Tang Consulting and Hyperlink Research, Shanghai, China
– Visited December, 2008

Tang Consulting is a small but growing company at the forefront of usability in China. The company has been in operation for two years and it currently employs 20 people, not including a number of part time workers. Tang has worked with large multinationals such as Hewlett Packard, Microsoft and Intel. It currently has large user experience projects with major Chinese banks. These projects look at the whole system of the clients in terms of usability, not just software and web sites. Jason Huang who founded the company was educated in usability in the UK and was instrumental in the setting up of the Usability Professionals Association chapter in China.

Tang is mainly called to do summative testing in their work. They balance this by working to train designers and developers in client companies in the principals of usability design. Although Tang has some in-house testing facilities, they have undertaken an interesting partnership with Hyperlink research. Hyperlink has a number of usability testing facilities available for other companies to use in various types of evaluation.

Hyperlink's Ricky Xie has taken a unique approach to designing test facilities, deriving from his background in hotel management. When visiting the Hyperlink facilities in Shanghai, it is immediately apparent that a great deal of thought had gone into the user experience (for both client and test subjects) of the test facility. Rather than locate the facility in an office building as most labs are, Hyperlink facilities in Shanghai are located within a former mansion in a relatively quiet residential area.

On entering the front door you see a reception area that is very much like one you would find in a boutique hotel. The upscale furniture in the test and focus group rooms are accompanied by state of the art digital equipment for capturing the tests. Hyperlink’s usability work is built upon its main business of providing market research support.

Hyperlink and Tang demonstrate a model partnership of two relatively small companies leveraging their combined talents to exploit the great opportunities that exist in China. Tang’s expertise in user experience design and evaluation methods combined with Hyperlinks world class design of test facilities, create a support environment that is useful for any company involved in serving their customers better.

Some pictures of hyperlinks facilities (used with permission)

The control room for one of the usability test labs - the recording equipment is fully digital.

The test room with modern furniture and lighting and a test computer equiped with an eye-tracking monitor.

A focus group/physical product test room. Audio visual recording equipment is discretely integrated with the environment.