Interview with Julian

Julian is 24 years old, studies mechanical engineering and is interested in music.

Questions on daily life
Julian uses online trading. He is almost exclusively buying, rarely selling items using eBay. He also consults newsgroups, but he thinks that they are to complex to browse and that there are not enough offers because of the regional character. With eBay he quickly finds what he is looking for, and the offered items are mostly directly available (for example via the 'Buy at once'-Option). With one exception he made only good experiences using eBay. He doesn't use eBay regularly. There may be periods where he buys up to eight items a month, but it may be that he doesn't consult eBay for weeks after such a period.
Concerning the use of services in general, Julian told us that he takes e-bass lessons. He found his teacher by an announcement on a bulletin board at university by coincidence (normally he isn't interested in those boards, only looks at them if he is bored at the moment). The first contact with his teacher was made per e-mail.
If Julian needs to gain information concerning a certain product or product group, he mostly asks his friends for help. He once wrote a report for the 'rating'-portal 'ciao.com', but he would not consult those reports on a certain topic because its much too time consuming to filter out the desired information.

Reaction on our product idea
Julian's first reaction on our project idea was quite positive. He would probably use it if it is well established and if the costs for using it are really low. He would mostly use it in a passive way, which means the he defines some search-keywords and lets the device look for matching offers in his environment. He's not interested in spending time to browse the environment by his self.
One feature of our project is the possibility, in contrast to eBay, to have a look on the offered item before buying, since the seller is actually in the near surrounding. A feature which we considered very interesting by ourselves. Since Julian made mostly good experience with eBay he didn't notice a necessity for such a feature at first, but he likes the idea to get in contact with the trade partner directly. Concerning the categories he proposes a basic subdivision in goods and services. The number of underlying categories should grow proportional to the amount of users. Their may be too much empty categories if number is too high at the beginning.
Julian thinks a 'user-rating'-system like its used by eBay is very important to protect buyers from being betrayed.

See also Maarten's and Kerstin's interview