A unified design language for five B2B apps, and the first time AI entered the design process.
I worked as a design intern inside Huawei's user experience team, in the B2B department. We ran three projects together: user identity, structural optimisation, and cross-app consistency.
In B2B, identity is everything. Yet on most platforms, users are reduced to a name and a job title. How do you bring offline trust online without overcomplicating the product?
An app often serves multiple professional roles simultaneously, whose needs vary greatly. Some roles spend most of the day facing clients; others work across departments and regions. The user experience team and I analysed user types and typical interaction scenarios together. Two findings came out of it:
Most B2B platforms are straightforward and restrained, prioritising efficiency over expression. A good online experience should preserve, rather than strip away, the trust and emotional connection people have offline, bringing that sense of connection back without adding complexity.
First-hand research: through workshops and user interviews, I identified key identity-verification scenarios: first meeting, internal collaboration, client meetings. Secondary research: how "trust" is visually established across professional contexts, and the tension between genuine ability and social stereotype that shaped our subsequent design choices.
Presented to the product team across four occupations and two card types compatible with all five apps, helping users build a stronger first impression and faster trust online.
What I learned: in B2B design, "feeling" is not optional; it determines whether a tool is tolerated or trusted. Most B2B platforms underestimate this.
In the second phase, I moved to a large-scale enterprise-level web system serving users with multiple roles. This phase focused on structural design: simplifying information hierarchy and improving efficiency based on real behavioural data and user interviews.
Behavioural data: click-through rate, dwell time, bounce rate. User interviews: what's convenient, what's confusing, what do users expect.
An evidence-based classification that replaced intuition with a data signal and a behavioural hypothesis for every design suggestion. Each pattern maps straight to an optimisation strategy, not a guess.
| Pattern | Data signal | Behavioural hypothesis | Optimisation strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dispersed entrances | The same function appears on multiple pages, and clicks on it are scattered. | The user's goal is unclear, or different pages share irrelevant entry points. | Reorganise the entry path to reduce redundancy. |
| High click-through rate + short dwell time | Users exit immediately after entering the function. | Accidental touch, or a misleading function name. | Verify through interviews and adjust labels or layout. |
| Low click-through rate + long dwell time | The feature is hard to find, but once found, is used extensively. | An important function is visually underestimated. | Enhance visual hierarchy and entry-point placement. |
| High bounce-rate pages | The task was interrupted midway. | A lack of clear task-completion feedback loses the user's confidence. | Strengthen completion feedback and guidance for the next step. |
What the framework looks like in use. Each read below starts from a data signal, not a preference, and lands on a different kind of fix.
Alongside the previous two projects, I maintained design consistency across all five B2B applications: analysing each app's business structure, identifying inconsistencies in shared components, and aligning the design team on a unified standard. This work is quiet, without dramatic before/after comparisons, but it's the foundation that makes everything else feel coherent.
Two things happened once I left. Neither was asked for, and that is why I keep them here.
The head of user research on my team posted about me on her own social media, to her own network. Her name and picture are covered here, and I have cut the part about hiring for the next intake. What is left is what she said about the work.
The photographs in her post come from two places. The top row is my TEDx talk. The bottom row is me sharing work inside Huawei, to the team and to the wider department. I am glad she kept both, and I hope to keep going in this industry for a long time.
Our team's 2024 intern, Yidan Xu, just spoke at TEDx in July about design giving power back to everyday life. She was lovely and sharp the whole way through. Her work during the internship was outstanding too. A girl who is both beautiful and clever is a sight worth seeing, wherever she goes.
Translated from the Chinese.
A second colleague came to find me after I had gone. He told me he had read my final report and graded it A+. He did not have to tell me. That is the part I remember.