Larry Cheng

I've joined the Design Research & Insights team in the Small Business & Self Employed Group

Design Strategist, QuickBooks Online, Small Business & Self-Employed Group

Case studies through 2017 including Transpose, QuickBooks Online, TurboTax, and IDEO: https://larrychengdesign.com

I led the design & development program for the QuickBooks Card Reader and QuickBooks Power Stand, which released in market summer 2021. This program, internally known as Node, included SW design & development teams inside Intuit, and external partners in industrial design, hardware development engineering, and mobile payment hardware.

As Passenger Experience Design & Research on Project Transpose, a modular platform for commercial airline cabins, my key mission was to gain insights to define the future passenger experience opportunity enabled by Transpose. I accomplished this through design-based qualitative + quantitative research, from massive full-scale live “flights” involving dozens of passengers, to deploying multi-cell neuroscience price testing. I led a global team of partners and consultants from designers to behavioral economists to create industrial design, rapid prototypes, execute flight experiences, and synthesize test outcomes. I expanded my role into product leadership by creating initial product specs to define and capture functional, operational, and experience requirements for Transpose. Additionally, I was also deeply involved in revenue modeling of Transpose business cases affecting product definition and market fit. ---- Highlights: Flight 002: Qualitative research with 100+ passengers in a full-scale A330 mockup cabin; test included behavioral economic research on willingness-to-pay via pre-flight booking experiences. Flight 001: 60+ passengers in a low-fidelity cabin, testing feasibility of active passenger movement. Reference Designs: From concept to prototype, a reference set of 6 unique modules and a combined cabin layout (LOPA). Use cases, concepts, color/ material/ finish guidelines, translation to full-scale rapid prototype build. Booking Tool: UX, Visual Design, and prototyping (Invision & React) of an online service to discover, book, and personalize travel on a Transpose flight. Quantitative feedback: Design & execution of multiple quant tests, including a neuroscience study of concept pricing linked to the models used in Flight 002. - A^3 is the Silicon Valley outpost of Airbus Group SE. We seek to disrupt Airbus Group (and the competition) before anyone else can. And in the process, we are setting out to build the future of flight.

I was acting Group Manager for the Intuit Developers Group design team, whose mission is to make the QuickBooks platform deliver awesome customer benefits through the integration of the best small business applications. I coached & managed a team of experience designers, visual designers, and service designers (or UX, UI, and CX), to both re-imagine how we might deliver on our mission to fuel small business success, as well as aggressively launch, learn and evolve within the confines of existing priorities and capabilities.

I led a team to redefine the subscriber experience for the Quickbooks SAAS offering, from product discovery through customer care. My team included UX and service designers. We identified pain points and opportunities, created digital prototypes, and partnered with teams across the Quickbooks business unit in design, marketing, product, care, engineering, and operations to execute on these opportunities.

Design Strategist on the central Design Innovation Group, making Designing for Delight (D4D, Intuit's Design Thinking approach) one of Intuit's core competencies. I led, participated, or consulted in key innovation & D4D initiatives across Intuit, by applying human-centered design and design thinking methods. Highlights: Ignite: a six week “deep dive”with the new business leader of TurboTax, to reimagine the vision of the Consumer Tax Group. I lead user research & synthesis, and designed activities to equip 600+ employees for guerrilla field research with taxpayers in San Diego. The Ignite team received the CEO Leadership Award for its achievements. One Intuit: an initiative with business unit design leaders & teams to create a company-wide Experience Strategy which highlighted strategic product opportunities across business units. Innovation Catalysts: Training and supporting a community of practice in D4D principles and methods. Through Innovation Catalysts, Intuit holds design-thinking sessions leading to disruptive, sustaining and commercial innovations.

I directed a portfolio of innovation projects encompassing many phases of product development, from the conceptual and strategic, to the concrete and visceral. As a Project Lead, I served as a design catalyst, project manager, client advocate, and occasionally even a sketcher, prototyper, or brainstormer. I often worked in collaboration with a client’s senior leadership throughout a project’s timeline, to continually define and refine what success looks like for a project and, more broadly, for an organization. My project portfolio at IDEO included the Node chair and redesigned RoomWizard scheduling system for Steelcase, both award winners at Neocon 2010. as well as Steelcase’s Mediascape collaborative workspace, a Neocon award winner in 2008. My 13 years at IDEO also included successful innovation projects for clients in such diverse fields as laboratory blood testing, online payment, space exploration, sporting goods, kitchen tools, and the branding and distribution of beer. Additionally, I taught IDEO’s human-centered methodology at innovation workshops, empowering client organizations to add “design thinking” tools to their internal processes. I also coached student design teams in Stanford University’s MSME program, and brought design thinking to local community groups. I was a regular contributor to conceptual design projects such as IDEO’s Designs On series. My “free time machine” built for Designs On Time has dispensed hundreds of hours of free time from the front desk of IDEO’s Palo Alto office.

Mechanical Design & Build of animatronic robotic creatures for the motion picture industry. My projects included multi-ton animatronic sharks for feature film Deep Blue Sea, and full-swimming swordfish models for feature film The Perfect Storm.

Senior Engineer and Manager of the Antenna Mechanisms team within the Mechanisms & Solar Array design group

Lead Mechanical Systems Engineer for the GOES weather satellite program