Photo^ by^ Cynthia^NguyenVOICES
Interview
products, the consequence of sending the
wrong command is relatively minor and
simple to correct. However, in a business
context like the one that our merchants
operate in, the risk is considerably higher.
With the merchant’s money, brand,
operations or customer relationships on
the line, we’ve learned that the experience
of working with Kit needs to be more
considerate and feel far safer.”
The second challenge of open-ended
input systems that needs to be sorted out
is the cognitive burden that they place on
the user. “Without proper guidance, a
user is left with the responsibility to figure
out how to proceed with the desired
action,” Ho cautions. “Kit is often most
needed when the merchant lacks the
experience to confidently know what
actions they should carry out. For example,
they often don’t actually understand what
marketing activity they should invest in
next. Increased flexibility in this case
actually leads to more ambiguity, which
in turn requires more cognitive heavy
lifting from our merchants.”Kit therefore remains a guided
conversational experience, which means
that open-ended responses are only
requested sparingly. Most steps in the
conversation also present explicit options
for commands the merchant can use to
move forward. “We’ve also designed Kit
to proactively make more
recommendations to help guide the
merchant on what they should be doing
next,” Ho adds. “This has already been
shown to increase merchant activity and
improve their business performance.”
Kit is continually being improved based
on merchant feedback. This includes
interacting with merchants on a regular
basis and paying close attention to the
tickets that flow through the support
team. Also, when a merchant decides not
to execute a task with Kit (for example,
they respond ‘no’ to publishing an ad),
Kit can gently prompt the merchant to
share why this is. If there’s something Kit
can adjust immediately, such as the
budget, the responses can sometimes lead
to new conversations.To optimise conversations, the team
analyses a few key metrics. “The number
of conversations being had gives us a
sense of how well Kit is being adopted and
engaged with,” Ho explains. “We also
look at task completion – or acceptance
rate, in the case of a proactive
recommendation from Kit – as a measure
of how effective certain conversations are.
Finally, we look at the performance of the
tasks themselves, like how many sales an
ad by Kit generates, as a reflection of the
impact it is having on a business.”
Apart from Kit, Ho works on UX
Summit, Shopify’s annual, internal
conference for the UX team. Now in its
fifth year, the event was born out of a need
to scale the team’s summer retreats as it
continued to grow. “Part of the inspiration
came from my days running Jet Cooper,”
Ho recalls. “Twice a year we would pull
the team off client work for two days and
let them present ideas to each other on
how to improve the studio. Shopify’s UX
Summit extends this idea and simply gives
each presenter a bigger stage and a louder
voice to share the ideas that they’re most
passionate about with their peers.”
Leading the programming and speaker
coaching is one of the most fulfilling
projects Ho gets to work on every year.
But it’s still not all he gets up to. Outside
of Shopify, Ho is an avid, self-taught
photographer and runs an online shop
(featuring tutorials, resources and
Lightroom presets) for budding
photographers. Together with his friend
Darrin Henein, he also created a hashtag
management app for Instagram called
Jetpack. And last year he opened Founder,
a cocktail and snack bar that’s already
been voted Toronto’s best cocktail bar by
local magazine NOW. Like most of his
projects, it was about scratching a creative
itch: having spent more than a decade
creating digital experiences, he and his
best friends wanted to try their hands at
building a physical one that celebrates the
distinctly diverse creative spirit of
Toronto. Despite being 3,000 miles away,
Ho leads the design and digital marketing,
even if that means a fair share of FOMO.
“I hate being bored,” Ho laughs. “So I
tend to bite off more than I can chew to
keep the creative juices flowing!”