Peopeo did the usability testing  to find the user  requirements and attitude of the phone.

Clients & Partners:

Nokia Research Center

Peopeo did the usability testing  to find the user  requirements and attitude of the phone.

Clients & Partners:

Nokia Research Center

This project is aimed to provide more support  in the respect of  browser. Cygnus is an Orange customized browser developed in Orange Las Beijing, based on Android open source browser.Cygnus aims to provide more support for Orange requirements on browser.

Cygnus can:
Display the Orange mobile app portal by default.
Discover the installed Orange apps on the phone and launch the apps.
Launch Android Market to download an Orange app if it is not installed.
Improved browsing experience compared with the Android native browser.

Peopeo’s Job :

Design a set of GuI interface with Orange’s own styles according to Orange’s UI definition. And an Icon as well.

The Chanllenge:

Orange has its apps with a set of its own VI color styles which not permit usage of  high light sensation materials and other special materials including  wood ,metal ，crystal glass…. The page showing effect must be close to the sense of  printing page which is clear , soft  of   comfortable reading and 2 D visual.The pages should have a layering.

The Solution:

In the beginning, our team analyzed  some browses of different brands and got some conclusion. Based on the conclusion  and the styles of Orange ,we used flat gloss with a slight gradient effect to represent the softness of the pages and the visual effects. And we represent the layering effect from the lines ,the picture typesetting ,the test size as well as the depth of the colors.

Clients & Partners:f

Orange

Project Brief:

PingAn auto insurance site was a sub-site under the website of PingAn group. Customers have to navigate ina complex directory to find auto insurance entrance and to enter. With the growing of the economy, more and more Chinese people are buying cars, auto insurance business has beome a large portion of PingAn group’s annual income. Moreover, in the insurance industry, in order to have a good profit, one way is to reduce costs, another way is to reduce losses. Among the costs, there is a large block of brokers and agents to rebate. So besides promoting the telephone sales, in the same time, strengthen the network construction and promote auto insurance online direct sales, is also very important. Hence, in late 2010 PingAn Group decided to create a new independent auto insurance platform. Among the internationally renowned consulting and design planning companies as competitors for this project, Peopeo had won the project by deep understanding of the industry, understanding the business logic of PingAn, and understanding of user demands and requirements. Through a deep study of the target user and the user experience, started from product planning and strategy, Peopeo presented the most simple and effectively solution, which can significantly boost sales of the program, thus Peopeo’s solution was so outstanding and had been chosen.

The Challenge:

There were many international competitors for this project, Peopeo had to show a unique and insightful business and product understanding and strategy, came up with innovative and effective design solution. Secondly, in fact at the time, most domestic insurance companies were still using the traditional template of the website, innovation also need to have good reasons and earn customer recognition. From the business itself, the challenge Peopeo team faced was how to effectively help clients increasing sales, to araise user awareness and encourage users to use the online sales platform. The solution has to meet the business goals of PingAn and also meet the needs of users, effectively solve the user concerns, and actively encourage users to buy PingAn auto insurance.

The Solution:

This is a brand new revision of PingAn auto insurance website, as an independent site. Peopeo team worked with PingAn from market research, user research, consumer insight, competitive analysis, to product planning, positioning, and then designed and developed the site, besides post-maintenance and updates. Through in-depth study of the characteristics of the insurance industry, together with understanding on target user’s problems and needs, combined with the client’s business logic and goals, Peopeo designed one of the most straightforward and effective websites.

“Those with popular support will dominate,” as the old Chinese saying goes. The same is true, in particular, with the domain of the Internet. All users of the Internet vote with their feet, or more precisely, they vote with a slight tap or touch of their fingers. It is a virtual but the most real world, and comparatively the fairest one without politicians’ tricks. In the domain of the Internet, enterprises will be able to enjoy the largest number of followers and most active users as long as they offer the best service and humanized exchanges and interaction. And they will thus achieve commercial success with users’ identification.

1. User experience is not only related to the interface, but to various links of the whole enterprise, including its business mode and market strategies in particular, hence a multi-disciplinary subject.

In Peopeo’s view, user experience is present at various aspects of an enterprise. It comprises macro experience, which is reflected in business mode and market strategies, and micro experience, which is demonstrated in the interactive interface. The experience in business mode and market strategies, in turn, needs to be expressed in interface-defined interaction with users. It is a major fallacy and a one-sided perception that user experience and interaction design are intended for easier and smoother operations. In an age of Internet economy, especially in the current mobile Internet era, enterprises formulate their business mode and market strategies, communicate and interact with users and make transactions via the Internet or mobile Internet. Thus user experience should, in the long run, completely reflect and adequately and efficiently employ the enterprise’s business mode and market strategies, and help enterprises shape a widely-accepted brand image, actively interact with users and attract and keep customers.

User experience finds its presence in all facets of a company such as its service, its products and its interaction with end users. The first requirement for excellent user experience is to meet the real demands of customers and then simply and adequately interact with them. Much more than just the function to provide a list of items based on customers’ demand, user experience is a multidisciplinary service the helps a company achieve high quality of its products as well as its commercial goals. It is a seamless and unified outcome that combines broad-ranging factors such as market strategies, commercial mode, psychology, engineering structure, sales promotion, techniques and material quality, color and graphics, industrial design and interface design.

2. That sometimes users are not aware of what they want does not mean user research and user experience are unnecessary. We need to learn users’ fundamental needs, creatively offer product value and meet their unaddressed needs via fine experience.

When it comes to user experience, many will think of Apple Inc. and its series of products as well as the commercial strategies adopted by iTunes application stores. And some will even quote Mr. Steve Jobs as saying he was least mindful of user research as he did not believe users are aware of what they want. Taking Jobs’ remarks out of context, they conclude that user research is unnecessary. In fact, users’ needs are basically of a piece. Just as the hierarchical model of human needs developed by Abraham H. Maslow describes, all users have basic needs such as survival, reproduction, love, esteem, and, finally, self-actualization. The difference, however, is that the urgency of their basic needs varies with their stages of life and ranks in society. Hence Maslow’s hierarchical theory of human needs emerged. Certainly it is not completely accurate, because under some special circumstances, people with different educational backgrounds and dissimilar values will voluntarily give up their physiological need for survival to pursue a much more respected value need.

In different periods of time or different regions, needs of the same users may be presented in different forms of wants. Jobs’ remarks about users’ unawareness of what they want actually refer to users’ needs. Possibly for lack of professional skills, innovation capability and foresight in future development of science and technology, users may not feel the need for a future innovative product or service, but their needs are constant and coherent and can be studied, understood and explored.

In a developing country, people probably focus more on the satisfaction of their basic physiological and safety needs, such as the needs for food, clothing and a shelter. There thus are frequent complaints that stability is what the Chinese aspire most for, and Chinese students will, as always, choose those hot specialties that help them find a good job, in contrast with American students, who will always follow their interests and seek for their future career development rather than just stability. They are not to blame as their environment makes the difference. Stability, however, is still inaccessible though so many Chinese long for it. I’m digressing from the subject, but it is realistically related to the current entrepreneurial environment in China, so the business mode many entrepreneurs have introduced does not work in China. Even if they obtain venture capital, their efforts will come to nothing in the long run.

The same need may be expressed in different wants with different people. On most occasions, we cannot foresee our future wants. When feeling thirsty, for instance, some want to drink tepid water, some would like some ice water and others care for Coca Cola, but the Liangshan heroes would gulp down bowls of liquor. Before automobiles were invented, in order travel vast distances, some users want a horse, some want a donkey, some a sedan….If we had conducted user research at that time, we would have found it impossible to determine what they really want. But user research would have unveiled a host of inconveniences in their work and life, and in making a long journey in particular, hence a need for a vehicle for transportation. The research would have also shown their spending capacity, how much they could afford to meet the need for a conveyance, and the problems and advantages and disadvantages in their current means of transportation. Then with technological innovations, automobiles were presented as a solution. Through due calculations of prices and costs, a certain group of people were identified as the target for the solution, followed by promotions and sales. Then with technological improvements, automobiles would be further popularized and benefit more consumers. Then through market and customer segmentation as well as that of users’ needs, “design an automobile for each wallet.” In light of diversified physiological and psychological needs, spending capacities and purchase motivations, product segmentation would be further carried out.

3. Research on user experience, which is iterative and agile, goes through the long process from detecting the unaddressed need, formulating relevant strategies, through further verification in the process of product or service innovations, to users’ acceptance and response. Then it needs to be re-optimized and re-launched.

Research on user experience starts at the beginning of a product or a service or before a business plan is drafted. A sound business plan entails an accurate market positioning as well as an accurate starting point in market segmentation, whose subject is the users. In a sense, market research is actually research on users. All the efforts, whether qualitative or quantitative research, informal discussions, interviews or surveys, are all aimed at finding out measurable or unquantifiable data or factors such as users’ attitude and behavior. Market research will certainly deal with such issues as those concerning their competitors and market trends, which are fundamentally determined by users. Users’ consumer behavior determines market trends while their competitors’ market situation determines which group of customers have become their users.

Based on the results of market and user researches, entrepreneurs employ their own technological advantages to work out their business plan. With the plan, they build a commercial model centering on the users, and seek a service mode and a profit model. For instance, which group of customers are the users of our products and services? Which groups of users pay us for them? What value do we provide for the users? In what way do the users receive and enjoy our services? How to let users readily pay out? How to keep users on our platform in the long term? How to engage more users in the process of duplication and amplification?

We need to establish a good commercial mode, work out a service process centering on user experience, strike a balance between various parts within the whole system, and then begin to build a information structure for the whole series of products based on users’ operations, their past use cases and business relations.

From time to time, customers voice their hope that we will be able to come up with perfect user experience at one go. Unfortunately, our answer is “impossible”. For one thing, users’ needs are always changing, and for another, as there are no absolutely identical persons in the world, needs for user experience could not possibly be one and the same. We cannot but selectively conduct research on users experience in conformity with the characteristics of our target consumer groups and devise products to satisfy them to the maximum extent. From this point of view, there is thus no immediate perfect user experience.

User experience has to be iterative and gradually come out. In accordance with responses from the market and users, we will roll out new versions to improve user experience.

It is Peopeo’s suggestion that product models should be put to market test as many times as possible in the design phase to determine whether they meet users’ needs and satisfy their experience demands. We also need to try our best to bring down the cost to the lowest possible level in the development and promotion phases.

4. There is not “big and all inclusive” but the customized and most considerate wife-like user experience, which needs to take into account the diversity of the customers.

Different strokes for different folks. The same product may be used on completely different occasions or totally different ways. Designers of early desktop computers could hardly imagine their CD-ROM drive would be used as a saucer for a coffee cup, nor could the inventor of locks envisage his inventions would be used to hammer in a nail. Rumor has it on the Internet that iPhone can be used to crack a walnut and regrettably someone really give it a try. The diversity of users is thus far beyond our imagination.

But people tend to take it for granted that the vast majority are just like themselves. Basketball is their favorite sport, so they believe there must a lot of others who like to play basketball. Overgeneralization is the problem with them.

While studying the collective characteristic of the users, we should make allowances for the diversity of individuals, the possibility of some extreme events and fault tolerance. Certainly we have to make a choice at long last, or we, overtaken by misgivings and fears, will not be able to proceed.

Though the world has become a global village, we still cannot disregard the different characteristics of different groups in different regions. A “Universal Design” is a goal that cannot be achieved in the real sense though everyone is discussing it. If you are touring countries like Sri Lanka, you will find trucks and vans there are magnificently decorated with pictures of gods by their owners, who are followers of a religion.

That might explain the reason why, after being introduced into China, many renowned foreign brands suffered setbacks, then failed to adapt themselves to local environments and eventually lost out to their Chinese rivals. Having lived in America for years, the author finds that the Americans live in practically the same way: they usually reside in a house with a yard, where there stand a stone statue and a fountain; invariably there are carpets and a fire place as well as a family dog in the house; they drive cars (old or new, or whatever their models) rather than travel by public transport; they go shopping in such supermarkets as Wal-Mart, Best Buy or Target, and fast-food restaurants like McDonald, KFC and Windy are everywhere; they eat basically the same food and speak broadly the same language except for a slight accent with the southerners. In China, or to be more exact, in South China, people living miles apart speak quite different dialects. And there is a considerable disparity between the rich and the poor as well as a dramatic difference in people’s way of life and their work style. In this case, foreign brands and foreign products can only be marketed in first-tier cities and some more or less internationalized regions while domestic brands or even fake products still dominate most inland and far-off cities in China.

In promoting and marketing products in China, the traditional pattern, in which consumption is boosted by Science and technology enthusiasts and early acceptors, may not be able to achieve success whereas Mao Zedong’s strategy of Encircling the Cities from the Rural Areas will probably make the grade. Have the several early successful cases, such as the health care product Naohuangjin, not adopted such a strategy?

One’s wife has always been the most caring and intimate person for him. User experience, if featuring the wife-style loving care, will be the best.