Hokseh is an iphone app, designed in collaboration with programmer Matt Chu as an app to help people practice ‘Pinyin’, a romanized version of Cantonese. It was designed as the ‘ideal chinese character writing app for students, teachers, study groups, business people and travelers to China.’ When I met Matt, the programming functionality was already there and working, he was frustrated with ‘how ugly it is, and who’d want to buy something that looks so confusing?’

My role was simply to get in there and establish a friendly face, and make Matt’s heavy lifting accessible. Matt explained that if this wasn’t around, people most likely use a deck of cards to memorize the material. It was the ‘aha!’ design moment for the both of us to take the metaphor to the interface.