01. Introduction
ROLE
UI Designer
UI TEAM
Elsa Wu, Randy Khoo, Aaron Cobankiat
UX TEAM
Jake Cebryk, Joyce Xiao, Banoo Moaven
PLATFORM
Responsive Web
CLIENTS
Kaizor Innovations
PROBLEM
Kaizor Innovations is a well-established consultancy that helps western companies strategize and innovate the world’s largest growing market — China. The challenge with conducting research in China is establishing trust between Chinese participants and User Researchers from the West. China is a very relationship-oriented society, where people won’t necessarily respond to cold calls. However, they highly value relationships, known as GuanXi (关系), a Chinese concept referring to the tight social networks that shape Chinese society. Trust almost automatically exists between people in the same GuanXi, and without GuanXi, distrust is the default. It is the connections that open doors for new businesses and facilitate deals.
In order for Kaizor to build trusted relationships, they manually go through their recruitment process, which is undeniably time consuming and tedious. As a result, we were there to help design a leading-edge business model to streamline the user research recruitment process while providing value-added services to bridge cultural and social gaps between the West and the East.
To streamline the recruitment workflow and build a responsive web that helps users effectively recruit participants in China.
02. Research
CLIENT KICKOFF
To further identify users' aesthetic preferences, our team took the initiative to do some research to get our headspace in the market. By doing so, we were able to identify trends and commonalities between the competitor websites — colors, icons, shapes and other UI elements. Based on the results, we discovered the following key points: functional consistency, open navigation bars, imageries opposed to illustrations, and tech related colors (blue & green).
Simple, White Space, Imagery, Relevant
PERSONA
While developing our visual direction, our team then formed the user persona in order to understand users’ needs and pain points. His name is Lawrence, and he is an experienced user researcher leading a research project in the Chinese market for a western company. Lawrence is aware of the valuable insights they can gain from an ethnographic research, but can’t always glean from a survey. The current frustrations he is facing are recruiting quality participants in China, language/culture barriers, and overall trip logistics when his team goes abroad.
03. Visual Identity
THE WHY
To better create the visual design for the new Kaizor Innovation product, we began our ideation phase to find a "why statement" to guide the principle of our design, and help us convey the company’s purpose and set it apart in the marketplace. We also branched out to visual languages that can establish a sense of reliability and joy, in order to set the stage for valuable long-term user relationships.
Better Design Starts With User Insight...
MOODBOARD
Our goal is to help create a trusted recruitment platform for the West and the East, by creating a site that is culturally relevant with trusted elements that will help contribute in building a solid bridge between these social gaps. Therefore, we iterated and came up with our moodboard that is inspired by people and their perspectives.
04. Branding
THE NAME
Before starting our logo design process, we had to come up with a name for this recruitment platform. Since this is a brand-new business model, our client did not have a name in mind. So, we decided on…
"KONTECH"
WHY KONTECH?
First thing you may notice is that Kontech sounds similar to contact, as the business focuses on finding contacts for western companies to connect with and conduct user research on. Since this is also an online recruitment platform, we changed the “tact” in contact to “tech”. The parent company is Kaizor Innovations, which inspired us to keep the homage of the letter K.
LOGO
We began our logo design with some paper sketches. By sketching different iterations with pen and paper, it allowed us to explore a wide range of ideas before actually moving onto digitizing and fine-tuning on the computer.
The next step of our process is where we set out to digitally rework the ideas that showed the most promise. We came up with many iterations, mainly focusing on branding the letter K and connectivity in various expressions. As you can see, there are simple, techy and abstract iterations.
From here, we had to narrow down our options, and make sure the design we create translates well into an actual logo. Based on our whole design direction, we decided to go with sharp edges. We also didn’t want to create anything that is too playful, so we opted out of all the round designs. At the end of the day, this is a business to business (B2B) service, and we have to make sure our design holds a sense of professionalism.
Other than a sharp-edged letter K, if we dissect the logo, you will find two different expressions of arrows, representing the unity of the West and the East. We also intentionally left an opening at the intersection point, conveying that the door of opportunity is always open for companies to leverage the growth in the Chinese market, while Kontech is the open door for these relationships.
05. Style Guide
06. Design
HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPES
After putting together all the visual elements, our team built a UI library to ensure consistency through all designs, and kept everyone informed about the changes, which helped us work more efficiently. We then used the mid-fidelity wireframes that was handed off to us by the UX team as the foundation to begin injecting colour. We were able to add a captivating and cohesive look to the public website, personal dashboard, and the web app.
07. Conclusion
Kontech was a challenging, yet rewarding client project. It has bought me many learning opportunities. Not only did I learn about working under tight timelines, working in a highly collaborative team, coming up with a business name, and designing a responsive web, I also learned a lot about user research and research abroad. I was extremely grateful for our team dynamics; it was an absolute pleasure to work with every single one of them.
FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS
• Bespoke photography more relevant to the brand and user research industry could be more impactful and captivating for users visiting the site.
• More animations and interactions for both public-facing and webapp could help captivate users.
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