Localizing and closing the cultural gap with 20+ collaborators led to 11% growth

Background & my role

As the Senior User Experience Manager at AlipayHK, I oversaw various aspects of UX, including defining localization strategies, conducting UX research and usability testing, managing a team of up to 5-6, communicating with stakeholders, and improving the product through user insights and data analysis.

Project Background

We observed the in-app experience was too complicated to Hong Kong market.

My colleagues, senior management, and I, as residents of Hong Kong, found the design from China to be too complicated for our user base. Our city's longstanding fusion of Western and Chinese cultures had shaped distinct tastes and behaviors that differ from those in mainland China.

Business goal

Primary Goal: To increase 1st-time user activation rate

At the same time, we had a secondary goal: to increase traffic from the Home Screen to other business verticals (e.g. Telecom Bills)

User profiles

Initially targeting promo-driven users, we aimed to broaden our reach to efficiency-driven users to introduce them to more functionalities.

1. Promo-driven users

   • Behavior: They decided when to use the Alipay e-wallet based on the offers, and proactively searched for offers and the status of rewards.

   • Goal: To save more by using the Alipay e-wallet.

2. Efficiency-driven users

   • Behavior: Seeking convenience and efficiency for their shopping while using the Alipay e-wallet

   • Goal: To save time by using the Alipay e-wallet.

Problems

What did 'complicated' mean? Initially, users encountered an excess of unnecessary functions, causing confusion and making it challenging to determine a starting point.

I led the team along with a researcher to utilize both quantitive data and qualitative data to help us understand the problem better.

Challenges

#1 Design Challenge: The design must balance scalability for future use with simplicity, taking into account diverse user needs and goals.

1. Balancing scalability and simplicity

   • The design needed scalability for future expansions, like adding new services, while maintaining simplicity and avoiding information overload on the home screen.

2. Addressing diverse user goals

   • Various user profiles possess distinct needs and objectives. It was crucial to enable each user profile to intuitively accomplish its goals without encountering conflicts.

3. Concern from business

   • Simplifying the home screen could result in some existing services being less visible, potentially hidden on subsequent screens. This could pose challenges for existing users accustomed to accessing those services, as they may struggle to find their usual options.

#2 Culture Challenge: Advocating for user-centric design approaches to senior stakeholders from diverse cultural backgrounds.

1. Design and culture gap

   • Many talented and experienced stakeholders from China might find it difficult to recognize the design gap between Hong Kong and China, including design team itself.

2. Stakeholders involvement

   • More than 10 stakeholders were involved and each of them had their interests and points of view, including a few product managers, C-level management, the growth team, the marketing team.

Goal

Developing a scalable, intuitive, and user-friendly home screen that lead to new users to make their first payment easier.

• considers the diverse needs and goals of new users

• tackles the needs of returning users

• allows users to explore other services easier

Problem Statement

How might we help the customers to complete their 1st transaction by simplifying the home screen?

Design Sprint

By utilizing the Design Sprint process, stakeholders collaborated in co-designing solutions which helped to foster customer empathy and gain a better understanding of user response.

This approach improved communication efficiency and fostered a customer-centric mindset. The Design Sprint process, which typically spanned five days, included the following steps:

1. Day 1 - Internal Stakeholder co-creation

2. Day 2 - Designer modified the solution

3. Day 3 - Internal Critique

4. Day 4 - Prototype

5. Day 5 - User Testing

Final Solution

New users: By simply viewing the interface, they understood that a top-up was necessary to make payments.

Additionally, we consider other user profiles:

1. Promo-driven users

   • Much easier to spot the latest status of the e-stamps collected, which encouraged them to continue to use AlipayHK.

   • Much easier for them to explore all e-stamp activities on the home screen.

2. Efficiency-driven users

   • With significantly reduced information density, it became simpler to discover additional Alipay services.

   • The relocation of the Scan/Pay buttons to the bottom made them more accessible for thumb use.

3. Returning users

   • Every time they opened the app, they easily spotted if they needed to top up again or not

Result

~11%

increased activation from 1st-time users

~20%

increased traffic to the key functionality and unique page visits

Summary

Regarding to the challenges, we identify quite a few important approaches which can help the situation:

1. Design and culture gap - The gap can be reduced by looking at the competitor analysis and user research, taking through the findings to stakeholder regularly is a effective way.

2. Existing user experience - Using separate user flow design such as 1-off education for new users can have a good balance on taking care new users and existing users experience.

3. Stakeholders Involvement - To get them understanding the customers feedback with more communication can help to ease the conflict between business requirement and customers feedback.

4. Scalability - Customer feedbacks from research or usability can only reflect the current design. Designers need to make their design scalable for future product development and the business roadmap.