Han Luyi had heard Su Niannian complain about ugly UI a long time ago.
He had looked through the user feedback. "Ugly" ranked third among the complaints, with "laggy" and "hard to use" taking the top two spots. Lag was a matter of model capabilities, software architecture, and server scaling, which they were already working on. The usability issue lay in the user onboarding flow, which Su Niannian was also improving. As for ugliness, he thought it looked fine and had never taken it seriously.
—It was still usable, wasn't it?
Not until he saw that timetable app on Zhou Min's phone did he experience, from an end user's perspective, just how troubling that kind of ugliness could be.
When he brought up the subject himself, Su Niannian gave him a surprised glance, as if to say, You finally get it.
"I've already contacted Lin Wanqing," Su Niannian said. "I want to ask her to help Open Things design a set of components."
"What did she say?"
"She said she had to look after her child during National Day and couldn't come out to work."
Han Luyi thought for a moment. "How about... I watch her?"
So the next afternoon, the two of them stood outside Lin Wanqing's door.
Lin Wanqing opened it. She was wearing loungewear, her hair casually tied into a bun.
The folding dining table he had seen last time stood in the middle of the living room as a workbench. An iPad rested on a stand, with a stylus and a cup of tea beside it.
One of the inner room doors stood half-open, revealing an easel inside and stacks of paint boxes beneath the windowsill.
Duoduo was lying against the cushions on the living room sofa, watching a Peppa Pig cartoon with the TV turned