Listen to this articleBo Zou is a Toronto-based digital, branding and UX Specialist, helping brands strengthen their customer relationships. Below is our recent interview with Bo Zou:
Q: What is your mission?
A: I seek to be both an instigator and inspiration for change in the banking industry as we know it today in a bid to democratize access to all the benefits of financial services. Over 2.5 billion people in the world don’t have access to any sort of banking services, but this access is as critical to reducing poverty and development as good healthcare and adequate food supplies. By bringing together the best minds in fintech, user experience design and strategy and organizations dedicated to global economic change and reforms, we can solve this issue through a new, blockchain-based digital banking infrastructure.
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Q: Could you tell us something more about your background?
A: I have been a professional practicing user experience design and strategy for over 15 years. This really entails finding ways to create optimal interactions with brands, products, systems or services in ways that make the experience more distinctive or memorable. While I have been a Toronto resident for many years and earned two master’s degree from London universities, my upbringing in China resulted in cultural influences that have helped color how I approach the CX discipline.
Today, for example, technology plays a huge – and often disruptive – role in our lives. I strive to leverage the positive aspects of technology in designing user experiences, but also tap into my heritage by weaving in the harmonious contexts of the ancient Chinese practice of feng shui to temper technology’s disruptive effects.
Q: More generally, how do you see the Blockchain landscape developing?
A: It seems you hear more and more of applications that go way beyond digital currency because of the overall benefits of the blockchain structure – like security, quality assurance, cost effectiveness, traceability and an enhanced level of transparency over any sort of transaction. But its adoption is likely to go much slower than the hype might suggest, whether it’s for supply chain management purposes or a means of safeguarding an individual’s identity.
For one thing, its adoption is going to require software to run that will typically be user-specific, and thus may be more expensive to purchase, acquire or develop in-house. It also may necessitate compatible hardware. Then, too, who’s going to work with the technology? Proficient professionals are currently hard to come by and command top dollar. So the reality is for the immediate future, at least, it’s going to be a playground for visionaries who can imagine the blockchain possibilities and organizations with a lot of resources to put against making them happen.
Recommended: Q: What are your plans?
A: Where do I start? So many plans and only one lifetime to make them all happen! Probably my biggest plan is to create and lead this advocacy movement to bring a new form of blockchain-driven banking and financial services to the unbanked of the world. I am working to create a consortium of thought leaders on every front – humanists, designers, developers and entrepreneurs – to make this happen, from conducting research to formulating a strategic vision and roadmap for getting it all done. I’ve also created a Change.org petition specifically for this purpose.
Q: What’s the achievement you are most proud of?
A: It’s still early to be looking back in pride, especially when I have so many possibilities ahead of me. But I have to say that I am proud to have made my family proud, to have made many achievements as a citizen of the world that would not have been possible for previous generations of my family. I hope that my academic achievements, my professional achievements, my creative thinking and, most importantly, my aspirations for our world’s shared future inspire others toward a similar path.
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