While sitting in his MBA class, James skims CNet’s news website on his laptop. One story grabs his attention: “Google takes ad service to China.” He learns that Google will let advertisers in China bid for keywords in traditional and simplified Chinese. The article mentions that Sohu reported advertising revenue of $9.5 million, a 120 percent rise from last year. Figures and calculations race through James' mind; he tries to extrapolate the current market size and imagine how big it will grow over the next five years. He is curious if there are companies in China that specialize in Chinese character search technology. He hopes he can find local partner with whom he can work together to build a search engine optimized for search Chinese characters.

He goes to the Mapping China website where all the information—industry, market, company, and contact data—is arranged in a clear and easy to digest interface. He clicks the industry analysis section where he read a brief overview of the search engine market in China. He goes on to select a specific company. The company page contains a brief description of the company and its management team. Suddenly, he remembers meeting the company’s vice-president of marketing at a trade show a few months ago. He gives the VP a call to see if he can a better sense of more market trends.

Scenario #2

Stella needs to write a paper on wireless industry in China. She knows something about the topic already, but still, she would like to have a general overview of the industry and some specific statistics. She comes to our site, and immediately sees "wireless" listed under "industries". She clicks on it, and it takes her to the wireless industry home page, where she is given several paragraphs about the industry and tools for her to visualize the information. She selects bar chart to show the overall growth of the industry from 1990. Also listed there is all the major players in the wireless industry sorted by revenue. She noticed China Mobile has the most revenue, so she clicks on the company names and reads more financial data about the company. She wants to know the number of wireless subscribers in China. She clicks on "statistics", and found the 2002 figure. She reads some latest news about the industry, and she is interested in reading some analyst reports. She goes to the "resource" section, and saw a list of websites with both free and paid-subscriptions where she can get more information. She clicks on one of them and continues her research.

Scenario #3

Janet is a 27 year-old graduate student interested in job or internship opportunities in China. Prior to pursuing her Masters degree, she worked for several years as a software programmer. She's therefore very familiar with the software industry, although not particular to China. She knows China is the fastest growing market for high tech and, thanks to WTO and IP regulations, has been growing its software industry. Janet has some familiarity with China, and has an idea of where the major cities in China are located. She's interested in finding jobs in Shanghai, which she has heard is the most international and cosmopolitan Chinese city.

She has heard about the MappingChina web site from a friend of a friend and types in the URL in her browser. After skimming general information on China, she selects the software industry so she can filter the information to only that regarding her industry. She's surprised to see that the software industry is actually most active in the Guanzhou region; she notes that there are more software companies and news stories centered around that region. She skims through the Chinese government's recent policies regarding software, including intellectual property and high tech park initiatives. But because she's still reticent about life under communist rule, she decides she's still interested only in jobs in Shanghai. She reads a few statistics about Shanghai area, including cost of living and salaries. They're much lower than what she's used to, but maybe it's worth a shot. She's still young and China is where the throngs are amassing (not to mention the dire job situation back home, given the terrible economy).

Unsure of what software companies are located in Shanghai, she zooms in on that province and does a company search. She clicks through a few company summaries for both Chinese companies and multinationals, and even continues on to some of the company Web sites, where she applies for a few of the openings on their job pages. UTStarcom is a telecommunications company that also delves in software. However, their closest offices to Shanghai are in Hangzhou. She wonders how far Hangzhou is from Shanghai? Could she live in Shanghai and commute to Hangzhou? She zooms in on the map to see the distances and looks up transportation information for Shanghai. She notes that there's a regularly scheduled train that goes between Hangzhou and Shanghai, but it takes 2 hours to get between the cities.

Taking a break from this job search tactic, she clicks on news to see which software companies are making headlines in China. She clicks on a few news headlines to read the articles that interest her, including a few on software outsourcing to China -- evidence that business is booming, but also that she'll have some strong local competition. Eventually, Janet decides to sign up with MappingChina in order to regularly receive email headlines for the software industry.

Finally, she clicks on the Guanxi link to see what software professional groups and events might lead her to company contacts to assist in her job search. She notes a couple that are active in her area (San Francisco Bay Area) and decides to attend the next meeting of the Chinese Software Professionals Association. According to the CSPA Website, they will be welcoming a speaker soon who will talk about his entrepreneurial experiences setting up a software startup in China.

Scenario #4

James has been chewing over an idea for a new start-up company that would serve as a liaison between semiconductor design firms in the U.S. and fabrication firms in China. He wants to find out if any other companies are already providing this service and, if so, whether they would be potential partners or competitors. He decides to try out a new web portal developed by some SIMS students. He settles at his computer after dinner one night to do the initial research.

He brings up the web portal and browses companies in the semiconductor industry, seeing that they’re mostly located in Shanghai. This makes him curious about the development of the industry in China over time, so he looks at that. He then looks through current news stories on the industry and on specific companies. For companies that catch his interest, he looks up service type (design house, fabricator, etc.), specialization (consumer product chips, computers, servers), parent/subsidiary relationships, statistical information – size, financial data – and website link (if any) for a company contact. After about an hour and a half, James has found and printed out information on a few companies that he will ask his colleagues about at an upcoming conference on high-tech development in Asia. Satisfied, he checks his email quickly before logging out and going to bed.

James is an aspiring technology entrepreneur who is thoughtful and directed. After receiving his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering, James worked as a computer chip designer before moving over to product marketing and sales, where he found his true calling. His goal after graduating is to start his own business – he has many ideas for high-tech services, applications, and products that he would like to develop and market. He is interested in the high-tech market in China because that’s where the greatest opportunities are taking place.

Although he was born in Taiwan and speaks Taiwanese and some Mandarin, James’ family moved to the United States when he was very young, so he considers English to be his native language. He feels most comfortable and confident communicating in English for business purposes. For this reason, he wants to interact primarily with the U.S. affiliates of Chinese companies, since GuanXi and speaking Chinese are essential to doing business with Chinese companies.

When he first got into marketing and sales, James attended many networking events and conferences. Now that he is more knowledgable about the field, he doesn’t go to as many events, but his contact network is still a primary source of industry information. When James hears about a trend or wants to learn more about a particular company, he will do some basic internet research and then call up people he knows to get more information. James wants to know more about the smaller high-tech companies in China as well as who they’re affiliated with in the U.S. so that he can evaluate them for partnerships or as competitors. He plans to live and work in the U.S. but travel to China regularly.

James’ Goals

• Understand the interrelationships among American and Chinese companies
• Find out a particular company’s specialization
• See where industry concentrations are located geographically in China
• Find out who the key players are in each industry
• Get contact information for companies, both American and Chinese
• Find out information on professional organizations in China
• Use a China MapQuest to help

WHAT:
Telcomasia.net is an online news and research portal catering to professionals in the telecommunications industry in Asia.

DESCRIPTION:
A publishing company based in Hong Kong operates this portal as an extension to its print business. The portal consists of three main components: news headlines, company and industry directories, and research resources.

AUDIENCE
Telecommunications industry professionals

POSITIVES
- Overall the user interface is straightforward, allowing users to skim news and get to analyst reports with just a few clicks.
- Every page in the website has the same layout.
- The uniform layout allows users to focus on the main content as they browse through the site.
- The menu is a visible and consistent navigation element that effectively guides users as they move from page to page.

NEGATIVES
- The left menu contains over 30 items divided by categories headers
- The company directory section is populated with only barebones information.
- The user goes in expecting to find company descriptions, statistics, and various other data, but telecomasia.net does not provide such detailed information.
- Telecomasia.net relies on companies to input their own data.
- The only way for a company to submit its data is via a PDF form, which defeat the whole purpose of web-based information exchange

The research resources area breaks down the telecom industry into a hierarchy of equipment and service providers. The arrangement of these categories anticipates what topics users will look for as they browse. This directory serves as a reference for Mapping China to breakdown the high-tech industry.

WHAT:
IDC (International Data Corporation) Market Analysis for worldwide telco market

DESCRIPTION:
Industry-specific market analysis portal (Paid service)
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jhtml?containerId=IDC_P595

AUDIENCE
- Primary: Marketing professionals (Account Managers, business
development), industry professionals
User Objectives: track industry news, information, activity
- Secondary: Other people interested in the telco market
User Objectives: track industry news, information, activity

PURPOSE
- repository for market analysis, industry research
- e-commerce site to purchase such research
- advertise IDC services (get new customers for consulting, analyst briefings, etc.)

CONTENTS/FEATURES
- secure log-in view as well as browse view (can view abstracts, search)
- Customizable views with user registration
- Free newsletter (with registration)
- IDC RSS feeds to user desktop
- Browse research (by business area, geo, strategy, technology)
- Browse events (all upcoming, by region, by event type)
- Content Management System (CMS): Upload/download documents
- IT advisory Tools (SmartIndex to help set competitive pricing,
SmartBuy for procurement, etc.)
- Benefits of registering spelled out clearly
- Help is available -- some is task based, with a handful of screen
shots for part of it
- data/analysis objectivity disclaimer
- request for analyst briefing
- side bar for recent IDC press releases, for Featured Research
- Quick link to request to quote IDC (Web-based form)
- Contact IDC (including listing of brick-and-mortar offices)

POSITIVES
- Purpose of the site is clearly stated on homepage
- Main functionality of site is intuitive on homepage: personalization
"My IDC", Login, it's a paid service (shopping cart), Subscription, How To (Create a Business Plan, etc.) services,
- Credentials displayed up front (Meet the Experts, analyst teams, etc.)
- Possible personalization of site, including remote storage
(Bookcase), saved searches - Search tool with filter: by document identifier, author, company, geo, event, topic, language (English or Japanese)
- Search tool has sort feature (published date, title)
- Advanced features available (e.g. advanced search)
- all documents are labelled with date and author
- documents have summaries (abstracts)
- printer-friendly format available
- document summaries and Table of Contents available, even without user registration
- site index/site map
- Web forms "remember" content typed in them if user navigates back and forth (even without completing "submit") -- did they use cookies?

NEGATIVES
- User experience: random javascript components, some of which don't work on some platforms (like my Mac, Unix), also some text formatting problems, ghosting of UI objects (remnants that stay long after your mouse is no longer on the GUI object)
- Content: Some menu choices are abbreviated (unfinished); redundant bits lead to unnecessarily text-heavy pages
- Information Architecture: no clear flow of data; many menus
distributed all over home page
- Terminology: what is a "Bookcase" ? (never answered, but you need to be a registered user to use it); Inconsistent naming scheme of IT Advisory Tools, data formats
- (side bar) IDC press releases, Featured Research titles are not
related to the Telecomms industry
- Help removes button bar: how to go back?
- Help has 2 lists of options (help topics, and sub topics per each). But help topics are a mix of feature and task
- Cannot resize help window (but you can scroll); window chops off some Help Topic options
- Help doesn't cover many topics - is it comprehensive?
- RSS feeds non-intuitive (complex, non-intuitive techie process -- for marketing people -- involving XML, cutting and pasting URLs)
- It's not clear how to use the IT Advisory tools (can you link to
them? Do you have to pay for them? Do you have to pay for an IDC analyst to use them and then deliver the results to you?) Two layers into the Tools page, I still don't know...(You have to call them to set up an appointment in order to find out more!)
- link to jobs at IDC -- seems inappropriate here
- seems a little slow (I don't know if this is general network traffic
or specific to their site)

WHAT
SmartMoney.com Maps Feature (http://www.smartmoney.com/maps/?nav=DropTabs)

DESCRIPTION
Visualization tools and related information on company and industry performance.

AUDIENCE
- Primary: Individual stock and mutual fund investors. User objectives: see “hot” and “cool” spots in industry, see current stock prices of companies by industry, see size of companies in relation to other companies in same industry, track company performance over time, see who a company’s competitors are, get recent news on companies and industries.

PURPOSE
- Offer free and subscription-only investment information services for U.S. and international companies

CONTENTS/FEATURES
- Visualization of companies and industries
- Visualization of companies within an industry
- News stories by company and industry
- Financial information on each company: stock price, stock volumes and high/lows, graphs of performance over time, earnings, ratings, competitors, key rates, financials
- Free information on 600 stocks
- Subscription services for 1000 U.S. and international stocks
- Mutual fund map

POSITIVES
- Visualizations very effective at depicting company size and performance
- Easy to get a quick overview of industry performance
- A lot of good information on individual companies
- Icons in company boxes let users see which companies have “news”
- Vertical hierarchy competitor graphs good way to visualize performance relationships
- Site is customizable – users can track and visualize their own stocks
- Maps are accessible for new users; by moving the mouse around, users quickly see how the maps work
- “Find” function offers like names when user begins typing a name
- “Find” search result consists of highlighting relevant box on map and bringing up additional information pop-up

NEGATIVES
- Must click through many screens to get information
- Screens come up as individual panes that must then be closed; can’t use the “back” button
- Company information is stock-oriented
- User must enter billing information before being allowed a trial 2-week subscription
- Control panel for the map visualizations is separate from the map; easy to lose it behind open panes
- Maps can be overwhelming at first sight – one doesn’t have an immediate frame for using them
- Information that could easily fit on one pane is spread out over multiple panes (probably to allow for advertising)
- Distracting animated ads and pop-ups
- News icon sometimes obliterates small companies on the map
- “Find” search result highlight box hard to distinguish from industry outlines
- Map discriminates against small companies, since some are depicted as no larger than a dot

Main map of all industries:

Company information (Intel):

Competitive analysis (Intel):