Helping my Son Discover Model Trains on eBay via BuyerCommand

My son likes model trains, and one day he wanted a new engine. He was 5 years old at the time of this story, and the O-Scale model train locomotives he had up till this point in time were well worn from rough play. I suggested that eBay might have a large collection of cool yet attractively priced trains. He and I sat down at the computer, I fired up eBay.com, I typed in "model train locomotive", I told him to look through the trains, and I left him to find a few he liked.

After approximately 45 seconds he came back to me, and asked to do something else. I asked him why he didn't keep reviewing the trains, and he said it wasn't very fun. We returned to the computer together, and I watched his behavior over his shoulder. I realized that reviewing the listings was a broken experience for him. He told me that he kept getting lost, and that the pictures were too small. My professional background as a software developer led me to analyze the problem and imagine a better solution.

I spent a few days building a prototype version of a new way to review eBay listings. That first version only displayed the search result pictures in a large frame, and I enabled the left and right arrow buttons to move forward and backward through the search results. I named the site BuyerCommand. I sat him down at the site, and asked him to review the trains again. After about 15 minutes he was still looking through listings, and had found some great locomotives. I knew BuyerCommand met the needs of this young man, and further work on it might help others as well.

I kept on working on ideas for BuyerCommand. I realized that an open design that allowed the end user unlimited customization options would be great for all the different types of users that might want to browse eBay differently. I had found success in enabling the keyboard for navigation, and I have always been a advocate for the efficiency of keyboard shortcuts in other apps so I enhanced that functionality. I wanted a quick way to change the search criteria so I included a command line for entering the search. I determined that all of those items could be present for all the different possibilities, but in the simplest form BuyerCommand could be that simple app that my son enjoyed that first day. It was simple to use, and it helped him discover cool model trains on eBay.

Visit BuyerCommand.com to see how you can shop eBay with larger pictures, simple keyboard shortcuts, and a simple yet powerful command line. Let me know what you think.