Hi guys, My name is Jia Li (李嘉， in Chinese). I am a senior math & CS student from Sixth College.  I’ve spent most of my time in three countries so far: China, New Zealand and United States. After I finished my middle school in China at 15, I went to Auckland, New Zealand for high school (Saint Kentigern College, later transferred to Auckland International College). At Sain kentigern college, a local private school, I learned a lot about Maoris, which are the indigenous cultures of New Zealand, since I used to live in the boarding house, and half of my roommates were Maoris. Haka, which is a form of war dance that was originally used to intimidate enemies, is known to be one of the most famous symbols of Maori culture. These days Haka has been introduced as the classic national programme which is usually performed before rugby games by All Blacks, the national rugby team, or during the celebration of traditional festivals. Since I was born in China and I have spent most of my time in Guangzhou, my hometown city, I still have the strongest identity as  a Chinese. Guangzhou is a southern city of China, and so it shares many cultures in common with Hong Kong, for example, we all speak Cantonese, we enjoy Cantonese food such as Dim Sum.

Since I was interested in business and I had learn some product design, UI design and programing, I recruited a team of professionals and developed our first version of online parenting app. But the early user data appears to be disappointing (not even a 100 registered users). We then carried out serveral research and studied the backend data. We found that the parent-child book dubbing feature in the app had highest click rate, while many parents users complaint that there were too little content provided. So we adjusted our direction, and turned to develop web app in WeChat ( a Chinese Social Media), which supports app experience without having to download it. Also, we updated many dubbing materials, including colorful pictures,  simple stories and guiding voice for 3-6 children and parents. Suprisingly, in 2 weeks, we obtained over 20,000 registered users. And now, it’s over 30,000 registered users, and it’s still growing.

As far as I am concerned, communication is the key to understanding business. In business, communications are everywhere. When you develop a software product, you want to communicate with your users through it. When you want to know what’s wrong with your project when it fails, you want to know the reasons by communicating with your users (which indeed is extremely tough. From my experience, talking and surveys are the last options you want to pick. Customers or users in many cases won’t or can’t tell you what they need). When you want to design a successful product, you want to know how users would be willing talk about it or even communicate with each other with it. Besides, All cultures start with communications. For instance, Haka is a form of communication. The gestures and facial expression both mean to send their enemies the message of threat and danger. When the patrols or kiaps wrote their record, they were also sending a message to the reader. It’s not that i am not interested in learing their culures and lives, but i would be more intereted in the way how their culture is generated based on communication and human nature.