As businesses in Asia in various domains look to how they can mature, differentiate and compete globally in their respective products and services, User Experience (UX) is gaining significant momentum. Management are curious as to what UX means and how it can be applied to not just improve experiences but towards real customer delight. They are looking for people and professional communities to help them understand. This is being helped some by Asian companies like Samsung, Huawei, Baidu, Lenovo and HTC (to name a few) investing in design. There has also been an increase in design studios and research & development opening up locally as companies from outside Asia also want to get a deeper understanding of the "Asian consumer mindset"—especially in growth markets like mainland China—towards designing more effectively for their needs. The media has also helped with continued coverage of the importance of design in the business success of Apple and the continued integration of technology into all aspects of our lives.
When we started pitching the importance of related disciplines like usability and user centered design 10+ years ago in Hong Kong and in mainland China, there was little interest or understanding of what the terms meant, how they could be applied in product design and development, or how it could help the business make better products and services. Fast forward to 2011 and we are seeing encouraging trends and indicators in the Asian market to show that User Experience is healthy, growing and will continue to do well for many years to come.
Here are a few recent observations:
Local and Regional Communities of Practice
Whether it be smaller meet ups or professional association conferences, practitioners including researchers, designers, usability, product managers and marketing are keen to get together, learn from each other and take UX into their organisations. For example, the Usability Professionals' Association China has been running a conference called User Friendly since 2003 and has been getting a steady and increasing attendance every year. The China Interaction Design enjoyed their first conference in 2010 and newer events are growing including User Experience Taiwan in 2011, User Experience Hong Kong in 2011 (repeating in 2012), the USID Foundation India and User Experience Singapore in 2010 and 2011 that all point to a need for local professionals wanting to get together but also a regional need to better understand the state of UX in each market and how each market help get a better global UX understanding.
From tools based learning to UX Leadership
There will always be a place for improving our understanding and implementation of UX tools we use on projects but we have also seen a steady increase of practitioners in Asia wanting to know more about forming, growing and managing UX teams, hiring UX team members, gaining a better understanding of the skill sets to look out for when hiring, better managing communications between the UX team and other teams organisationally, better understanding how to communicate the UX results to management clearly towards cultural change in organisations. This suggests the market in Asia is maturing.