FORWARD

Research

The Current Situation of International Chinese’s Social Life

Millions of Chinese who have lived overseas are going back to China for various reasons. The number is continuously growing. Among them, almost half have developed their own lifestyle and value system as “international Chinese”. A lot of them would stay in cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou etc. The major professional area they would choose are mostly finance and business, creative industry, technology and educations. Quite a few of them would like to start their own business.

For this large group of International Chinese, even though opinions are usually valued at work, things are not going so smoothly within their social life . Most of them are having different kinds of problems living in China with some “Cultural Difference”. 

Based on some desktop research and interviews, lack of network is one of the major problems. Since they have spent quite some time abroad and everything has changed, their original network is no longer good enough for them to live in China where network means almost everything. They almost have to start from the beginning in order to find some friends with similar mindsets. The difference in value system is also a big one, which would leads to different ways of living and choosing events, like cultural and art activities are highly overlooked in China. People are more into earning money instead of paying attention to their leisure life. While for international Chinese, hanging out with friends in different kinds of events are big part of life. The survey I did showed that the events they are missing most are outdoor sports and happy hours, which local Chinese don’t have the mindsets about. Thus, the lack of access to events that they are used to makes them not satisfied in their social life.

Synthesis

To Provide What They Want Based on Who They Are

Through previous research about Chinese market, and some additional observation and deep conversations with different international Chinese, I found out some common patterns among International Chinese, which led me to the 4 insights and 1 additional advantage below.

INSIGHT #1
International Chinese need to rebuild their network in order to do everything in China.

INSIGHT #2
International Chinese would require high values to match the experiences they used to have abroad.

INSIGHT #3
International Chinese tend to be curious about new things and need to know exactly what they are doing.

INSIGHT #4
International Chinese are aware of their difference but still want to keep their uniqueness to stand out in the group.

At the same time, because of their personalities and characteristics, International Chinese have the high potential to be the leaders in the market based on the research - they could possibly influence the people around them. This advantage makes them the group of people that would attract merchants and brands.

With these insights and current situation in mind, the opportunities are clearly laid out around the social needs of International Chinese, which includes understanding friends and interesting events. The potential influence of this group could be a good starting point with the commercial side as well.

Ideation

Making the The Social Life Effective and Fun

Towards all the premises I concluded from information about this group of people, I came up with 5 major features above. The solution should be trying to provide International Chinese with best recommendation, special events and high-quality friends to enrich their social life, which led me to the core below -

VALUE PROPORSITON
The most understanding & high-quality community for International Chinese that makes their social life effective and fun.

Meanwhile, among all the 5 features, most of the activities are happening within the community and members, but the “exclusive discounts of merchant events” brings the merchants/brands into the picture, naturally making the business into a multi-sided model. The solution - Platform “Forward” - is connecting two customer segments, who are International Chinese and global/new merchants, through one community. International Chinese who age from 25-35 and work in business, creative and tech area are the major one and core part of the community. Global and new merchants who want to enter Chinese market, as a secondary customer segment, need the high-quality International Chinese as their first target to promote their brand and product.

On one hand, “Forward” will provide members (high-quality International Chinese) the opportunity to network with each other through exclusive in-community events and best curated recommendations about friends and events based on their preference. Members will get exclusive discount if they buy tickets of other merchant events through this platform. In return, the platform will get some membership fees or event fees from members as part of the revenue; it will also collect the data about members’ selection to improve their machine learning result and provide more accurate recommendations.

On the other hand with Merchants, things are much easier. “Forward” offers the global or emerging merchants a platform to target on the leading consumers in their market and the chance to grow, while they will be providing sponsorship, discounts, along with events opportunities back to the community.

Analysis & Strategy

To Understand and Conquer the Market

According to the 4 insights above about International Chinese, it’s obvious that the 2 action items are to socialize and stay unique, while high standards and new things are more of requirements to their life. Thus, the selected International Chinese, as the major customer segment, can be divided to 4 archetypes based on the frame below. The archetypes are closely connected to different professional areas as they require different skills and mindsets. In this case, the Creative Entrepreneurs will be the early adopter, since they need to stand out in their business and also need the network to grow and maintain. 

Apart from the target users, competitors in the market are also worth some discussion. It's always important to understand the current products in the same market before putting yourself out there. 

There are a few Returnee’s Association Apps/Websites currently working for the whole group of Chinese returnees, but the product/service themselves are a bit messy and not quite effective, like the Official Returnee Association. There are also some other event or networking solutions in market, which are not specifically designed for returnees.  A few of them are quite good, like “Chinese Eventbrite”, but it’s just focusing on event part; while some others don’t care much about event qualities but more into connecting people, like Wechat.

“Afterwork” does a good job for working professionals but still is lacking some networking elements; “Lovingevents” kind of combines event and network elements well but neither of them are highly curated to satisfy the user needs, and the quality is hard to control.

Thus, there is no perfect solution specifically designed for “International Chinese” out there in the market right now!

Prototyping & Testing

Improving the Product and Service through Iterations

As described in the concept, “Forward” will provide curated recommendations through an online App, and also organize some exclusive-for-member offline events. During the iterations, the flow chart and wireframes of the app will be leveraged as testing prototypes to get users’ real in-time feedback; while co-creation with different users will be major format to brainstorm ideas about offline events. Thus, each MVP will be split into online and offline part to show different ways to involve users in the process of solution development. 

PART ONE - ONLINE APP

MVP #1 FLOW CHART & WIREFRAMES

MAJOR USER FEEDBACK FOR MVP #1

1. Adding “friend preference” in the sign up process will give the users more space to describe themselves and improve the accuracy of the recommendations.

2. The idea of 5 special recommendations for you is kind of interesting.

3. The “Events” & “Explore” tab could be combined because they are talking about the same thing - events. They can be differentiated by being treated in different styles or shown in different logics.

4. The message function is missing here since it would be quite important after they connect with each other. Users shouldn’t be led to other communication tools.

MVP #2 FLOW CHART & WIREFRAMES

MAJOR USER FEEDBACK FOR MVP #2

1. Rearranging the order of set up pages to make event and friend preferences more clear and easy to navigate.

2. The content combination of events itself is pretty cool, but having too many tab areas might be confusing for users. Especially since “for you” tab will be disabled after user went through their contents, it’ not really making sense to have it there.

3. Search page is having too much content. It should be clean and easy to use.

4. It is a bit weird to hide the message function inside some tab and users have to reach it after a few clicks. It is kind of an important function isn’t it?

5. The functions in Me tab is a little bit repetitive, otherwise it’s a smooth and fun experience.

PART TWO - OFFLINE EVENTS

After the 2 rounds of iterations, the key features user care about are getting clear. A lot of actions were taken after each round of feedback and suggestions to improve the product and service little by little.

The Final

Preparation Before Launching the Pilot

A final solution was settled after all the discussion and revisions. 

PART ONE - ONLINE APP

PART TWO - OFFLINE EVENT

The community and platform will design and organize some exclusive events for the members to help them enrich their social life. According to research and co-creation, Happy Hours and Outdoor Sports are two most popular areas but rarely satisfied needs for this group of people. Gallery Openings and Conferences & Talks are also very popular among a lot of the members. Those can serve as the learning activities to partner with the other leisure events to make a good balance of people’s free time. Thus, Forward will start with these four series of in-community events and follow up with some merchant events to provide more options to users. Also, Food tasting & Cooking could be added as the next series if there are more and more demands for special events. 

Some more development and testing work still need to be done for this project. For more details and other part of this project, please refer to thesis book.