- Cross-cultural design
- Interaction design
- Information design
- Project management
Process
The first phase of this project was really understanding why members aren't using eBay China's discussion boards, especially given the fact that discussion boards (or Bulletin Board Systems) are extremely popular in China. I was lucky enough to be in the China office during this project, so was able to see first hand some of the cultural differences that weren't being addressed by our current discussion board design. Additionally, I completed a competitive analysis that included the most popular discussion boards in China. Based on this research, I worked with the business representative and product manager to identify areas for improvement. I then created rough mockups of the initial redesign. Based on feedback from the project team (business representative, product manager, graphic designer) as well as eBay's user experience team, I created several iterations of the design.
One of the most important areas for improvement on eBay's discussion boards involved the concept of identity. Although a member's user id, feedback score, and related icons are currently shown, there's not any way for a member to personalize their post. Identity is one of the emerging standards in electronic communication, as can be seen on discussion boards as well as instant message and VoIP applications. Given the importance of identity, we added several ways for a user to personalize their posts, including the ability for users to upload an image, or avatar, to be displayed with each post.
The desire of users to express their identity is not specific to China. However, we did address several cultural issues specific to China with the new design. For example, in the current design, information is often displayed horizontally. While this may be appropriate for US users, it's not as natural for Chinese users. The new design better uses vertical space and reduces horizontal layout as much as possible.
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