Background

In the past 2 years, as part of the Apollo project, I have been working on a variety of new projects aimed at global markets. However, for internal reasons, the Apollo project was temporarily suspended, and reset its targets to “Radical Improvement” of Naver's old services.

“Knowledge” is a Q & A service that anyone can ask and answer. (In Korean, it’s 지식in / Jisik-in, but I would call it Knowledge here.) Initially, Knowledge was built as a database of questions and answers, it contributes to Naver as a search engine, but 17 years later, In people’s minds, it’s an old service that did not guarantee the quality of answers.

Role

Former Knowledge team were divided into planner, designer, and engineer and they mostly did maintenance work. A new TF, including myself, was newly formed to radically improve Knowledge. UX team in this TF took charge of the overall process of the project, and I'm the only senior designer on this UX team.

As Is

1. Anyone can answer - The quality of the answers cannot be guaranteed

2. Answerers are leaving - Stagnant for 17 years without major change, without compensation

3. Hard to find information, Complex iA - Categories added without planning whenever needed

The time given to us to improvement was only 3 months. So instead of an entire renewal, we decided to create a new “Mobile paid counseling service" that continued the value of Knowledge, focusing on questions and answers. At the same time, NAVER want to compensate the users. Knowledge already has offline experts in various fields including lawyers, accountants, translators and psychological counselors, etc. We hoped our experts would make a profit in eXpert.

eXpert

To Be

1. Experts can make profit here

2. Users can receive professional counseling at a low cost, anytime, anywhere.

3. Break away from the old and boring image of Knowledge

Users can enter the eXpert service through the eXpert logo on GNB and can switch between Knowledge and eXperts by toggling. Knowledge has been free for 17 years, so people could have antipathy for paid features. To show that the two were clearly different features, we separated them. The main page of the Knowledge was also renewal at the lowest cost.

Result

eXpert successfully launched in just 3 months. The number of counseling sessions exceeded 3 times the initial goal. Some eXperts earned nearly 6 million won per month. (In the New Year's fortunetelling & Tax accountant category.) People cheered that Knowledge found a new vision.

NAVER supported the massive promotion of eXpert. We could see TV commercials of Knowledge everywhere, starring Kian84 who is famous web-cartoonist.

This year, eXpert aims to increase the number of categories from 10 to 100. Therefore, we're developing UX, which was limited in showing a lot of categories.

Due to the unexpected pandemic, eXpert transactions are increasing. Video and Voice counseling functions will be updated soon.