The Challenge:
Cyworld wanted to launch a U.S. version of its very successful Asian online product, whose key features include a personal home page, photo-sharing and other social networking features. Through market research and third-party analysis of its Web site, Cyworld and Native Instinct determined that the product had to be customized to meet the needs of the U.S. audience. Cyworld hired Native Instinct to lead its development team through a redesign effort to meet those needs.
The Solution:
Leveraging Cyworld’s existing product strengths to create an engaging, viral community, we resolved existing design and user interface issues that relied on the learned behavior of Cyworld’s Korean audience, and instead designed the UI for the more instinctive behavior anticipated by the new U.S. users. Using a "one-team" approach, our product managers, UI designers, content strategists and PHP developers worked side-by-side with Cyworld employees to rapidly build a new product. We built a product roadmap, set product priorities, ran daily "Scrum" meetings, recruited additional team members and made sure that team members had the tools required to complete their tasks.
Results:
Cyworld launched in August 2006, and is acquiring thousands of new members each week.
