Opening
This is the first article I write on Medium as well as for the Design in China series. If you’d like me to write about specific product, let me know! Also, any feedback is welcome.
Why I'm writing about Design in China
Speaking of Chinese design, I’m pretty sure a lot of people think about the word “Copycat”. There are indeed Chinese companies rip things off from other products. However, since late 2014 I've seen a lot of awesome design from Chinese products. It is also interesting to mention that some Chinese products having very different UX approach than same type of products we use here in NA due to the different demographic.
I’ve been talking to a lot of people in the industry, and many of them said Chinese market is a mystery to them. I’m hoping this series could be a start for people to understand Chinese market, including the design, the user behaviour, the culture and so on.
In this series I'd like to introduce the rising power of Chinese Web/Mobile design. Due to the culture and language barrier, most of you guys might not be able to experience many Chinese products. I'll be very happy to walk you through the process of it. I'll talk about awesome and cool products that are very popular in the Chinese market as well as how Chinese users' behaviour is different from the Western's.
If there's any specific or types of product that you are interested to read about, let me know!
Here is the list of products I'm planning to write about. I'm open to suggestions!
- Keep: https://www.gotokeep.com — by far my favourite workout app. It’s free, and ads-free, and has a great community.
- Wechat: http://weixin.qq.com probably gonna also talk about Weibo and compare the both. These two are the social media giants in China, which both having billions of users. Also, Momo is another popular app that I might discuss about. (Seems like there will be a “social medias in China” post )
More coming..
About Me
I’m Tori Zhao, currently fourth year Interaction Design student at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, BC.
I grew up in Guangzhou, China until I was 17 and came to Canada. As a UI/UX design learner, I always enjoy reading about design.
I’ve been thinking about writing on Medium for very long time. Since English is not my first language, writing is a bit difficult to me. However, I decide to give it a try and write articles as a practise and hoping it can be a value to more people.
Feel free to say hi to me on twitter!
