Torry Guo : 785.393.0180

Or: torryster@gmail.com

2010:a IxD grad student at KU

Life in KU was quite in surface, but challenging underneath. We are trying to solving real-life problems, some of which are extremely complex and difficult. Good thing to be in school is: you don't fear to fail, and you have time to try, to throw away and try again.

2009: Some dreams came true

A year of big changes. I quit my job and went to US for a IxD(interaction design) master degree. For the first timeI realized the true range and power of design could be, and how important communication was.

2008:so called UI designer

Titled user INTERFACE designer, most of the time I was doing GRAPHIC design indeed. What is the difference? And what is the user experience design? Am I doing the right thing? Questions came out now and then and I started to think.

2007:Graphic designer

My career began as I switch to the world of design. It was lucky to find something combines my background and interests, I was called the interface designer.

Before 2007: a CS student at BUPT

Self-finding I: I knew c++ would not be my future life, and I tried to explore life as much as I could during different internships: web developer, news photo editor, HR, animator...

NextGen PC OS Design

NGOS

This project was for the 2005 NextGen PC OS Design Competition. Cell-circle UI includes: a holographic 3D screen and a Bee-pen that provides sound, light, touch, and smell, making it convenient for all users.

IIT Chinese Website

IIT

This project aimed to give a local character to the basic design of the U.S. site. Content needed to be arranged in a logical manner and web function usability was paramount. www.iit.org.cn

My E-book

ebooks

This project used a graphic ebook to present my feelings and thoughts on life in my 3rd year of university. The style is casual and tries to give a pencil and watercolor effect. Click here to view more graphic books I created during my university years.

Days at ChinaFotoPress

ebooks

During my internship at CFP, I created the CITY EXPRESSION photo collection and sitemap. I also built an internal wiki system on the company server.www.chinafotopress.com

Logo Design

ebooks

The company required to design a brand name and logo for their new perfume. It needed to be simple and gracefully French. The design include the text, font, and image.

Banner Design

ebooks

Corel Painter is a great tool for computer graphics. I picked up my pen again after all these years being a science student. Instead on paper, I did the drawing directly on the computer with the Wacom tablet.

Piece of Freshsky

It was a flash project when I was in freshsky studio(www.freshsky.net). Our team developed a story based on all the services the Gototel provided. It was showed in a big telecoms exhibition.

Jazz I OS UI

GUI for Jazz I

C2 Microsystems is a TV box chips design house. They are looking for the new graphic user interface for their key-product PVR.

Mino Landing Page

landing page

This project aimed to give prominence to product advantages and promotional information, while allowing prompt feedback via a simple form for users to fill in.

Mino New Site

new mino site

This project aimed to emphasize a website design that was both professional and in line with the company's own high-tech style. MiNO is an American telecommunications company and international mobile VoIP operator; its customer base is composed of various international corporations and groups.

M-call Branding

m-call

The project aimed to design a unique logo for the M-Call brand and a multi-page brand introduction, including cover, product intro, company intro, etc. M-Call is a new mobile service and the design is in line with its modern, high-tech style.

Poster Design

posters

The project aimed to create hand-drawn cartoon posters to illustrate, simply and clearly, the main concept and principal advantages of the roaming project. These posters were to be used for the marketing and sales plan. The cartoon needed to be laid-back and lively, but not overly simple like a children's cartoon.

Mino Banner

banners

This project required strict maintenance of image resolution and banner size. The challenge was to attract maximum users and create consumer awareness within these constraints.

Graduate Thesis Project

Graduate thesis

This project was part of my Bachelor's thesis. The design makes use of a "plug-in/framework" concept. The "frame" is only a base support while other parts "plug-in" for specific services, allowing users to customize their own service.

T-shirt Design

T-shirt

This project won 2nd prize in the BYR forum T-shirt contest for the forum's 4 year anniversary. It uses the homophone pair '4ever' and 'forever' to celebrate the anniversary. Boys' and girls' shirts are different colors.

Mino for Windows Mobile 5

Mino WM5

This project aimed to design the MiNO GUI for the Windows Mobile 5 platform while improving some aspects of the UI flow. This software is used for making calls, including the main functions of CALL, CALL LOG, ACCOUNT SETTING, etc.

Mino for BlackBerry

Mino for BlackBerry

This project aimed to design the MiNO GUI for the BlackBerry platform while optimizing UI flow to increase usability. This software is used for making calls, including the main functions of CALL, CALL LOG, ACCOUNT SETTING, etc.

Style Research

Style Research

This project is an experiment in frosted glass style, part of the popular UI material research project.

Icons-DPF, NMP, PVR

icons

Icon design was one of the most important part of my job as an interface designer. Meanwhile that was why I called myself UI designer titled graphic designer. But there were usability issues to concern when design different icon sets: visibility, mapping, consistency and feedback.

Jazz I OS UI

GUI

C2 Microsystems is a TV box chips design house. Among 3 alternative provided, this was their final choice, including icons.

DTV GUI

DTV GUI

As an important component of the Jazz I chip OS, the user interface development of DTV was set as a individual project other than NMP, DPF or PVR. Instead of using qt-based element, DTV could use bmp format images since it has a fixed screen resolution.

Digital Photo Frame UI

Digital Photo Frame UI

DPF(digital photo frame) project was the first project that I was completely enrolled to the team as a UI designer from developing phase day 1. We followed the traditional process: start a meeting regard to marketing requirement, and start design the frame, when goes to detailed interface design, I worked with engineers seamlessly and making necessary iterate improvement while developing.

User Interaction Flow

User Interaction Flow

Other than design single interfaces, I carried out an user experience improvement research, and the interaction flow analysis was part of it. Here I compared and analyized the user operation flow of C2's current products and the competitors' such as apple and Tivo. The research finnally generated a comphrehesive report, which provideed a powerful reference to the further improvements on user using the current product.

User Interview

icons

This was a part of the user experience improvement research. The interview was designed to observe the beginner, intermedia and expert user's task-oriented operations. Certain questions were asked during the observation. The interview reports provided important reference data to the whole plan and it was a base for the Jazz II OS R & D.

Icons-DPF, NMP, PVR

icons

Icon design was one of the most important part of my job as an interface designer. Meanwhile that was why I called myself UI designer titled graphic designer. But there were usability issues to concern when design different icon sets: visibility, mapping, consistency and feedback.

My2book

My2book

My2book is an information platform for the used book industry. It was my classmate's concept for his personal start-up. I was helping with the strategy development, user interaction flow and the prototype.

Yiyo UI

Yiyo UI

The design process including the user anaylize, user flow design and the final interface design. Yiyo was a service system conceptual product that especially designed for roamming users, including phone number booking and other special services, such as weather forcast and language translation.

Color and the Style

color

Trying and exploring are endless for designers.I tried to use color and flower patterns to convey the model's temperament. Photos were processed first, then patterns and text were added.

Huanlezhu Site

Huanlezhu

Huanlezhu wanted the site to present the fairground's character of rich entertainment contents. The color patterns should be bright in color and fashion, meeting the taste of children and teenagers. Meanwhile, it required to organise the content effective so that the contents looked rich but not crowded.

Brochure for IIC

IIC

The marketing manager came to me to create a clear and professional product brochure. He requested it to be in line with C2'shigh-tech style and to draft a high-quality overall product diagram and first-class flowchart. I saw it as an experience of printing design.(don't ask again if it is a UI designer's job) This brochure was widely delivered at the IIC event.

C2 Company Portfolio

Company Portfolio

Don't ask me whether if it was part of an UI designer's job, check it out at OK/Cancel. As I said, I was just a graphic designer most at that time. So the marketing people wanted me to create a PDF format company portfolio for C2. It should show the company character and style, and using the logo blue as the mian color.

Jazz II OS

Jazz II OS

Jazz II was C2's new chip with more features. Current Jazz I OS would no longer support the expending thus a new R&D program was carried out. As the UI designer in the application team, I built the 2 prototypes based on user's behaviors from former interview and observation.

E-style Banner

E-style Banner

I designed some fashion banners to put on blog for a friend. Since the blog theme was blue, I tried using different blues to create an old-fashion style.

Banner for New Website

Banner for New Website

Since I was in charge of the website project, I created this illustration that has the company slogan "break media format boundaries", with the cc1100 chip in center (the main product of the company). As a multimedia processor, the powerful decode-encode ability is the highlight of this chip.

New Company Website

New Company Website

C2 marketing needed a website design that was in line with the company's own high-tech style. As a user interface designer I was in charge of the whole project with a limited time. The visual effect was more emphasized than the interaction with visitors in this case since the function of the site was simple. Web URL:www.c2micro.com(design changed in 2009 after I left)

Redesign an Online Flower Shop

Redesign an Online Flower Shop

It is a challenge to manage the colors for this kind of project: they're just too many. And they were looking for a website redesign that both attractive and best presented the comfortable flower shop style. Meanwhile, design details should be carefully handled. And must keep the colors harmonious while containing rich texts and photos contents.

iWish

We are trying to turn money spenders to money savers. This handy application aims to help people fulfill their wishes in a planned, effective and economical way. As the leader of this design team, I managed the project in a way to maximize everyone's talents. From the initial sketches to the demo flash of the application, we showed our ability to work under time pressure with people from different cultures and backgrounds.

Concept of saving

Concept of savingp

To demonstrate the concept of saving, I use water to metro.

It's about money

It's about money

This map is a life circle of how man interact with money. As one step of the money saving tool design process, it is interesting to step one step back to see the big images. In this circle, we create a personal that's a typical non-saver.

User Interviews-insights

User Interviews

Interaction Evaluation

Redesign an Online Flower Shop

How to evaluate the design was one of the questions I wanted to be answered in the master program. In this case, a electronic dictionary as an interactive device was evaluated. Different aspects to be judged including Norman's framework.

Money Saver Observition

Using the Card Key:SIP to DCC

What to do with Human Factor

Presenting a situation

Redesign an Online Flower Shop

How to represent a situation so that we can have a better understanding of the design context? Professor Richard Branham showed us a really conperahensive way: AEIOU(activity, environment,individual, object- understanding).

Using the Card Key:SIP to DCC

It was a group work with Brook Granham and Zoe Beach. We started with the SIP study, using Norman's 6-point framework to analyze the situation. Brook and I developed a testable flash prototype for a new card-key door system design, which focus on the display-control compatibility.

Design Problem in Chinese input method

Lekan TV-box UI Design

Redesign an Online Flower Shop

Redesign an Online Flower Shop

KU Graduate Student Orientation Website

Cindy's story

Want to rent a DVD?

You can go to Redbox if you just have a sudden idea when you walk through a supermarket. You can drive to the blockbuster shop with your mum for a family movie. Or you can also enjoy something by yourself by clicks on Netflix. Comparing the front-stage back-stage of these services and observing the experience finally could become some insights of the touch-points.

Mapping the user behavioral model

behavioral model

You can use the behavioral model methods on many places, other than traditional Architecture design.

Dirty-and-fast Prototypeing

Fatimah, Brook and I was using paper prototype to explore ideas on a health care portal website design.

Mapping the Customer Experience at Jade Mongolian BBQ

CLW Website Design Competition

behavioral model

It is not a success to share, indeed it's a total loser. But it has nothing to do with the design. The organizer refused to pay because there's not as many as they expect entries for the event. Re-think about competitions: why do it and what is the goal? There should be the time to think about the traditional web design process: rather than through all content to a outsource, why not involve the designers from day 1?

Help Margo-My Health Network

Who's Margo? She is a mother, a housewife also a chronic disease patient. To help her, we designed the health network scenario that showing how a new disease-management system help Margo get healthier. It was the one of the best group works I ever have.

Explore the food shopping

Thinking about being a busy mum, have full-time job and 2 kids to take care of, food shopping could be more easier to release her. Our group focus on the specific situation here trying to solve the problem. After all, mum is often the one in charge of the diet of the family, which is a significant part of family health care. All kinds of methods were implied in the process.

Better Everyday

©2010 Torry Guo