Quan Zhou (he/him/his)

During my study of the MDes program, specifically, I want to improve my user study and research skills. At Microsoft, product managers provide the user needs, designers like me evaluate project duration and create designs, and we jointly review and modify our designs before submit them for development. Most of the time, I didn’t get the chance to independently conduct user study, and gain first-hand materials and form a clear understanding of user needs. Also, the lack of professional knowledge in user study caused many problems in my design work. For instance, when I participated in the News Answer news layout project, I conducted several rounds of user study using different designs. Statistics showed that most users preferred our new design, however, when it was developed, all the important data indicators of the design (such as daily active user and click rate) were lower than the online products. I wondered why the results of user study were contrary to the online data reflections. Did we miss something important in user study, or did our user portrait not match the actual users of Bing News? To find the answers, in graduate study, I want to enhance my abilities in performing user study and in mining user needs, so as to be able to create more human-centered designs and excellent user experience. I also want to upgrade my skills in interaction design and visual design in graduate study. When helping senior designers to conduct Top Stories redesign for Microsoft Start Mobile App, I built several designs, but none of them was adopted. As I consulted my leader and reviewed his designs, I realized that I focused too narrowly on the visual effects of this module’s background, and overlooked how the news image can also be utilized as a part of the visual expression. To build stronger visual expression abilities and master more interaction design skills is essential for my career development."