like Pinterest, which has a central hub but depends on many different individuals to create and organize its content, has a very different feel and level of usability from a site like Easy Peasy and Fun which was originally started by one person and has more of a blog feel.