The primary goal of this project was to develop a channel-agnostic creative tool that can generate creative assets at scale. This was a new creative direction for eBay and one foreign to many others, even within the company. While this creative tool sparked excitement and curiosity, there was some fear of the unknown.
Due to confidentiality, I cannot share the full scope of this project. However, I can share my design process and key takeaways.
From our initial discovery phase of conducting 16+ focus groups and recording 280+ user stories, some feedback focused on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and automation. Some people feared that this tool would nullify the need for creative roles at eBay. After hearing our users' concerns, I reflected on the dilemma of automating the creative process and the possible outcomes it could have.
From my perspective, a tool that executes tasks efficiently gives people more time to focus on areas of their work that need more attention. We wanted to make conscious design changes to emphasize users' autonomy while assisting their creativity through automation.
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With our user interviews, I was able to create personas that defined our targeted users and user flows that mapped our users’ existing processes. The process of mapping these flows allowed me to visually identify the pain points and understand where this new tool can come into play.
One of the biggest takeaways from this project was learning to collaborate with a global team. How can I relay the things I’ve completed to my teammates, and how can we share/work efficiently and collaboratively? With a project at this scale, I needed to communicate well and provide solutions that enhance our teamwork.
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Here are some of the tools I loved using for this project:
Despite the different time zones my team and I were in, these tools enabled us to collaborate in real-time. It was gratifying to draw and share our ideas as if we were in the same room.
As with many projects, there’s a moment when things head in a different direction, and you end up having to change the design completely. While this was stressful under tight deadlines, we needed to discuss and understand the rationale behind these sudden changes. To move forward with these new ideas, we validated our concepts through user testing. Our collected data and feedback were invaluable and ensured we made well-informed design decisions.
After many design reviews with our stakeholders and users, we built a solid foundation for our tool. The final deliverables for this project included high-fidelity mockups and prototypes that gave our development team a better understanding of how certain components should behave. The most rewarding part of this experience was learning many new tools and skills while building a strong relationship with my teammates.
Thank you to all my teammates for your support, perspective, and humor! It was a huge opportunity for me as a new graduate to jump on this project, and I’m happy I was able to impact the future tools of eBay.