Main Design Studio is responsible of Naver's mobile app and its main page. I had the opportunity to be part of this awesome team last fall! During my time there, I participated in various projects spending most of my days analyzing user problems and creating interactive prototypes for new design concepts.

Background

Naver is a search engine most widely used in South Korea. It's also a platform for contents where people visit to read the news, peep into what others search, and watch trending videos. These core services, search and content, are first accessed through Naver’s main page. As you can see, a lot of things are going on here!

Light Home

Although the content is an indispensable part of Naver's main page, its fallback was heavy data consumption. Light Home is an alternative version of the main page, which consumes less data.

I conducted user research and data analysis to understand how users currently make use of Light Home. Throughout the research process, I constantly questioned who would most benefit from having a separate home, and how we can improve Light Home to better serve their needs.

People use Light Home differently

When I compared where users click for each home, I recognized that Light Home use pattern is more concentrated on search. I created a hypothesis that Light Home users are search-oriented. They are less sensitive about content and mainly use Naver app to search.

..but the design doesn't reflect that

Interviews from Light Home testers revealed that the participants were motivated to go back to the other home because there wasn't enough content, which brought fear of missing out. For search-oriented users, they didn't find much advantage as the design is almost identical.

How can we expand Light Home's value to better suit people’s needs?

I can't share much about this project now, but I'm happy to chat more about the experience in person :) Let's Talk!