Lists.
eBay · iOS Android · 2024
A zero-to-one feature giving 100M+ shoppers a way to organize everything they love.
Watchlist, before
Problem
The Watchlist gets cluttered. Things pile up. Missions get lost.
116
items unsorted in the average power shopper's Watchlist.
Lists existed on web — but not on Native.
Chapter 01 — Discovery
What is a watchlist, really?
Flat
No default list where items are automatically saved to, every save must be organized into a list.
Default + custom
One catch-all list where items go by default, at the same hierarchy as custom lists.
Nested
One catch-all list where items go by default, but custom lists live as subsets within the main list.
Constraints
Interaction model determined by engineering resources.
Low-fi explorations
Engineering constraints
Nested Model
No change to existing lists architecture
Minimal Entrypoint
No shifting watched items down or surfacing images
Low fidelity nested model
Chapter 02 — Design
Two flows.
One user need.
Organize while browsing, or select then sort. Both land in the same nested home — predictable, fast, forgiving.
Flow 01 — Organize while saving
Flow 02 — Organize many at once
Shipped, validated designs
Shipped to the Native app, validated through A/B testing, and now the foundation of a broader watch-and-save framework across eBay. 2.5 years and counting in production.
