RESPONSIBILITIES
Researches, Wireframes, UX/UI Design & Testing
YEAR
2020
CREATION TOOLS
Adobe Creative Suite | Figma
About CHIHUO.Inc
CHIHUO Inc is founded in 2011 which has been exploring every aspect of the hospitality and food industry initially started on WeChat (a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent). As the company's influence continues to expand, branches have been established in 14 cities in North America. From a single WeChat article writing and publishing platform to a multi-platform full-service company.
CHIHUO.Inc Press
Hulu & CHIHUO.Inc
As of 2020， Hulu has launched a food reality show named “Taste the Nation.”CHIHUO with great honor was invented as one of the representatives of Chinese cuisine.
Timeline
Project Brief
I participated in and responsible for the research and UI design part of the company introduction page for the CHIHUO B2C official website.
CHIHUO.Inc already has an official B2C website, but the about-us page has been vacant for a long time. Page optimization design needs to maintain the visual style with other pages of the website, establish a brand image, and let more potential users know the company.
Project Analysis
The original purpose of CHIHUO was to let more Chinese in the United States feel the warmth of home by sharing Chinese food. Therefore, the page style and text need to reflect the story that CHIHUO has accompanied users for nearly 10 years. My goal was to reshape the brand’s online presence through creating a sleek user interface , which also would offer more engaging online experiences to customers.
Business Goals：Export brand culture through the page to attract more vertical fans. Attracting more quality clients and business partners.
User goal: Learn about company activities through the page; look for opportunities for cooperation.
Information Architecture (IA)
Ideation
I drew inspiration from CHIHUO existing website (Official Website, CHIHUO store), social media account, and offline event pictures before starting my design. Visually, the site needed to be unique to the "nostalgia sense" style, repeating VI to enhance user memory. Functionally, I wanted the site to increase more interaction with users.
Wireframe
Through discussions with the team members, we finalized the page as vision, brand influence, brand growth timeline, loyal clients story, and contact us in 5 main sections.
Explain the Concept
It is found that users don't immediately understand the concept of our brand name, so an explanation is provided at the beginning.
Sharing Brand Stories
Sharing Brand's stories with the customers, they will feel more connected to our business.
Adding Social Proof
Customers tend to be attracted to products that are loved by others. Therefore I decided to highlight excellent customer reviews on the page.
Scrolling Tags
Customers could get more events' details of a specific experience in the expandable columns. It also enhanced the interaction between the user and the web page.
Show, Don't Tell
Show our power by list cooperations with well-known brands.
Finished Design
Team Members
Team Leader
Yidan Ma
Design
Mengwen Yu
Quality Control
Yue Hou / Bibi
Content Creation
Meihui Li
Support
Yushi Zheng
Developement Director
Qingyuan Wen
What I've Learned
I learned that in actual projects, discussions, and exchanges with team members are very important. In the time period of project production, nearly half of the time is spent on research and assignment. The preliminary work is ready, and the later UI design will be smooth.