Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
eBay Desktop Usability Study
The eBay Desktop blog is soliciting volunteers to take part in an eBay Desktop usability study.
The only requirements to take part in the study are that you have to be located in the SF Bay Area and (at least an occasional) user of eBay desktop.
I’m finding out from Alan Lewis if there is still room to take part in this study. He and I are due to sit down early this month to talk about the progress of Desktop for Ink.
On a related note, Alan has just published a patch release this week for eBay Desktop: 1.0.6. “This version has the usual bug fixes and performance improvements, plus one frequently requested feature: a title and description search option! Now, just like on the eBay website, you can search both the titles and descriptions of items to get the widest possible set of items that match your searches.”
UPDATE: There will be two in-person usability sessions taking place on Thursday, July 10 in San Francisco at 6pm and 8pm. Each participant will be compensated $100 for their time. Please email ebayink@ebay.com if interested in attending and I can make sure you receive further information regarding location.
Cheers,
RBH
Tagged: ebay, eBay People, ebaydesktop, ecommerce, usability test
Andy GeldmanOn 07.03.2008 at 4:15 am Said:
It’s great that eBay take usability seriously…
I’d love to get an insight into eBay’s usability work on the main site. Search seems to be getting ever more complex… does that come out well in the studies?
DaveyOn 07.03.2008 at 9:23 am Said:
I have to give kudos that input of any kind is being solicited. I can only hope that the same is being done for the selling experience and vetting of policies in the future, so disasters that lead to policy reversals can be avoided and the community less damaged.
In hindsight, it would have been great to do this for Best Match before it hit the street, as my using it as a buyer is completely frustrating so I quit, only for the eBay system to reset my default search back several times. In a thread in Seller Central, some sellers were blowing off steam by telling variants of the lightbulb joke: “How many eBay execs does it take to change a light bulb?” A: They can’t find a light bulb because of Best Match. They can find Light Beer and Tulip Bulbs, but the sellers have great feedback…
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