Problem statement

By October 2019, my UX design team of 3 people (including me) had spent 8 months to do an initial launch in the US, and then an additional 7 months for Germany. As we had to launch in an additional 16 (plus unsited) in 20 months

As a UX designer, I want to be sure the team can deliver quickly and efficiently as things start to ramp up.

My Goal

To create a design framework that supports the Global Payments Product and allows the design team to quickly design globally without sacrificing the major regional differences.

Research and investigation

When I was looking at this project, we’d already launched the MVP to a small portion of sellers in the US and were about to launch to a small portion in Germany. We had already run some initial studies to a) help form our strategic design approach and b) can be used to quickly catch up stakeholders.

The first two studies mentioned were done by an agency and I was involved as stakeholder throughout their process.

• Competitive analysis
  By looking at the logged out state for many competitors across the globe, we were able to analyze the tone of messaging, tools and policies provided, motivations, and more

• Initial seller interviews where we talked to 5 sellers (each from a different region), having them walk us through the marketplaces and products they use for selling.

• In depth regional studies in both US and Germany. Including user testings of the end-to-end B2C seller experience, focus groups, in situ interviews, surveys, and foundational research.

IDENTIFYING the requirement differences

Along with the research we’d done so far, I also took my knowledge of the product, investigated requirements, and mapped out the happy path flow from migration/registration to getting paid, then called out the regional differences in each.

The below is to get an idea of how the flows were structured and what it consists of. Due to the size of the visuals, it can’t be viewed in detail on my portfolio, but I’m happy to show a larger, zoomed in version in a call.

Hypothesis

Though we need more data and research to verify, the research we had done lead us to three basic theories.

One global platform

Sellers across geos generally operate the same way and have the same needs and concerns.

eBay can build a baseline product experience for managed payments with some regional customization (payment methods, regulation, etc.)

Regional messaging

Messaging and communication for managed payments will need to vary across geographies.

• Formality

• Information density

• CBT emphasis

• Seller support

CBT integration

In order to successfully roll-out to global sites eBay managed payments must address cross-border trade because it is a large driver, or sole driver, of sales for sellers in Europe and Asia.

What it is

The Global Payments Prodcut is what we need to build in order to accommodate 18+ regions. We hypothesized that 80% of the experience should be consistent across regions, with less than 20% changes.

What it is

A set of product components shared across all regions in the managed payments experience. Allows us to rapidly roll out to new regions while adding new features to the product.

What it does

Establishes the shared UI designs and English source text that will be reused and translated across all regions, with little localization needs.

Product requirements
“What makes it work”

Any features, functionality, legalese, or other product requirements that are required to go live in the region.

In short, any documented product requirements needed so Product and stakeholder teams can sign off on launch.

Cultural consideration
”What makes it successful”

The product can typically work without this consideration, but at the sacrifice of a good user experience.

Takes into account the…

• Emotions

• Mental models

• Perceptions

• Ways of thinking in each region.

Where we’ll have to focus

Using the research and product knowledge I had, I took the biggest 7 projects/flows in the experience and hypothesized the amount of Regional Delta each would need, split by product requirements and cultural consideration.

To help meet the goal of allowing the UX design team move quickly, while still taking into account regional differences, I created the Global UI Framework. This will identify which pieces in the experience need to be configurable in order to not only make sure the product works, but to also make sure it’s successful.

1. Get alignment on which UI/content is Global Baseline

• Avoid reinventing the wheel for every region

• Need cross domain agreement on what is expected to stay the same in each country (beyond translation)

• Allows to prevent churn in review on things that have already been decided

2. Focus on the Regional Deltas

When going to new regions we’ll only have to to discuss things that are either a) a product requirement change or b) cultural consideration

The Global UI framework

The Global Product UI framework looks at each page of an experience and calls out where design and content strategy focus is needed when moving to a new region. Rather than an example of one particular region’s experience, the framework includes all possible permutations.

The example on the right would never exist in a region. The countries that need nationality do not need a national identification number, and vice versa.

But there was still the issue of production

While these cheatsheets would allow a new designer to come in and easily identify what would need to be changed for each country, if there was ever any update to the global baseline, it would be a massive undertaking.

The addition of a single comma could mean having to make changes on 480+ screens.

Not only is that time consuming, it also has a high probability of human error.

B2C Migration Global Baseline Library

• 1 library for desktop designs, 1 for mobile

• This means instead of having to make the change 480 times, you only had to twice.

• It also allowed designers to quickly create the flow for a new region

Impact

The component system proved to allow designers to create the first iteration of the migration flow for United Kingdom in 30 minutes.

As of now, we have successfully launched in all regions globally, meeting our timelines and goals.

Outcome

I packaged all of what was mentioned above (and more) into a design document that could be referred to as we expanded.

This design document includes

• Introduced the problem and identified the obstacles we had to overcome

• A summary of the global research done up until that point, as well as giving suggestions on where we need to focus next to confirm hypothesis

• End to end flows of the whole experience

• A strategy on how to address regional differences in design

• UI framework for migration flows

• Roadmap to global baseline