Episode 27: East meets West Product Design with Kuei Tien Huang
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Hi everyone, I'm Dalen, founder and design educator at Curious Core.

Welcome to our Working in UX Design podcast series where we interview a UX design leader in the industry on their experience in this emerging field. We've had UX professionals from Grab, AirAsia, Google and more join us previously and we're bringing you more exciting interviews this year. Stay tuned for this week's interview with our special guest who is working in UX design.

Good day, everyone. This is Daylon over here from Curious Call, and I'm the founder and general manager and also your host for this evening. This evening, we have a special guest. Her name is Tina Huang. We have put her Chinese name in the event description. So she's also called Kui Tian.

And Kwe-Tien, or Tina, is a product design manager with Rakuten Vicky. And she manages and develops the product experience for the design team. And she actually was born and raised in Taiwan before coming to Singapore to work for various companies, eventually Rakuten Vicky today. She enjoys solving complex design problems and just making people happy in the office.

and she aims for simple, intuitive solutions that will improve the lives of people around her. Kwe-Tien has been promoted in her role from a senior UX designer to a product design manager and this evening we're actually going to talk a little bit about her experience being a first-time manager and some of the lessons that she has learned along the way.

She was also a product designer at Carousell. So because she designed for markets in the Asia Pacific for Carousell, we're going to ask her to describe some of her experiences around that as well. She has also done visual design and UX work for various other companies, including MIGMI, as well as the Bread of Life Christian Church.

So we're very glad to have you over here today, Tina, and we have a very international audience hearing. So maybe let's just start off by having you share with me what do you do on a day-to-day basis at Rakuten Viki as a design manager? Okay, sure. Day-to-day usually is meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings.

So as a manager, our role is basically communicating design values to other departments, especially non-designers like engineers, marketing, content team, and even CX team and PM team as well. Because Vicky team is so relatively small. So 30% of my time was still working as an IC elite designer role.

So 70% of my time is meetings every day and I need to find a little bit of my time work on the groundwork. Is there anything that you are working on or have worked on that you're especially proud of in your entire career?

Oh, proud of, definitely is my graduation project in interaction design field that I studied in UK. So that project basically is how to like help the people enjoy dining together while dining and having fun at the same time. So my graduation project basically is design a game, racing game and display the game on the plate.

And how Yuzup played the racing car basically is using a coaster. So the coaster basically is like when you eat on the table, you use coaster to rotate the wheel. Yeah, so we hope by integrating this interaction design and gaming design in the dining experience, it will help increase like the users, not just, you know,

play like focusing on their phone but at the same time they can have fun and chit chat during the gaming time yeah thank you for sharing that and it's that sounds like a very interesting project for some context uh

Kuei-Tien or Tina has actually studied mathematics as her bachelor degree in Taipei, University of Taipei. And then she eventually went to the Nottingham Trent University to study her master's in interaction design, UX design and game design. So it does sound like your project was related to something that's around gaming.

So you have worked in this field for several years. I was just wondering, aside from the school project that you mentioned, is there any commercial project that you would say is interesting that you feel particularly proud to talk about?

Okay, Watch Party and Viki, I would say. Maybe before we start, could you share with the audience in a gist, what is the Viki product about? Because some of our audience may not be familiar with it. Oh, sure. So Viki is an online streaming platform where we sell most Asian content to the world globally. And our target market is a bit like Netflix.

But our target market is more in the US and Europe So we try to sell all the Asian dramas to the Western world where Netflix trying to sell the Western drama to Asian world They do it completely different but the goal is the same the only different Like I would say main difference between Viki and Netflix is Viki is more focusing on community the viewer community and the subtitle community and

where those community users are a big fan of Viki. They really help translate Viki's drama into multiple languages. We have around 200 languages.

Yeah, that's really cool. Thank you for sharing more about Viki. And you were saying you are proud of this feature called Watch Party. And Viki, can you explain to us how it works? So Watch Party concept is actually born during COVID, where a lot of people are at home, don't know what to do, and people will start watching shows. But interestingly, during our research in US and Latin America, a lot of users were

They actually like US users and Latin American user. They love Asian drama But they don't have friends or even their close friends like they're not interested in Asian shows They have no idea why this puppy love thing can be so popular. So they feel like this You know the things that they love no one to share. So we found that this is an opportunity for

to allow, like Vicky is, Opportunity Era gather all these people together to watch Asian drama and shows. So why not we co-viewing together and make them feel sense of belonging at the same time can share their feelings towards the cast and loves with someone who has the same and similar interests as you.

So the watch party is a co-viewing experience, which the Viki had provided certain comments allowed to co-watch with other people around the world. So even if you're from Brazil or you're from the US, you can see that all the users were saying, hey, where are you from? And they were like, hey, I'm from Brazil. I'm from Mexico. How are you? What time is it?

So there's a lot of engagement happening in the chat room. It's a little bit like Twitch, but not really exactly like Twitch. Walk us through a little bit about that process. How did you all first discover there was a need for that feature? And then how did you manage to test it and validate that this is something the market needs? Yeah, so initially,

we actually do a massive user survey at the same time we realized that at that time a lot of like big tech company they also create a lot of like co-watch or co-viewing you know like like line i'm not sure if you've heard about line that can multi you know multiple people like

Line's from Korea and it's really popular in Thailand, right? Yeah, and also I think Meta also have a function called watch party that you can invite people into kind of like a group chat, video call group chat, but they can also view the chat and the feed at the same time. So when that comes, like company was thinking like, okay, maybe we as a streaming service, we can do something different.

We actually do a massive marketing survey to two parts of users. One is existing user. Another one is outside Vicky, like people who don't know. We try to share the survey into certain forum or Discord is a very good place also for the viewer community user type because these are the people who kind of like to hang on online, get together with people who are the same interests.

After gathering all the survey back, we realized there is a potential and needs. A lot of users are actually using Viki, using Discord, and then ShareStream and open Viki app or open Viki website to watch together. And even YouTube.

So you found that out through a survey. Did you guys also do user interviews to ask more questions? Yes, correct. We actually, after the survey, because we wanted to test whether if we introduce this feature would it really benefit the user. So after the survey, I quickly created a prototype

And then we do the user interview and to the potential user that might use our feature. Now the user who have this behavior in Discord or trying to find a community, these type of user, and we introduce this prototype and let them try

and play around and they will start to give feedback to us like which function is quite cool and excited or which one is just nothing. I mean, I can find out in HBO also. So we actually test several rounds. I think...

two or three rounds about the "not just with usability test" we usually call this concept testing. It's not testing you know how the UI works or not but it's more testing about whether this feature works or not. How many people did you test this concept before you decide like this is like worth going ahead? I think two rounds overall

20 user, not a lot. And what kind of metrics are we looking about? Like, does it have to be like 70% of them love it in order for you to like go ahead or what's going on? Actually, I would say this is a game bowling thing of this feature. I wouldn't say usability test or concept testing really can test out whether the function that market

will accept. Everything have to roll out and monitor. It's still a small sample size after all. Yeah, compared to VK's large traffic and monthly user base. Like what gave you the confidence to go ahead after two rounds of testing with like 20 users? Definitely in user satisfaction store. And then another thing is, Suscore will definitely use it just to measure whether the UI and everything makes sense or not.

But user satisfaction score is one thing. Another thing is what type of user is this and why this person rate this satisfaction number. And then this type of user, like compared to larger Vicky user base,

how many percentage of them is in our largely Viki user base. So we actually compare to the large Viki user base. And then to also do another round user interview, actually just wanted to check whether this type of user can drive more revenue. It's a bit like Instagram, 95% of users are viewer, only 5% are

of users are really a content creator. They create content every day. But with this 5%, it can empower the entire watch time and entire time that people can stick on Instagram. So we're trying to see whether these types of users really can, you know, just satisfy them. Then we can drive more revenue, more engagement and watch time.

Yeah, that's pretty cool that you deep dive into that. Can I ask, when you were launching this particular feature, did you choose to launch it only with certain markets first before launching it with the rest of the market? Absolutely. We actually launched in the US first because the US is still our logic market. At the same time, we also have a logic content library and license.

where we safer to do that because watch party is a very tricky feature where we allow user to watch shows together if they are not a paying or subscription user this feature also kind of very critical and sensitive at the same time when we launch this feature in different markets

So what I'm hearing you say is that non-Viki subscribers can actually join their friends who are Viki subscribers in the watch party. Correct. So it's like a growth engine that we drive user, like a user acquisition. It's like, yeah, user acquisition. So far as you're kind of like, now the feature is out there, like, is it proving to be true? Is it proving to be like a growth sort of like engine for the business?

I would say during COVID, it is. It really drives a lot of new users. Also, like word of mouth, like any users who just, you know, even the first shows they watch on Viki, they already wanted to use Watch Party. It's because...

we have this feature and we have the content they need. But after the COVID ends, we can see the adoption drop quite a lot, to be honest. Thank you for sharing. I wouldn't press you on the numbers because I know they are commercially sensitive. But I'd like to maybe find out what are you noticing from this versus like

building a community like do you see people like connecting offline after this feature is launched do you see them like building a community around like this show or something like that yeah I think definitely like a lot of the key user like to share their loves and

you know, passion on Reddit and also on Discord. Actually on Discord, we have a Viki community, which is running by Viki user itself. So it's not running by Viki team. So it's quite interesting and impressive. So yeah, one of the reasons we are here tonight is also to talk about, you know, designing a product for a more westernized market, right? On the west side of the world.

versus designing for Asia Pacific, which is on the east side of the world, where you were at Carousell. Maybe we can start off by having you share a little bit about Carousell as a product and which markets were its primary markets. Sure. But I just want to have a disclaimer because I work in Carousell. It was like six years ago. That's fine. No worries about it. You can share from your experience back then.

So at that time, Carousel Target Market is still Southeast Asia. It's in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia when I joined at that time. And its primary function is what is it about? Primary, it's still in Singapore. At that time, interestingly, is that the team is still very dynamic, at the same time, very small.

So at that time, I think we have quite a lot of Western designers and mixed with Asian designers. So we have a lot of debate when it comes to designing. This product is for Asian people. However, like Western people tend to, you know, deal with like cleaner designs. One homepage, we just wanted to display two to three products with very elegant color with an accent.

The Asian designers, they tend to have this Taobao, Lazada, Sharpie style of design where it's a little bit cluster, makes it like UI is a little bit busy. When I joined that time, there was a lot of debate when the design in every single page that we think this is better with users. Before we go into that, which is a really very interesting part of the conversation, just to give some context, Carousel is like a marketplace for use

products, right? They're kind of like very much similar to eBay where they have a lot of different listings and people can actually ask the owner who's selling like what's the price that they want to sell at, but the listing price is also there. So let's get into this debate where you and your colleagues back at Carozell, you know, East versus West in this case, more cluttered, which is the Asian design, and one is less cluttered, which is the Western design. What was the conclusion in the end?

The conclusion in the end, we based on the primary markets, which is Singapore. And Singapore has a lot of expect, like a lot of foreigner, right? So we wanted to still maintain Western style, clean style, but at the same time, some pages will look a little bit cluster and...

busy. I wouldn't say messy but busy because in Chinese cultural, I don't know whether you have studied some Chinese cultural mentions like become busy makes people feel like you have business. If we kind of go to the flea markets in Taiwan or like even in Thailand if anyone visited Thailand before like the markets are always busy right? The stores are always packed very closely together. Interesting at that time in Karasau wanted to position in the middle

So we still wanted to be clean at the same time in certain screens, we still wanted to have this Asian cultural vibe inside. So this is a bit like, I would say, thanks to the head of design at that time really helped us, I would say, fix through all this, like debating,

Would you say you guys hit a sweet spot in the design and balancing between East and West? And after that, you all saw all your numbers went up. Yes, correct. It's really like a sweet spot because Singapore market has a lot of foreigners. And at the same time, also, we are selling this to the local market. So we want this to be balanced. At the same time, can Western people use it? They can also see that this is very easy to use.

app, I can also buy and sell easily when I move house around. And for local people, they will still feel like, oh, okay, I can still get a lot of things. Carousel still have a lot of like items, products, categories, like compared to Shopee and Lazada and Taobao, for example.

For context for our international audience, Shopee, Lazada, and Taobao, I'm sure all of you know, it's very, very popular as an e-commerce app in China. Shopee and Lazada in Southeast Asia are one of the biggest commerce platforms for stores and shops to kind of like sell, whether they're small, whether they're bigger brands. So just to kind of dive a little bit on this East versus West kind of debate, now that you're in Vicky, like what are you kind of adopting? Because when we say it's West,

You also have Latin America, right? Which is also, I would say, share some similarities with the Asian culture. How are you balancing it between like North America versus Latin America? Latin America, they're speaking Portuguese and Spanish. They are all coming from Latin words. So it's very similar to English. Like most of the things are left to right reading. Where it compared to Asian market, some...

character is up and down when you're reading it. So it's much more different, like the Asian design and Western. But for North America and Latin America, the main difference actually is the message, a copy that we deliver to the audience. So Latin user, this is what we found during the research, they tend to be easily satisfied, and also very passionate about

about the love of their actors and actresses, they will usually share very loudly, use extremely light, these kind of words to share their interests about things. So the copy is very crucial for us. We try to localize our product copy in those countries and make it use more passionate words when it comes to show recommendations.

That's a very interesting insight. Thank you for sharing that. In terms of coffee, I hear that you're using more passionate words, which is also like how they speak in real life. They're very, very passionate people. And then for North America, it's kind of like more neutral. So we kind of explored that on the content design bit. What about design? Did you all make any differentiation in terms of localizing the design, perhaps like the colors, the

or anything like that yeah for the design wise i would say the color wise we because vicky is still as a brand we we want to use color like address our branding so the color wise we didn't change that much but the feature that these countries adopt is a little bit different

So for US users, usually very picky on system stateability or certain UI, like not very user-friendly

or the content that we provide doesn't have complete English subtitles. A lot of complaints usually it's coming from US but they also have higher spanning power when it comes to Latin user. Compared to Latin American user, they are

more easily satisfied even though our subscription, sorry, our subtitle is not complete. At the same time also these users like to gather together, you know, like Latin users always like to hang around, have beer after work. This kind of culture also happens on Wiki where they like to create a forum and community to talk about things, random things even, or make friends.

They are very easy to open up, sharing their Twitter, Instagram account, even on Wiki platform, which is a bit annoying for us. And also for Latin America, their spending power is quite low. So these type of markets, usually we like to drive more, we call it AVOD. AVOD is like advertisement on demand word, like people who don't pay, but they come here to watch, watch with ads.

I think that's a very interesting model, which is also something Netflix has been exploring, right? It's kind of like a payment-light kind of plan. That is quite interesting. Well, I really like that conversation and how it's going. Is Vicky also in the European market by any chance?

Actually, European users are still able to watch, but we don't invest much effort. But I'm not allowed to say the future plan for now. We are trying our best to invest in certain countries now. That's good enough for me. So I gather that the American continent is one of the main markets. So you're designing primarily for the US market, as you said. It's really interesting because...

Vicky is most of the team members are based in Singapore or am I mistaken about that? Yes, correct. But we have office in China, in US, in Korea as well. But your CEO or your head of products sits in Singapore?

They're all in the US. That's really interesting. I mean, if it's your biggest market, it makes sense for them to be there. But you do have a product design team here in Singapore and you're doing product work here in Singapore. That's good. Do you get to do immersion trips, like go to the US and actually talk to users or...

like observe users, does any of that happen? So we are actually planning. So at PaaS we always do remote user interviews with the US users but at the same time we also target Latin America. However I don't speak Portuguese or Spanish

So we have a local agency who help us do everything like user research, user recruitment, everything. So what we have to do is get all this insight translated into the insight that they translated into English and we analyze it.

So I have a general question. Like most of our listeners are from Asia and their base or they're working in Asia Pacific. When you're designing for Asia or you're as a design UX designer, and especially like looking at how diverse Asia is, do you have any general tips or pointers like what we should look out for when we're localizing for local markets or designing for Asia in general?

I'm not sure whether you have heard of research before in the Purdue University, the global navigation. So basically the study is to try to understand if the international brands like Starbucks or Uniqlo, they sell all the products around the world. How do they make sure their global navigation

suits the local users when it comes to their product also sell in West and also sell in Asia. So the study found interesting that this global navigation, how they measure is the achieved results such as fattest performance time, the lowest error state rate,

and greatest biggest user satisfaction they use this three measurement to measure whether this global navigation ui is a success or not the finding is the eastern market prefer vertical layout for the

global navigation. However, for the Western market, you know, such like Chinese using English interface, they prefer horizontal interface to vertical interface. So it's quite interesting for me because when I read this, their study, this vertical and horizontal UI navigation is really very much related to the Chinese and English characters.

where in Japanese, Chinese and Korea, a lot of the reading is coming from top to the bottom and all the western world are always from the left to right. So that's why this kind of effect to help eastern and western user when they do the navigation are also a bit different.

Yeah, I really like that. And I think it's also important for our listeners to understand that this is very much dependent on the market itself, whether they're reading from left to right or top to bottom. So at least I think for Singapore, we're still reading things from left to right, as well as like for certain markets like Indonesia and Malaysia, it's still kind of like a left to right format. Would you agree with that? Because I believe Carozell has targeted some of these markets.

To be honest, a lot of things are still experimenting because, you know, like a lot of

Chinese products are going into Southeast Asian market as I mentioned like those like Taobao, Lazada, Shopee, those big e-commerce brands. These products will actually train users how they navigate the product as well. So that's why you can see a lot of products in the Asian market is trying to be a little bit like Chinese stuff.

where it's a bit messy, flustered, but at the same time, you can also navigate.

That's something very interesting that we learned today. I believe there's also character differences in terms of different characters. As we had a previous speaker kind of share a little bit more about it, certain countries have more characters versus less characters. We have to kind of work with that as a designer. Are there other things that you think we should look out for when we're localizing design for local markets?

the feature and marketing. I think these two would definitely be a key differentiator and how you're gonna enter and hit users' heart. Because I'm not sure whether you all kind of observe Uniqlo

how they target their clothing styles in different markets. This is something interesting I saw in Taiwan. They will try to use Taiwanese way of having fun with others or all those influencer, Taiwanese influencer dressing style.

in their, we call it, billboard main page. The hero landing page. Yeah, the hero image on the homepage, right? Yeah. That image is super critical for localization. What kind of image that you can really hit users with their culture? I also saw the Indonesian version in Uniqlo where they use their local styling and design

Is it Malaysia or Indonesia? I forget. They use a bit like Hokkien style of wearing and clothing style. And...

Yeah, to put it on the hero landing page, which people will think like, oh, actually this product knows me, knows my culture, understand me. Because this will actually kind of gain users' interest and trust at the beginning. So marketing on the localization, I think is super crucial. Yeah, thank you for highlighting that. I hear you were making some tweaks on the copy side. Like do Vicky, likewise, from a visual point of view, make such tweaks when they're localizing?

The marketing, yes. So our content team and marketing, both teams work very closely together. So our marketing campaign and show recommendation were really based on our data to see which type of shows that the user liked. And the graphic designer will actually do some tricks on the image.

and to express certain elements that only that cultural or that country has in the newsletter or in even the show recommendation image and sometimes with the copy itself.

Yeah, that's really interesting because I believe some of our audience and listeners over here are also working very closely with their marketing teams or are handling marketing design responsibilities. And that's definitely a very important factor to actually adapt your designs to the local market.

Let's spend the next 20 minutes or so talking about your journey in your career. You became a manager. That's about one year ago. It's like your first year as a manager now. What are some of the lessons that you learned switching from being an IC, which is an individual contributor, to being a manager that you would like to share with the audience? I think mindset is the first thing that has to change and also reflect.

myself as a leader. So mindset is coming from like at past I see always manage projects, manage things, how can you push this project, have a better performance, metrics, a delightful UI, those kind of things. But when it become manager, you're focusing on people. To be honest, my first three months become a manager is a little bit challenging for me

by just changing this mindset. However, I found out a way that can easily observe as a junior manager. So it's like, as I see, we design a product to a user, eventually company earn revenue. But as a manager,

we interact with our members and eventually drive revenue to the company. So this is how I switched my mindset. And at the same time, I see all my team members as a user segmentation. This is my mindset. And I was thinking like, how might I as a

people manager satisfied with my user which is my team members and eventually they can grow and learn and happy at work so the company can earn money eventually

This is the thing I think it would be easier for an IC to transform their mindset quickly if they think your team members is kind of a user persona because different team members have different style, different personalities, soft skills, hard skills. Do you kind of like adapt your leadership style with every team member then? Or is there like something that you prefer and that you stick to?

I actually adapt every single

team members I use different ways about like helping them and helping them grow and give them different kind of guidance based on their preference because different individuals have different ways of receiving sometimes feedback or sometimes is they actually are doing very well but they will keep saying that I did so badly okay my design is so bad but so for this time people just need to give them hint give them

you know praise comments to help them gain confidence so in one day they will be more independent to drive their projects yeah so i actually will change my style based on that sounds great and i think that's the best kind of leadership that i i learned as well i mean this this is like what we call situational leadership based on the situation based on the person you you're

adapt it and to get the outcome and the result that you want because that's actually what matters. Would you have any other sharings or learnings that you might want to share with other first-time managers other than having a

the right mindset? I think there are two things. So one thing is the, I actually read Making of the Manager book from Julie Zhao. I think it's a very popular book for every single person. I heard. Yes. And there's one or two chapters mentioned about leaders and managers. They are different.

However, I would say that in the smaller design team like Vicky, especially if your design team is less than like 15 people or 10 people, like all the managers somehow have to play a role as a leader as well. So I would say like for me, my current role is have to be a leader at the same time have to be a manager.

And I also read an article that was very interesting. They mentioned like as a leader, you need to create a vision into the world. So all your team members who is kind of your followers will try to base on the vision, your dream wonderland that you want to create. So they try to work for you.

And as a manager, your job is management, which is often like how you bring it to like fruition. So it is important to get people on the bus, but to get people on the bus is like a leader. But in order to let the bus move,

you have to have gas and working steering wheel. So gas and working steering wheel for me is like a management. You need to kind of like help them grow so everyone can move in the same direction.

So this is like my learnings, like my role has to be a leader and a manager at the same time. I think that's quite an interesting analogy and also like distinction. I think a similar one I've heard is about instead of getting, like this is an analogy that's related to being like a captain of a ship, right? So instead of getting people to just do their jobs on a ship, get them to yearn for the feeling of being at

in the sea, right? That's the job of a leader that they should love coming to the boat, to the ship, to kind of like work as a part of your crew. They have to yearn the sea, right? Versus like just doing their job to keep the ship functioning. That's also another analogy that I've heard. Thanks for sharing tips on that. And I'm sure you'll be learning lots more along the way.

Would you have any tips for people who are looking to get promoted as to become a manager? You know, like what, what would you, you know, you got there, right? Like obviously you're quite outstanding in what you're doing. How should people kind of like work towards getting promoted? Do you have any general tips on that?

To be honest, when I've been promoted, it was unexpected. Yeah, but I do ask my manager and also my ex-colleague or those director level person who used to work in Viki, like, why do you think like my boss got me promoted? And they were saying that actually is based on one very main characteristic.

how this person can harmoniously collaborate with nearly every type of people. This is one very big angle. And at the same time, how can this person peacefully influence others to buy in your design to others? So these are the very two critical things that I would say that my boss maybe found I'm a little bit different from the others.

So it's not because you have very strong skills on hard skills, on designing, on searching. It's not about that. It's always about soft skills. Because as a manager, a lot of times, 70% of my time, my current working days is communicating with different departments and also trying to influence your work and also solving conflicts if there is.

And how can you use a very like soft way and also very powerful way of persuading others? It's a key that I would say your manager will be looking after. So it's not really about your hot skills. It's really a lot on collaboration, soft skills and influencing. It's good to know that it's about that because I think that

Yeah, I think...

There's only so much you can improve in your technical skills, but in terms of soft skills, in terms of leadership skills, there's always room for improvement to be better, whether it's managing yourself, whether it's managing others. I'll make a guess over here, but there's definitely no major problems with your work and your delivery as an individual contributor as well. But they also took into account your soft skills and your ability to work with others,

Your ability to persuade others to kind of adopt your point of view, which is leadership in its own form. So that's very, very important. So for all listeners, don't forget to improve your soft skills as you're growing your career as well.

You kind of took the risk to come to Singapore to work. And I think you took several career risks. Number one, you took the risk of becoming a designer after studying mathematics. And then after that, you took the risk of coming to Singapore after working in Taiwan. Can you explain what went through your mind before you decided to take that risk?

Yeah, sure. So when I was in my second year in my uni, I actually already know mathematics is really not my interest. I don't want to be a scientist or accountant or a person who dealt with algorithms every day. At that time, I tried to explore various options and eventually I find like visual design is something that catch my interest.

So I actually took a minor in multimedia design eventually in my third year in uni. And after digging more and more, I realized this is a whole new world and I really need more. I need more training and time to learn. So I actually went to a design institute in Taiwan.

which is a bit like Curious Core that help people transition to a design industry. But the interesting thing about this institute is they collaborate with a university around Europe and US. They somehow also invite all the lecturer or the professor in that uni

to come to give speech. Sometimes we'll also review our portfolio, like give us suggestions that what kind of candidate they're looking for in that field. Luckily, I successfully applied interaction design field in the UK. After I graduated,

I actually went back to Taiwan to work around like close to three years and then also luckily like there was a headhunter found me I think when the Taiwanese company was bankrupt at that moment in my third year as a UX designer that company basically bankrupt and

That company has a certain reputation in the Singapore industry. So that's why the Singapore headhunter found me and then contacted me. So that's why I'm here in Singapore, continuing my career journey.

That's cool. Were you on LinkedIn back then? Or like, how did the headhunter found you? To be honest, like when I was studying in UK, LinkedIn also kind of very popular in UK. So I already had my file set up during that time. But Taiwan, it's not using LinkedIn. It's another professional, more local one.

That's a really interesting story on how you transitioned from mathematics to UX design and then how you came to Singapore, which I believe part of it was luck. Part of it was also that you had the experience already. So you were ready for that opportunity. What did you learn when you're coming to Singapore or when you're working in Singapore, like in your first few years? What did you learn?

What were some of the things that stood out for you? Because obviously it's very different working in a UX job in Singapore versus working in a UX job in Taiwan.

It's a very international environment, I would say. When I joined Carousel, I can't imagine that there's 20 nationalities in one company where my job in Taiwan at that time is all Taiwanese and all very Taiwanese-style boss. Where Carousel at that time is very...

International, open and transparent, not much hierarchy. So this is the first thing that at that time I'm trying to get used to, like the working environment.

And in Singapore, also the design community, although it's very small, but it's somehow kind of like, oh, A person or B person, B person, know your friend or friend. It's a small city. People know people, you're right. Yeah. And also a lot of event in Singapore, a lot of like meetup event or a lot of like design industry advocator will try to share their experience.

thoughts, ideas, challenge in the company and also trying to influence the tech industry to make sure that other designers have a better life in the team. This is something at the moment of time when I was in Taiwan, it doesn't happen very frequently.

But in Singapore, I actually see quite a lot. So I can get to join the design community, know different company designers, how they work and get to know each other. Now that you're in Singapore, you've worked here for several years and you work on some international products. Do you have any intention of going back to Taiwan and contributing back to the UX industry over there? Or what are your future career plans?

In short term, no.

Yeah, because like I mentioned that Taiwan's UX maturity, I would say compared to Singapore, is still relatively low. They treat most of the UI designer, even their job title called UX designer. The company actually don't really see much value unless you are an international product like Yahoo, like Google, like BenQ, all those global brands.

they actually value UX designs and company willing to spend effort on that area. Whereas most startups,

They are more focusing on product statability. So they actually still want to hire a designer that works well in UI, no matter what your title is, like whether it's UI slash UX designer or product designer, whatever your title is, the company still thinks you are a UI designer.

I think that might take a couple of years to catch up. And it depends really very much on the job opportunity, I'm sure. Now that you've kind of gone through this journey, like being in the industry for many, many years, being a UX designer, and I'm sure you're also hiring people. What kind of advice do you have for people

people who are looking to enter the industry but are finding it very competitive and maybe they don't necessarily have the kind of opportunities at the moment, especially with the tightening of the tech industry. What kind of advice would you give to people who are trying to break into UX design? As a junior designer, I think there are two types of junior designers that I encountered in my past experience. So one type is that

they went to like also like institute studied the whole process of UX and then came up to find a job

And they assumed they were used a portfolio that they work in the institute to find a job. However, it's very different from the actual project you're going to working on in industry. And then the junior designers, some of them were thinking that they like to go with more like

strategic thinking when it goes to a UX designer role in their first job, which it's not possible to be honest at your first job because UX designer or power designer, or UX designer as a junior, you have to know how to create your craft. You have to know how to execute before you land on the strategy thinking ways of work.

So I think this is one very big interesting insight I found. Like a lot of people think like when I joined UX designer, I will do a lot of like strategic thinking, a lot of little things like PM jobs, less UI work. But to be honest, as a junior designer, your first job is have to know how to execute a project. Like given a scope of the project, you have to know how to execute. To be honest, you don't need to know how to hit the business metrics,

or like how can this improve the numbers like what PM is currently doing but you need to know what problem you're solving at the same time how to deliver UI is very important as a designer

You would suggest that for people who are still struggling to kind of make sure that their technical skills are strong so that they are able to get hired? Because as a junior level designer, we usually look for people who are capable of executing the project instead of thinking, oh, this project is not doable. I don't think it's hitting business metrics.

These are more like senior designers. They will usually have, based on their past experience, they already knew like what kind of designs, what kind of layout will better fit the business.

Are you speaking on behalf of the companies you work for or this is more specific to Vicky, like how you all look out for junior designers? I would say the past company I worked for, every single company, we are always looking for a person, like a junior person, your first year career, looking for more good at execution.

However, some startups actually looking for a junior designer who can do literally everything. I know this sounds very, very bad, but the thing is, I think it's a very good opportunity for a junior designer to sharpen from end-to-end experience from user research till the UI deliverables and also learning how to convince your work to different stakeholders. It's a very good opportunity.

a stage or a playground. I think like kind of like a sandbox, as you say, like a playground or like a kind of like opportunity to really grow very, very quickly. With so many people getting fired right now and it's not a really great time in the tech industry, you know, do you have any advice for people who just lost their jobs in tech? I wouldn't say advice, but maybe like any words of encouragement or tips if someone just lost their job and they're trying to

trying to like kind of like pick up the pace and get a job right to be honest I have to I'm standing from a hiring manager point of view

Which all the tech companies in this period of time are trying to save money. Yeah, I have to say saving money so that the company can still running it would be their first priority. So sometimes during this time even like very seasonal designers will have a little bit hard time finding job is just because

they want to save money or maybe find someone who is less expensive, which this also sounds very bad. But as a company, this is also what we are looking for as well. And another thing is that I would suggest that

If like going to the big company, if it's difficult, why not try more like potential startup or the startup who is going to profitable or ready or even is profitable? Because like these startup actually give you a lot of space or give you financial kind of like safety. Knowing that you join, you won't get fired, you know, within five,

several months. And then during the start, also they will give you a lot of responsibilities that you can do end-to-end. You have more voice and influence on the main position, on the business, on the design, on the future. So maybe during this time, you can join a startup, like a profitable one.

And then maybe stay for one year and can see the market for a while. And once the market is getting ready, all the larger companies will slowly, slowly open up. Well, thank you for the tips. I think that definitely sound advice to be open to joining startups and also be open to the idea of being flexible with your salary, especially when everyone's trying to save costs right now. We're very glad that you're able to join us tonight, Tina.

So for those of you who want to reach out to Tina, like you can look for her on LinkedIn, but do note, like you, you might have to type her Mandarin name, but I think she's going to change it pretty soon. So it's quite a quatient K U E I T I E N. If you want to look for her on LinkedIn, but I think she's going to add Tina very, very soon inside. So you can just reach out to her. And for,

Our listeners, thank you for listening to this. We hope this session and episode has been helpful and useful for you as we talk about the difference between designing for Ease versus designing for Wes and

Tina's lessons on how to transition from being an individual contributor to being a manager. And thank you so much. And do join us next month where we have different guests speaking about working in UX design. So thank you. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please let me know what you think. Get in touch with me over email at mail at curiouscore.com. I would love to hear from you.

Do also check out our previous interviews and other free resources at curiouscore.com. And until next time, I'll see you on the next episode. Take care and keep leaning into change.