{"id":117,"date":"2026-06-04T13:32:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T10:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/2026\/06\/04\/why-people-are-involved-in-curating-selections-at-ohmywishes-principles-of-the-editorial-teams-work\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T11:40:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T08:40:47","slug":"why-people-are-involved-in-curating-selections-at-ohmywishes-principles-of-the-editorial-teams-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/2026\/06\/04\/why-people-are-involved-in-curating-selections-at-ohmywishes-principles-of-the-editorial-teams-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Why People are Involved in Curating Selections at Ohmywishes: Principles of the Editorial Team\u2019s Work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You might think curating a gift selection is easy: browse the trends, pull popular products, sort them. But at Ohmywishes, we have an entire editorial team dedicated to this work \u2014 because algorithms rarely know how to pick a genuinely great gift.<\/p>\n\n

My name is Kseniia, and I\u2019m the Editor-in-Chief of Curated Selections at Ohmywishes. Together with my team, we maintain the quality of our gift guides, develop new categories, and tackle the same challenge every single day: how do you help someone find a gift that will actually make another person happy?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

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Not Just a Gift Catalog\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n

Selections or gift idea lists have existed almost since the very beginning of Ohmywishes. In the early days, they were put together by Azamat \u2014 the founder of the service. Over time, we saw how people responded to them, and it became clear that the selections needed to grow: to become more lively, more varied, and more useful to our users. That\u2019s how the editorial team came to be.<\/p>\n\n

We now have 15 editors, each responsible for a specific topic: beauty, fashion, electronics, jewelry, home goods, and more. But why go to all this trouble?The answer is simple: people often have no idea what to give someone. And sometimes, they don\u2019t even know what they want for themselves. That\u2019s exactly where our work begins. We try to build those gift idea lists not to fill space, but so that someone can open one and think: \u201cOh, that would be perfect for my friend\u201d or \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what I\u2019ve been wanting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

A Great Selection Is a Balancing Act<\/h2>\n\n

Our main editorial principle is probably this: don\u2019t let selections turn into an automatically updated catalog. Of course, we track trends, new arrivals, brands, and social media. But just because something is popular doesn\u2019t mean it belongs into a selection. In our children\u2019s categories, for instance, we try not to flood the selection with basics that parents would find on any marketplace anyway.We\u2019re more interested in offering something new \u2014 something the user might not have thought of themselves. At the same time, it\u2019s important not to go too far in the other direction, into niche or overly unusual ideas.For us, a good selection is always a balance. On one side \u2014 trendy, in-demand items that a lot of people want. On the other \u2014 timeless ideas that make for a good gift regardless of the season or what\u2019s fashionable right now.<\/p>\n\n

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Why We Don\u2019t Add Everything\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n

When someone opens a selection, they should feel confident that every item was chosen deliberately. So we look beyond product quality \u2014 we also consider the brand\u2019s ethos, how the item is presented, and the overall impression it leaves.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

The second thing we think about is context. Our homepage might feature anything at once: home d\u00e9cor, fitness gear, gifts for kids, for men, for women, electronics, skincare. But within a themed selection, everything should feel coherent and easy to navigate.Some items genuinely sit on the border between categories, and part of an editor\u2019s job is figuring out how to fit them into the larger structure in a way that makes sense. Because a good selection isn\u2019t just a set of ideas \u2014 it\u2019s a smooth, intuitive journey for the user.<\/p>\n\n

The Work Is Really About Understanding Other People\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n

Most of what we do is observation. We track trends, monitor social media, follow brands and local makers, look at what users are saving, and talk through ideas as a team. But the hardest part is stepping outside your own bubble. You have to keep thinking about people with completely different backgrounds, ages, interests, and lifestyles \u2014 and their tastes are endlessly surprising.Once, I added a digital piano from a small local independent brand to our homepage. Honestly, I wasn\u2019t expecting much from it. Musical instruments felt like a niche category compared to, say, sneakers or skincare.<\/p>\n\n

But that piano became one of the most-saved items on the entire homepage. I think it worked because it didn\u2019t look like a musical instrument in the conventional sense \u2014 minimalist design, compact size, the ability to fold it nearly flat against a desk. It felt more like a beautiful piece of furniture than a piece of technology.<\/p>\n\n

People probably looked at it and thought: \u201cI didn\u2019t know something like this existed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

This is exactly why we pay so much attention to local and independent brands. They often make the most original, alive, and authentic things \u2014 you can feel a specific person and their vision behind them. And it\u2019s those kinds of discoveries that make our selections feel human.<\/p>\n\n

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AI Can\u2019t Make Good Gift Ideas Lists<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

Yes, an automated system can analyze statistics, page views, trends, and user behavior. It can quickly aggregate popular products and predict what someone is most likely to click on.<\/p>\n\n

But the problem is that algorithms simply show you what you\u2019ve already seen. Editors work differently: they filter ideas through the prism of their own taste, their own experience, and a genuine desire to understand other people.<\/p>\n\n

I like the idea that taste isn\u2019t just the ability to choose something beautiful. It\u2019s a social skill \u2014 the ability to connect an object with a specific person, their life, their habits, their desires. That\u2019s why editorial work is fundamentally built on empathy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

The Hardest Part of Our Work Is Being an Editor All the Time<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

I think any gift editor eventually starts seeing the world a little differently. You\u2019re walking through a store, scrolling through your feed, noticing something at a friend\u2019s place or catching a glimpse of something on the street \u2014 and you automatically find yourself thinking: \u201cCould that be a great gift?\u201d<\/p>\n\n

On one hand, it\u2019s genuinely interesting. On the other, it\u2019s pretty exhausting, because you\u2019re constantly inside an enormous stream of information.<\/p>\n\n

But maybe that\u2019s exactly what keeps our selections alive \u2014 and keeps Ohmywishes one of the leaders in the market.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You might think curating a gift selection is easy: browse the trends, pull popular products, sort them. But at Ohmywishes, we have an entire editorial team dedicated to this work \u2014 because algorithms rarely know how to pick a genuinely great gift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":99,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gift-ideas","category-user-experience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions\/118"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}