Nov 28, 2006

Bags

I was staring at this wall for really long time....so beautiful!
(Fukuoka, Japan)

Seoul

I spent 4 days in Seoul last week for meetings. Seoul surprised me with many things. It is such a clean and organized city. Golden Ginkgo tree leaves brighten the streets, very delightful. Other then stuck in the meeting room most of the time, here is my impression of the city.

- Men wear nice looking pastel color neck-tie (looks like woman shops for men in Korea)
- The woman’s shoe session in the department store hire young good-looking guys (sex sell - sales strategy)
- Corp worker brushes teeth after meal
- Seoul has very intuitive street, subway and directional signs
- White collar female workers like to place their handbag on the desk; even at the immigration (handbag and accessory might be one of the status symbols)
- BBQ and drinking is part of daily life (fun!! But it is tough if you are a vegetarian)
- Lots of cute coffee shops (I had too much coffee :P)

Nov 7, 2006

UPA 2006 - Hang Zhou

今年的User Friendly Conference 给我很多的impact. Many conversation and discussions were around the culture differences. 因为长时间在美国公司工作及生活,我深深的体会到中西文化差異. 自来到中囯,我发现很多人 (包括designers) made lots assumptions on Chinese users. 我非常疑惑, 当People said to me that Chinese people love busy and flashy design because all the major portals in China have long pages and filled with tons of links and blinking banner ads. Chinese users love red, yellow and gold color. Really?

This topic was brought up again in the User Friendly 2006 Conference in 杭州. There were heated debates around this topic. I think China market presents an interesting phenomenon. Everything contains many different layers of meanings that reflect culture and time. It does not have one simple answer. After all, 5,000 years of history and culture takes time to digest.


哎, 生疏的中文拼音, 一段句子打好久...:P