Tuesday, October 25th.
Hangdong University Faculty Residential Area.
Yu Ping’an got out of the taxi and took out his phone to check the specific address and house number.
Today, he was going to visit Professor Kong Zhemin, a highly respected elderly professor in the Literature Department of Hangdong University.
Professor Kong Zhemin, born in 1946, was a Level-1 Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hangdong University, a doctoral supervisor, and concurrently the Director of the Hangdong University Language Education Research Institute, Chief Editor of primary and secondary school language textbooks, and a member of the Basic Education Expert Committee. He had previously served as the Editor-in-Chief of Hangdong University Press, the Convener of the Language Curriculum Standards Revision Expert Group, and more.
In short, he was an undisputed master in the Faculty of Arts at Hangdong University and even in the entire domestic academic circle.
Yu Ping’an had met many wealthy company executives, which didn’t make him nervous.
But meeting a true master like Professor Kong Zhemin was completely different.
Before going upstairs, Yu Ping’an calmed himself down and carefully reviewed the preparation status of the “Useful APP.”
He had come today to invite Professor Kong to join them, but this wouldn’t be easy.
After receiving the development task for “Useful APP” from Mr. Pei last time, Yu Ping’an immediately began to reorganize the entire department’s business and optimize the personnel structure.
Some people continued to develop and improve the various functions of the Tenda Life APP, while others were transferred to form the development team for the “Useful APP.”
When he received Mr. Pei’s task, Yu Ping’an was completely confused.
Because in his view, the “Useful APP” had a development cycle that was too long and would be extremely difficult to monetize—it wasn’t a very good project.
However, he still strictly executed Mr. Pei’s requirements and began preparations seriously.
Because Yu Ping’an knew clearly that when Mr. Pei made software, he emphasized one thing: “iteration”!
This could be seen from the development history of their department. From “Scholar Come Quick” to “Tenda Life,” this APP has undergone several revisions, with content constantly adjusted and the target user group experiencing significant changes.
It could be said that without the “iteration” that Mr. Pei had been pushing, the current success of the “Tenda Life APP” would not have been possible!
Therefore, even though Mr. Pei’s new project, “Useful APP,” didn’t seem very promising now, with successive iterations, it would eventually meet Mr. Pei’s expectations and achieve tremendous success.
Yu Ping’an believed this without a doubt.
However, during the development process of “Useful APP,” Yu Ping’an encountered far more problems than he had imagined.
Mr. Pei had already provided the basic structural framework for this APP: it was a content production platform with a tree-like structure.
The trunk part was somewhat similar to an encyclopedia website: the roots were keywords and basic concepts, the branches were concepts and explanations derived from these keywords, and the leaves were questions and answers regarding specific derived concepts.
The entire structure of the APP was like a forest composed of trees: key basic concepts would be interconnected, supporting jumps between entries or categorical searches within a major category (such as literature, physics, games, etc.).
In other words, the encyclopedia model was grafted with the Q&A model. It only made a slight innovation in form, but could greatly improve the efficiency of users obtaining information.
However, implementing the basic structural framework that Mr. Pei needed still required a lot of time and energy, with joint efforts in detail and content.
For example, how to design each level of the APP’s sub-interfaces, how to arrange the page layout so that users could see key information at a glance, how administrators could freely add or delete entries or modify the entire tree structure…
These were all key issues that product managers needed to worry about.
In addition, there was the issue of content production for the “Useful APP.”
Since the “Useful APP” was a content production platform, whether it could become popular ultimately depended on whether the content on it was good or not.
Specifically, there were three points:
Whether the content was accurate, with no erroneous information;
Whether the content was concise, with no garbage information;
Whether the indexing was convenient, allowing users to quickly find the content they wanted to check.
It all came down to people.
If content producers on the platform deliberately released false information and garbage information to deceive traffic, the platform would certainly fail.
Even with supervision, it would still require excellent producers to supervise less excellent producers.
When it came to professional concepts, it would require professional experts to accurately determine whether it was correct information, false information, or garbage information.
So, where could they find these excellent producers?
The first place Yu Ping’an thought of was universities.
Inviting industry experts was also possible. For example, when it came to issues related to the internet industry, inviting executives from internet giant companies would be beneficial, as these people had real skills and knowledge.
However, the problem was that these experts were successful people who needed to focus on their own professional work and careers and might not have time to do these trivial tasks.
Moreover, there was a big difference between possessing knowledge and explaining knowledge.
The “Useful APP” was more like a platform for explaining knowledge. The encyclopedia model, developed to its extreme, was essentially a textbook. And the questions related to encyclopedia entries were essentially detailed explanations of textbooks.
Therefore, graduate students, young lecturers, professors, etc., from universities were the most suitable candidates and would be the backbone of this APP.
Experts from various industries could only serve as supplements.
And given that the “Useful APP” was all-encompassing, where should this Herculean task begin?
The first thing Yu Ping’an thought of was some basic knowledge.
Mr. Pei had said that the “Useful APP” was a long-term plan. It was better not to do ambiguous issues at all than to do them incorrectly.
They would start from a certain field of basic knowledge, do a little, test the waters, and if the results were good, they would expand to more fields, progressing step by step.
Quality over quantity would ensure that this APP truly lived up to its name.
So, Yu Ping’an had gone through channels to contact Hangdong University officials and visit Professor Kong.
Hangdong University, especially the Faculty of Literature, was quite supportive of this collaboration. In fact, school-enterprise cooperation had always been strongly supported and advocated by the state. Many science colleges conducted joint research projects with enterprises, which was nothing new.
The Faculty of Arts, due to the specialty of its disciplines, had fewer collaborations with enterprises. If the “Useful APP” could succeed this time, it would also be a win-win attempt.
Moreover, Tenda Group was based in Jingzhou, and Mr. Pei had repeatedly donated to his alma mater. With this relationship, negotiations for cooperation would be much easier.
The only problem was that the Faculty couldn’t make decisions for Professor Kong Zhemin.
Because Professor Kong had to supervise graduate students, teach undergraduate courses, and conduct research, whether the old gentleman had the time and energy to join this project as a special advisor was questionable.
So today, if Yu Ping’an wanted to move this great Buddha, Professor Kong, he would have to use all his skills.
After calming himself down, Yu Ping’an entered the faculty building, came to the second floor, and gently knocked on the door.
After a moment, the security door opened, and an elderly professor with white hair and a spirited demeanor looked Yu Ping’an up and down: “Mr. Yu, right?”
Yu Ping’an quickly said, “Professor Kong, you can just call me Little Yu. I’m sorry to disturb you.”
Professor Kong Zhemin smiled: “Not at all, not at all, please come in.”
Yu Ping’an followed Professor Kong Zhemin into the living room. It was similar to what he had imagined: the sofa and furniture were mostly made of wood, looking quite vintage. Paintings and calligraphy hung on the walls, and one entire wall was a bookshelf filled with various books.
Professor Kong Zhemin even poured a cup of tea for Yu Ping’an, making him feel somewhat overwhelmed.
After a brief chat, Yu Ping’an didn’t dare waste much of Professor Kong’s time and got straight to the point: “Professor Kong, regarding my purpose here, the leaders of the Faculty of Literature should have briefly mentioned it to you. Let me explain the specific content of our APP in more detail.”
“I was originally responsible for the Tenda Life APP business at Tenda Group, and now I’m in charge of this ‘Useful APP.’ We want to create a knowledge-sharing community that combines the ‘encyclopedia’ and ‘Q&A’ models…”
Professor Kong Zhemin listened attentively, nodding from time to time. Occasionally, flashes of confusion appeared in his eyes, but he didn’t interrupt Yu Ping’an’s explanation. Instead, he waited until Yu Ping’an had explained the entire starting point, specific structure, charging model, incentive model, and other content of the “Useful APP” before beginning to integrate all this information and think seriously.
After considering for a moment, Professor Kong Zhemin said, “Mr. Yu, from your description, this software seems somewhat similar in positioning to the academic literature and paper retrieval system, CNKI. What are the specific differences between the two?”
Yu Ping’an immediately replied, “Of course, there are significant differences.”
“To put it simply, we’re targeting completely different groups of people and aiming to achieve different goals.”
“Academic papers and literature, including various course textbooks in universities, are indeed the most exquisite and cutting-edge knowledge, but reading, understanding, and mastering this content requires a very high threshold.”
“For most ordinary people, even if they were given this knowledge to look at, they wouldn’t understand it.”
“If the goal is science popularization, this approach would be very inefficient.”
“Therefore, the software we’re making is mainly aimed at the general public. We’re committed to popularizing this professional knowledge in a relatively easy-to-understand way.”
“What we’re doing is providing professional content with a lower cost of understanding, more inclined to let users understand rather than ‘fully master’ it.”
“And the biggest difference between this software and Q&A platforms is that the knowledge on it is filtered. We will try our best to ensure there is no garbage information, while also having a more advanced indexing mechanism, greatly improving the efficiency of knowledge acquisition.”