Chui Chui Tan: Cultural Strategist and UX Consultant: Innovation grounded in culture, historical context and a holistic approach

The Human Show: Innovation through Social Science

Chui Chui Tan is a cultural expert with more than 15 years of experience in UX (user experience). Her experiences range from defining business strategies to building a UX team within the organisation to implementation (research and design) and continuous consultancy support as well as training and coaching. She graduated from mechanical industrial engineering, and later pursued a Master in Musical Technology at Queen’s University Belfast where she stayed to complete a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Her doctorate was a research project to help visual impaired people to access graphics using multi-modal interfaces. Since then, Chui Chui has worked with global companies and organizations to help them with their launch and to improve international business by integrating user behavioural and cultural insights. She has set up her own company Beyō Global and works with companies such as Spotify, Asana, Marriott, Babylon Health, Google, BBC and others in their pursue to understand their users better. As her specialities, Chui Chui defines international research (culture differences), multichannel strategy, product and interface design, and customer experience.

In today’s episode, we talk to Chui Chui about her career path, which she had to pave herself in the absence of a structured frame. From mechanical engineering to acculturalisation of products, she shares how she came along her methods and principles of work as well as how they have helped her shape projects and lead cross-functional teams. She reflects on the importance of blending historical context with understanding everyday user actions in order to achieve better innovation. We ask her how to optimally balance proper research with cost and time constraints? Finally we explore how Chui Chui is dealing with doing research in times of COVID and how has she adapted to meet the needs of remote work?