Born in Malaysia to Chinese parents, Chui Chui moved to the UK over 20 years ago. Her unique background and global experience inform her approach to cultural strategy. Beginning with mechanical engineering and an unexpected transition through music technology to human-computer interaction, she eventually specialized in international research after conducting user interviews in Beijing for a hotel client.

Over time, her work evolved from pure user experience research to a more holistic approach that considers history, infrastructure, politics, and economic factors when helping businesses enter new markets.

• You can listen here or wherever you get your podcasts: https://www.howthisworks.show/034-dr-chui-chui-tan
• Or watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Q9mC2bykxuo

Key points from the conversation:

• Four-bucket methodology - Chui Chui shares her framework for organizing market knowledge into known facts, strong hypotheses, weak hypotheses, and unknowns when entering new markets. This approach helps align teams and identify critical knowledge gaps.
• Context-specific cultural adaptation - She explains how cultural manifestations differ depending on product context, using her contrasting work with Asana and Spotify in Japan to illustrate how the same users interact differently with different products based on cultural values.
• Cultural frameworks in practice - Chui Chui discusses the strengths and limitations of popular frameworks like Erin Meyer's "Culture Map" and Hofstede's cultural dimensions, emphasizing the importance of practical application over theoretical models.
• Future of AI in cultural strategy - Drawing from her experiments with ChatGPT, Baidu's Ernie, and Inception's Jais (Arabic) to analyze cultural insights, she predicts AI will complement but not replace human understanding of cultural nuances.
• Cross-cultural identity - Reflecting on her own bicultural experience, Chui Chui discusses how individuals navigate multiple cultural identities, noting she can "be more British in certain aspects of my life, and then when it comes to certain things, I'm quite Malaysian or quite Asian."
• Personal philosophy - "Care less about things that are not as important" – Chui Chui's evolving perspective on focusing energy on what truly matters, both personally and professionally.

Chui Chui also shares her fascination with understanding the origins of cultural differences, currently exploring this through reading "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari among others.

You can find Chui Chui at:

• Website: beyo.global
• LinkedIn: Chui Chui Tan
• YouTube: @chuichuitan

The audio and video for this episode has been edited by Gideon Kroutil.

Special Guest: Dr. Chui Chui Tan.

Links:

• "Research for Global Growth: Strategies and Guidance for Cross-Cultural Insights" & "International User Research" by Chui Chui Tan
• Chui Chui Tan on Erin Meyer's 'Culture Map' and other culture frameworks
• The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
• Erin Meyer's tools, including the Country Mapping Tool
• Geert Hofstede's six (6) dimension model of national culture
• Trompenaars's model of national culture differences
• Chui Chui Tan on hospital waiting rooms and business strategy
• ChatGPT
• Baidu's Ernie
• Jais — Jais is an open-source large language model developed in the United Arab Emirates and launched in August 2023. It was trained on both English- and Arabic-language data. Jais is named after Jebel Jais, the highest mountain in the United Arab Emirates.
• Why Gemini, Google’s AI tool, was slammed for showing images of people of color
• DeepSeek
• Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
• Culinary Class Wars on Netflix
• Taiko drumming

• You can listen here or wherever you get your podcasts: https://www.howthisworks.show/032-bumhan-yu
• Or on Youtube: https://youtu.be/O_qGqCS9i0A

During the show, we talk through a number of topics, including:

• German-speaking Bumhan comes from an academic family, with professor parents.
• Initially studying linguistics and psychology in academia, he left his psychology graduate program, worked various jobs including translation and military service in Korea, then discovered design (read: graphic design) through a trade school for executive assistants in Manhattan.
• His spatial-visual thinking style, using schematics and diagrams, led him to realize he could build a career making things. He views design as problem-solving beyond aesthetics, distinguishing between specialized "capital D" design and general "lowercase d" design.
• Bumhan's LinkedIn tagline "business of design, design of business" reflects his dual focus on design operations and organizational dynamics. At DoubleVerify, he maintains design systems, defines visual tokens, and collaborates closely with front-end engineers while focusing on systematic problem-solving approaches.
• He critiques design thinking's commodification while valuing its core principle of understanding problems before solutions, drawing inspiration from Bruce Lee's philosophy of adaptation and evolution.
• His coding skills enhance collaboration with engineers through better understanding of backend structures, while his linguistics and psychology background provides unique insights into human behavior and communication.
• Beyond design, Bumhan's also passionate about theoretical physics, particularly Carlo Rovelli's work.

Here's a photo of Bumhan's t-shirt from the episode:

Special Guest: Bumhan Yu.

Links:

• International Trauma Studies Program
• Eames design process diagram
• The Process of Design Squiggle by Damien Newman
• Audiobook for "The Order of Time" by Carlo Rovelli
• "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sönke Ahrens