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Japan’s UI Scope planning to expand its usability testing service

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This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Osaka 2013. One of the four Japanese startups that pitched at B Dash Camp in Osaka was InnoBeta, the creator of UIscope, a service for testing usability of smartphone-based media. The company’s CEO Daisuke Hiraishi explained a little more about their service on Tuesday, and revealed more about their plans moving forward. He highlighted the need for qualitative market research to be brought online, noting that the market size is about $3.3 billion globally [1]. UI Scope matches developers and testers, providing the latter with web cameras to explain and comment on a user interface as they test it out. The result that developers will see is a video and a questionnaire. They have 5000 testers, with each tester costing 3000 yen (about $30), with UI Scope taking 2500 yen and 500 yen going to testers. So far the startup has accumulated over registered 500 clients over 10 months, including the likes of Yahoo, Capcom, GungHo, and many startups [2]. Readers may recall that previously featured InnoBeta back in April when they partnered with Mixi’s Deploygate to create ‘DeployGate Scope’ to help developers crowdsource usability testing, not only for…

InnoBeta CEO Daisuke Hiraishi
InnoBeta CEO Daisuke Hiraishi

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Osaka 2013.

One of the four Japanese startups that pitched at B Dash Camp in Osaka was InnoBeta, the creator of UIscope, a service for testing usability of smartphone-based media.

The company’s CEO Daisuke Hiraishi explained a little more about their service on Tuesday, and revealed more about their plans moving forward. He highlighted the need for qualitative market research to be brought online, noting that the market size is about $3.3 billion globally [1].

UI Scope matches developers and testers, providing the latter with web cameras to explain and comment on a user interface as they test it out. The result that developers will see is a video and a questionnaire. They have 5000 testers, with each tester costing 3000 yen (about $30), with UI Scope taking 2500 yen and 500 yen going to testers. So far the startup has accumulated over registered 500 clients over 10 months, including the likes of Yahoo, Capcom, GungHo, and many startups [2].

Readers may recall that previously featured InnoBeta back in April when they partnered with Mixi’s Deploygate to create ‘DeployGate Scope’ to help developers crowdsource usability testing, not only for live apps, but also for prototypes still in development.

So what does the future look like for UI Scope? Hiraishi pointed to three strategies in particular:

  1. Global expansion, starting with Korea where they will provide testing for 30 different apps. They are also planning China expansion as well. Local partners will help them bring in new testers.
  2. Expand testing methods: Interview and group discussion can be done online as well.
  3. Currently they focus mobile but they can also test things like hardware or even consumer products such as shampoo.

Hiraishi closed his pitch by predicting that his company will be the number one online qualitative research company in the world. That’s certainly a lofty goal, but their first few steps have been promising.


  1. In online quantitative research, they point out Macromill and Survey Monkey as existing market solutions.  ↩

  2. I wonder if a corporate testing plan, or some sort of premium offerings, might be a way to increase their revenue.  ↩

UI Scope teams up with DeployGate to create a one-stop app testing solution

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    See the original story in Japanese. We frequently hear words like ‘usability’ or ’user experience”, but still very few developers have conducted user tests for their apps. So says Daisuke Hiraishi, the CEO of InnoBeta Inc., the up-and-coming startup behind the crowdsourced app testing service UIScope. Innnobeta announced today that it would be partnering with DeployGate, a smartphone app test platform run by Japanese social network operator Mixi. As we mentioned in our previous feature interview, DeployGate has acquired users from over 93 countries and been used for testing more than 4,000 apps worldwide. With this integration with DeployGate, Innobeta provides a one-stop service to be known by the name of ‘DeployGate Scope.’ It allows developers to provide crowdsourced usability testing not only for live apps but also for prototypes still under development. UI Scope was launched last October, and its team consists of three full-time workers, a freelance designer, and an engineer (who is attending grad school). The CEO Hiraishi used the bulletin board service WishScope to invite potential co-workers, including his CTO Takakiyo Aritaka. They’ve had been running a design-oriented app service, but faced many issues in the process of user testing. That experience made them…

 

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DeployGate + UI Scope = Dgscope

 


See the original story in Japanese.

We frequently hear words like ‘usability’ or ’user experience”, but still very few developers have conducted user tests for their apps.

So says Daisuke Hiraishi, the CEO of InnoBeta Inc., the up-and-coming startup behind the crowdsourced app testing service UIScope. Innnobeta announced today that it would be partnering with DeployGate, a smartphone app test platform run by Japanese social network operator Mixi. As we mentioned in our previous feature interview, DeployGate has acquired users from over 93 countries and been used for testing more than 4,000 apps worldwide.

With this integration with DeployGate, Innobeta provides a one-stop service to be known by the name of ‘DeployGate Scope.’ It allows developers to provide crowdsourced usability testing not only for live apps but also for prototypes still under development.

UI Scope was launched last October, and its team consists of three full-time workers, a freelance designer, and an engineer (who is attending grad school). The CEO Hiraishi used the bulletin board service WishScope to invite potential co-workers, including his CTO Takakiyo Aritaka. They’ve had been running a design-oriented app service, but faced many issues in the process of user testing. That experience made them realize that many app developers were likely facing the same problem. And this led to them to eventually launch the crowdsourced usability testing service, making use of a pool of testers to provide feedback to developers and designers.

Similar services exist, but there’s no testing service specifically focused on testing for smartphone apps. The majority of the startup’s clients are big Japanese companies such as Recruit or NEC Biglobe, but users from startups also on the rise.

Since launch last October, the service was used for 200 projects by 40 companies. 70% of developers have the service to get feedback on upgrades for their apps, and the rest are for testing initial releases.

In terms of specifying the layer of testers you want to ask, you may choose them according to age, gender. You can also select testers by other criteria, such as people who have tried out a specific service, or even someone who has recently traveled to a certain place. On average, every case takes about one week and with 10 testers. According to global measurement company Nielsen Jakob Nielsen, a test conducted with 10 five people is enough to find and identify 80% of all problems [1].

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Mixi’s DeployGate

The testing process is an interesting one. Participating testers will receive a webcam for free from UI Scope. Testers are requested to record their testing task, speaking their impressions as they proceed step-by-step. By collecting those recorded videos, you can understand how testers thought and felt, why they pressed a certain button, or why they abandoned a screen on the app. These videos will then be passed on to clients. Pricing is 3,000 yen for testing, and clients will pay 15,000 yen on average, typically asking for around 5 testers. Analysis reports are also available as an additional option.

Strict requirements for testers

More than 4,000 people have signed up for the service to be testers. The startup is devising ways to get more applicants, although they have a very strict filtering process for those who want to be qualified testers. Potential testers receive two to three dummy tests a week, and only are few of them who yield good results and display a certain literacy level will finally qualify. After that they can can receive 500 yen compensation every time they finish a testing task. When compensation reaches 2,000 yen, it will be transferred to your bank account.

Housewives were invited to be testers through the startup’s ‘invite your friend’ campaign, and many students have signed up through an introduction from the startup’s partner companies. UI Scope has also partnered with Mamion, a chain operating PC training courses for the elderly, thus succeeding in acquiring some older testers as well. This broad variety of testers helps the startup to receive many testing orders from a wide range of companies.

For future problems they want to solve, Mr. Hiraishi further explains:

We need to some time to educate developers on the necessity of the usability testing. That’s why we’re organizing events like the “Smartphone Design Conference”. For usability testing, it usually requires 10 to 15 minutes for a testing case. Conducting the case with 10 testers, that means 100 minutes at least. We want to improve the service so that it allows users to see each [step] of the testing task. We look into providing more specifications about our testers, so that our clients will be able to conduct more targeted tests.

For now, most testings are conducted at home, but the startup is planning to develop an environment where people can do tests outside their home (useful for testing GPS-enabled apps, for example) and real-time testing (for testing social network apps). For developers who would like to try out the service, UI Scope is giving a 50% discount until the end of this month.

The company previously raised 5 million yen (about $53,800) from Movida Japan, and has acquired 120 developers and 2500 testers during the last six months. The video below will give you a better idea of how the service works.


  1. Thanks to @david_z on Twitter for the error report! Much appreciated.  ↩

Korea’s beSuccess holds startup competition in Tokyo, winner moves on to Seoul for main event

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Read our Japanese report on this event Our partner tech site beSuccess will hold the second edition of its beLAUNCH event in Seoul this May, one of the largest tech startup conferences in the Asia region. In association with Tokyo-based Skyland Ventures and Seoul-based startup VCNC, the media company had a local satellite event in Tokyo on Wednesday, where one finalist was chosen from six participating Japanese startups to pitch at the main event in Korea. Let’s rundown through the lineup and take a closer look to who’s going to Gangnam, Seoul this May. The participating judges for the pitching session were (in alphabetical order): Hyungseok Dino Ha, CEO, Memebox (Seoul) James Jung, CEO, beSuccess (Seoul) Jimmy Jihoon Rim, CEO, Kcube Ventures (Seoul) Kiyo Kobayashi, CEO, Nobot Inc., (Tokyo) Ryuichi Nishida, editor-in-chief, TechCrunch Japan (Tokyo) Tetsuro Oshita, managing director, Cyber Agent Ventures (Tokyo) Yasuhiko Yurimoto, president and CEO, Global Brain (Tokyo) Yoshiro Taneda, senior director of digital media, Fuji TV (Tokyo) Designclue (the 3rd prize winner) ¶ Prize: Wins a complimentary booth to exhibiting at the Seoul event When you order logo design in Japan, it will usually not be very cheap due to high labor costs in the country. It can also be very hard for most Japanese people to order design work from…

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Read our Japanese report on this event

Our partner tech site beSuccess will hold the second edition of its beLAUNCH event in Seoul this May, one of the largest tech startup conferences in the Asia region. In association with Tokyo-based Skyland Ventures and Seoul-based startup VCNC, the media company had a local satellite event in Tokyo on Wednesday, where one finalist was chosen from six participating Japanese startups to pitch at the main event in Korea.

Let’s rundown through the lineup and take a closer look to who’s going to Gangnam, Seoul this May. The participating judges for the pitching session were (in alphabetical order):

Designclue (the 3rd prize winner)

Prize:

  • Wins a complimentary booth to exhibiting at the Seoul event

designclue

When you order logo design in Japan, it will usually not be very cheap due to high labor costs in the country. It can also be very hard for most Japanese people to order design work from overseas because of the language barrier.

Designclue is a logo-focused crowdsourcing site which allows users to easily place orders from independent foreign designers. Readers may recall that we we featured them on this site last week. The website has multilingual interfaces to easily facilitate your orders. Users can receive many design proposals at affordable rates from registered designers in emerging markets.

Not long ago, the startup announced that it had fundraised 14.7 million yen (about $150,000) from two Japanese seed investors, Incubate Fund and East Ventures.

Comobaco

comobaco

Comobaco allows you and your friends to create a pool of shared items both on the web and in real life. With this service, you can easily share things you own (such as books, DVDs, and game titles) with your office colleagues, your roommates, or any similar sort of group.

To use the service, someone at your location has to become the manager of a box, which will then be used to hold the exchanged items. If you put in things you don’t want to use any more, others will have a chance to take them without having to buy. The service’s founder hopes to change the concept of buying things for yourself only into buying things for the sake of the many people around you as well.

Job Share

jobshare_logo Job share is a community-based talent seeking site that helps companies find new employees who might enjoy working together. When you post a job opportunity on the service, your posting will be shared via social media through colleagues at your company. If someone sees it and would like to work at your company, you can then hire them if they’re a good fit. The startup aims to help companies create a workplace with a positive atmosphere by enlisting the help of existing employees in finding their new colleagues.

Conyac (the 1st prize winner)

From left: Conyacs CEO Naoki Yamada (the 1st prizw winner), Global Brain's Yasuhiko Yurimoto (award presenter), and beSuccess James Jung (award presenter)
From the left: Conyac’s CEO Naoki Yamada (the 1st prize winner), Global Brain’s Yasuhiko Yurimoto (award presenter), and beSuccess’ James Jung (award presenter)

Prizes:

  • A complimentary booth for exhibiting at the Seoul event
  • Round-trip air tickets for two, Tokyo/Seoul
  • A chance to pitch at the main competition

conyac_logo

Conyac is a crowdsourced translation service that gives users an interesting way to communicate with someone in a foreign language for affordable rates. When we spoke to them in a recent interview, they introduced the launch of a high-end service for business use, and told us about their first overseas expansion to San Francisco.

Booklap (the 2nd prize winner)

Prizes:

  • A complimentary booth for exhibiting at the Seoul event
  • Round-trip air tickets for two, Tokyo/Seoul

booklap Finding the right book to buy at bookstore can often take a long time. One recent survey says that 39% of all bookstore purchases take more than an hour. Similarly when you buy a book on Amazon.com, you’ll rely on book reviews posted by other users — but some of them are not reliable or just not good enough to help you decide.

Booklap is a service that wants to help you find a book you will love to read. It has two ways of doing this. The first is based on your interests which are pulled from ‘social graphs’ such as your Facebook profile. The other way by presenting quotes from books that have impressed other users.

The startup is planning to introduce a smartphone app which will allow a user to easily post quotes by just shooting a picture. What differentiates this from Amazon.com is that book reviews are being posted with the real names of those who have written the review.

Their revenue model is expected to come from affiliate fees from online bookstores like Amazon.com, driving users to buy books on their site. Booklap raised 3 million yen (about $32,000) from Incubate Fund last July.

UI Scope

UIscope

UI Scope allows software and hardware developers to crowdsource product testing tasks. A registered tester (called a ‘panel’ in the service) receives a camera from the startup so that it can record the testing process. When a developer (called ‘a client’) chooses someone from all registered testers and asks them to test the product, that person will take about 20 minutes to test it and report back with a video of the testing process. The developer pays 3,000 yen (about $32) for this testing, and the tester receives 500 yen. The testing results are reported online in the form of video, screenshots, and behavioral reports in text.

UI Scope was launched last August with the aim of creating a huge database of product testing by gathering such test results and case studies. It has raised 5 million yen (about $53,800) from Movida Japan, and has acquired 120 developers and 2500 testers during the last six months.

And now from Korea…

Three Korean startups also attended the meet-up, pitching their remarkable services to the Japanese crowd. Let’s have a look at what’s hot in this neighboring tech community.

BeNative

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BeNative aims to help students have a more organic language learning experience by providing them with content that imitates real-life situations with native speakers. By presenting video clips of a specific occasion in English or other languages, the service allows users to learn more natural ways to speak new languages. According to Alan Moonsoon Kim, the CEO of parent company Smatoos, they are currently providing English version  and Chinese versions of the language learning site, as well as running news sites in English, Korean and Japanese. For more information, check out this feature over on Technode for more details.

Profeel.me

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Profeel.me is your digital business card, incorporating your social network accounts. It can be exchanged through text, messaging services, and social networks. Following the model of a real/physical business card, Korean-startup Venster has created an online business card that can be used as a virtual ID or calling card.  The startup’s CEO HoSuk Jeong presented. beSuccess has further information if you’d like to learn more.

profeel.me_presenting
Profeel.me CEO HoSuk Jeong pitches to a Japanese crowd

Memebox

memebox_logo

Memebox is the Korean version of Birchbox, a subscription-based e-commerce service that periodically delivers a box of cosmetics to users. The startup’s CEO Hyungseok Dino Ha explains they have partnered with 185 brands worldwide, and have delivered 52,900 boxes to their customers since launching in February of 2012. Subscribers can sign up for the service using three different subscription options: one, two, or six months. So far there are over 5,000 total subscribers.

There are 31 people on the team with an expected revenue of $1.3 million in Q2 of 2013. The startup is from the first batch of graduates coming out of Seoul-based SparkLab’s incubation program.


The beLAUNCH 2013 main event is scheduled to take place at COEX, an exhibition center in Korea’s capital on May 1st and 2nd. If you’d like to join. please feel free to sign up.

From the left: Kcube Venture's Jimmy Rim and VCNC's Keisuke Kajitani with a collection of autographs.
From the left: Kcube Venture’s Jimmy Rim and VCNC’s Keisuke Kajitani with a collection of autographs.