Late last week
Shutterstock sent out a press release introducing – a little pre-maturely it turns out – a new image discovery tool called “Shutterstock Instant.” In fact, if you go to the Shutterstock site there is no evidence that this feature exists. It turns out it is still a prototype. As with all prototypes when it is finally released to the public it may be quite a bit different than it is today.
To view the prototype go to
http://shutterstock.com/instant/. The page asks, “Need inspiration?” All the user needs to do to get inspiration is enter a keyword.
Shuttertock says, “The interface re-imagines the traditional keyword search experience, and combines speed and simplicity to deliver a visual experience optimized for creative inspiration.”
The first thing to recognize is that Shutterstock has no plans to replace its current search experience. The company simply intend to add an additional new way to explore the collection that the customer is free to use or ignore. (Whew! Many customers will be glad to hear that.)
According to Wyatt Jenkins, Shutterstock VP of Product, “Everyone has moments (where they are) staring blankly at the search bar trying to figure out what to type…. We (have) tried something different with this interface.”
Once the user has entered a keyword, he/she is shown image returns that are several times larger than the typical thumbnail on the regular Shutterstock page. The search-return-order appears to be the same as “Popular” on the company’s primary site, but there are some variations in the order the images are delivered.
On the right are 10 different related keywords and under each of these are 5 thumbnails of images in that category. Click on the “more like this” or the keyword and the primary images are replaced with images on the new theme. Also on the right are 10 new keywords or phrases that are variations on the new theme.
Click on any image to see a full screen version. Then it is possible to move forward and backward one image at a time, or close the image and go back to where you were in the search. The images scroll endlessly allowing the user to browse 50 pages of content in about 1/20th of the time it would take to paginate through that same set of images.
More images meant there needed to be an easier way to save an image for later. To deal with this issue Shutterstock introduced starring images – a simple way to keep track of your experience without having to create a lightbox.
Jenkins says, "With Instant, we set out to give people an inspiring, visual discovery path - one that's not limited by their ability to articulate keywords. Now people can browse over 19 million images and see their ideas come to life with every keystroke."