The document outlines a design thinking process that includes four key phases: 1) Research and understand through empathy, research, and user data 2) Explore and converge by sketching designs, exploring options, and converging on a solution 3) Test and refine through rapid iterative testing, collecting user feedback, and making refinements 4) Analyze test results and user behavior through analytics to ensure improvements are effective

1. 01 Research and understand
02 Explore and converge
03 Test and refine
Sudeep Dasgupta Design Leader at eBay Confidential and proprietary Information.
01 RESEARCH & UNDERSTAND
Empathy
Research
User Data
02 EXPLORE AND CONVERGE
2
1
3
DESIGN
CONVERGENCE
03 TEST & REFINE
Results
Conceptsketches
Explore options
Refine
Design Method

2. Analyze the task
Empathy
Research
User Data
• Understand business requirement and strategic goals
• Improvement of existing product or feature
Research Planning
• Organize and define research objectives.
• Implement research methods most suitable for the task
• Engage researchers to identify user profiles and personas
Type of research
• Use the appropriate research methods
• Qualitative research: Customer pulse session, visits (ethnographic
studies) Talk to users to identify user needs and the situations they are in.
• Data Analytics and Data trends Use Data analytics tools and work with
data experts to identify user trends and pain points.
Competitive landscape
• Review best practices : what are the most common user practices for
performing a particular task and what are the opportunities to improve
• Understand the implications of change. How deep rooted are the current
practices and what will be the resistance to change
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user needs assessment and evaluation
Research and understand

3. Actionable ideas
Learnings from research have to be understood and processed carefully to identify opportunities and
challenges. Which become the starting point for the next step. Which is usually sketching out ideas
based on user stories.!
!
Identify:!
• Pain points!
• Needs!
• Opportunities !
• Challenges!
• Quick wins!
Some key themes and Opportunities :!
! •! Lots of missed opportunities when search sessions remain unfinished !
! ◦! Explore ways to remind users of their abandoned searches, items viewed!
! •! SRP work lost between sessions!
! ◦! Save progress and resume the exact search!
! ◦! Save refinements!
! ◦! Indicate which items have been viewed !
! •! Data is collected throughout the day from multiple sources - Photos, notes, browser searches, SMS, email, Facebook msgs, items on
other sites/apps, etc.!
! ◦! How can we support this behavior and help users keep track of their info?!
! •! Increased mobile use on weekends !
! ◦! How can we optimize for this pattern?
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Sample of actionable ideas
Actionable ideas

4. First define what is the user goal.!
Create the user story for reaching the goal. !
Create a series of narrative use-cases for the product that
illustrate every step in the user’s journey. !
!
Move past the visual details to make better decisions on
what really matters-how their product finally works.!
!
At this stage generating ideas is important. It is not just
brainstorming. All the designers in the team work on the
solutions independently and sketch them out on paper or a
whiteboard.
!
Identify smaller pieces of the user interaction flow and tackle
them with a fresh perspective.
!
Later combine the pieces into an end to end journey and
see if the pieces fit together.
!
Confidential and proprietary Information.Sudeep Dasgupta Design Leader at eBay
User stories

5. Sketching the user stories helps in creating wireframes
that are transformed into relatively high fidelity mocks
or interactive Keynote presentation.!
We prefer to create high-fidelity mockups rather than
testing wireframes to create an experience that would
seem “real” to users.!
While designing we keep a note of some key heuristic
details!
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Reduce the cognitive load on the user!
A. Leverage users' existing knowledge!
B. Provide enough information to guide users, not too much
to confuse them.!
C. Use progressive disclosure to provide more information.!
!
Aesthetic and minimalist design!
A. Simplify UI elements.!
B. Display relevant information only.!
!
Affordance!
Information organized for ease of use.!
Rely on recognition, not recall.
Sketches to prototype

6. Rather than testing wireframes, we prefer to
create high-fidelity mockups in order to
create an experience that would seem “real”
to users. Sometimes it is easy to create a
clickable prototype with some transition
effects in Keynote. While this makes the
process more labor intensive, it does result
in rich, insightful feedback.!
!
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02 EXPLORE AND CONVERGE
2
1
3
DESIGN
CONVERGENCE
03 TEST & REFINE
Results
Conceptsketches
explore options
Refine
We’ve found RITE study to be a powerful but !
low-risk way to test, validate, and improve our
designs, while engaging and building consensus
among stakeholders.!
This method is similar to typical usability testing in
that participants are asked to complete tasks using
a think-aloud protocol. The major difference is that,
instead of waiting until the end of the study to
gather the findings and suggest improvements, the
team iterates on the design as soon as issues are
discovered by one or two participants. In this way,
designers can quickly test and get feedback on
new solutions and ideas.
We usually recruit six participants online
who come into our usability lab for one-
hour sessions over the course of three
days. Usually half of our participants are
new to eBay and rest are either tenured
users or newly registered. The observers
of the sessions include designers, content
Prototype Test
strategists, engineers, and product
managers, most attending the sessions
in- person (we use our Adobe Connect
web conferencing tool to include those
who cannot be there in person).
Sudeep Dasgupta Design Leader at eBay
Rapid iterative testing and evaluation (RITE)

7. Iterations
Because we use the RITE method, we allocate
some time after each session for the product
team to discuss any changes that need to be
made before the next participant begins.!
!
Usually we include a day for iterations between
the first and second day. !
!
Overall, go through two rounds of iterations
(one round per day). !
!
Our changes to the design are not complete
overhauls. Instead they include alterations like
language rewrites, adding notifications, and
reorganizing settings.
Confidential and proprietary Information.Sudeep Dasgupta Design Leader at eBay

8. Sudeep Dasgupta Design Leader at eBay Confidential and proprietary Information.
User testing Data Analytics
User testing results can be corroborated with data analytics to find definitive behavioral trends.
Matching these results can be crucial in finding UX issues as well as measuring the success of
design improvements.
After the new designs are finalized, the changes are implemented and call to action triggers (CTAs)
are tagged for analytics measurement.!
!
We have a robust experimental platform that allows us to conduct A/B testing where a small
percentage of the traffic is diverted to the new design.!
!
Conversion metrics!
Engagement metrics!
Bounce Rate & Exit rate!
Average time on page and site!
Site speed!
If the KPIs are +ve we start adding additional traffic and keep a close watch on the metrics.
Analytics

9. With an emphasis on listening, user empathy, whole-brain thinking,
collaboration, and experimentation, the design thinking process
offers a complementary approach to analytical decision thinking. !
This process always opens up new paths to innovation.
Research: Rite study method (Michael Medlock, Dennis Wixon, Bill Fulton, Mark Terrano and Ramon Romero Microsoft),
Informance (Informed performance):Brenda Lauren (California College of the Arts Graduate Program of Design), Design
thinking: Tom & David Kelly(IDEO), Design sprint: Jake Knapp (Google Ventures), Sketching and story telling: Bill Buxton
(Microsoft), Affordance and heuristics : Don Norman and several others.
References:
Confidential and proprietary Information.Sudeep Dasgupta Design Leader at eBay
Conclusion