UX Research Agency in China

QPSoftware is a UX research agency in China, based in Shanghai and founded in 2009. We help international brands and Chinese organizations understand their users before a website, an app or an e-learning platform is designed. For TechTrek, our team started with user research and a competitor audit, and the findings then guided the design of its game-based e-learning platform.

User research studies your customers’ behaviors, needs and motivations. It differs from market research, which measures the size of a market and the demand for a product. Without user research, design decisions rest on guesses. It is the first step of the China website design services we deliver from Shanghai.

What our UX research covers

We combine several methods, depending on the project:

• Competitive analysis. We map the content and features of competitors’ home pages to find common conventions, design trends and site structures. For TechTrek, this took the form of a visual analysis heatmap.
• Heuristic evaluation. We review the usability, utility and desirability of interfaces against a set of heuristics. The TechTrek audit used 27 customized heuristics, combined with other design guidelines and market research.
• Stakeholder meetings. We meet your staff and stakeholders to gather your business goals and constraints.
• User research and usability testing. Direct contact with users, and tests such as click tests or A/B tests, show what users need and how they behave. Our guide on how to do user research describes these methods.

Research also covers your brand. Before designing the new website of Duke Kunshan University, our designers studied the values the university embodies, so that every design element would reflect quality and relevance in international education.

The research helps you:

• understand your target users
• define your product and market fit
• adjust your offer to user and market needs
• identify your competitive advantages
• create a unique value proposition
• improve your brand communication and visual identity

The Core Model workshop

The research leads into a Core Model workshop, part of our project methodology. With your team, we map the tasks your users need to accomplish and the goals your business needs to reach. The content where the two meet becomes the core of the website, and the structure is built to lead users to it. The website becomes more useful to visitors, and puts them in the right frame of mind to become customers.

Our article explains how the Core Model process works, and how it helps when user validation and client expectations differ.

UX research in China

User experience research with Chinese users follows local habits and local rules:

• Phones first. In December 2025, 99.6% of internet users in China went online with a mobile phone, according to CNNIC’s 57th Statistical Report on China’s Internet Development. Tests should run on phones at least as much as on desktops.
• Consent. Interviews and recorded tests collect personal information. Under China’s Personal Information Protection Law, consent to process it must be given voluntarily and explicitly, by a person who is fully informed.
• Language. Users describe their needs best in their own language, and our Shanghai team is multilingual.

From research to wireframes and interface design

The findings set the direction for the design work of our UI/UX design agency in Shanghai:

1. Design standards and best practices. A responsive layout and site architecture, checked through usability testing against your objectives.
2. Information architecture. Content organized so users reach their first destination on the site in three clicks or fewer.
3. Wireframes. Page plans that bring feedback early, prevent expensive rework later, and then guide the developers. Prototypes play a similar role: see the pros and cons of prototyping.
4. Graphic and interface design. Several concepts of the new website, refined with you over three rounds of revisions.
5. Content creation. Text and design planned together, because users see a website as one whole.