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INDUSTRY REPORT
DESIGNING FOR CUSTOMER INTERACTION ON THE WEB
Many Web sites give the user a structure, such as a site map, to interact with. Daimler-Chrysler Research designed a simple interface to a dynamic simulation that helps users learn by interacting with content, not structure.
STEFFEN KLEIN
Daimler-Chrysler AG, Research and Technology
When debis (Daimler-Chrysler Inter Services, the services company of the Daimler-Chrysler Group) decided to offer information about car financing on its popular Web site, the company knew it faced a serious design challenge. Experience told us many of our customers find car leasing and financing difficult subjects to understand. They often need a great deal of personal assistance to comprehend the range of products offered by debis Financial Services (dFS). How could we offer comparable assistance via the Web in a way that would enable customers to come away with the information they needed?
Initial design prototypes for a Web financial consultation system showcasing dFSs full range of leasing and financing packages used the familiar Web model. That is to say, information in the form of text, tables, and figures, organized by product type, was hyperlinked together in a structured way. This standard approach ultimately proved to be unusable for the dFS application. In particular, customers had to wade through too many pages of material, making personally relevant information too difficult to obtain, given their low threshold of interest. dFS turned to Daimler-Chryslers research division for electronic markets to see if it could offer an innovative design for a personal financial consultation system on the Web that could simplify, yet enhance, the customers experience.
This article presents a Web interface design developed at Daimler-Chrysler Research known internally as VisiLease. The design successfully reduced the customers interface to one simple-to-use page. The core principle that underlay the design was facilitating the customers ability to learn in an interactive environmentin this case, to learn about car financingrather than be passively passed information. Instead of emphasizing our various products, we offered a way for customers to quickly enter into a dynamic simulation in which products never appear by name until customers have learned what options best suit their needs.
32 JANUARY FEBRUARY 1999 http://computer.org/internet/ 1089-7801/99/$10.00 1999 IEEE IEEE INTERNET COMPUTING
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