Throughout 2024, there had been ongoing efforts to counteract a declining perception of Etsy's handmade inventory. With more of Etsy's inventory resembling mass manufactured items, and with a lacking investment in showing the role that sellers play in creating their items, Etsy was struggling to live up to its mission of "Keeping Commerce Human".
As the Design Lead on the buyer experience, I collaborated with the Senior Director on the seller experience to develop a vision for how we might build trust in our marketplace by highlighting the one thing that sets Etsy apart from the competitors: our independent sellers.
The creation of this vision was scoped to a tight timeline so that we could get it in front of VPs and the executive team and start working towards a plan to staff this project in late 2024 or early 2025.