Inside Asian Gaming

APRIL 2018 INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 41 INDUSTRY PROFILE “I solve problems. As a user interface person, I always say that my challenge is the last six inches – the space between the screen and the human. What I try to do is not change the human but change the computer, because process is important. OG: So how did your passion become your career? HN: I was a big Apple fan right from the beginning. My first computer was an Apple II bootleg because I couldn’t afford a real one. I actually wrote a letter to Apple and said, “Look, the reason your sales are so bad in Singapore is because your guys don’t know how to sell this.” At that time the CEO of Apple was John Sculley and I sent the letter via registered mail. I was about 15. A few weeks later I actually got a reply from Apple Cupertino, saying, “Thank you very much for your concern, we have forwarded your letter to Apple Hong Kong.” I then received a letter from Apple Hong Kong saying they had notified my local distributor to address my concerns and subsequently I got a call from one of the sales managers. He said, “You are causing a lot of trouble here, so if you think you can do better than why don’t you come in and prove it?” My first day on the job I managed to sell a Mac and they hired me! I was actually underage and technically they couldn’t hire me so they asked me what I wanted instead. I said, “I just want a computer,” so I got a Mac. OG: There was no formal education then? HN: In Singapore we have military service, so I went into the army and did computers. I built software for my officers to help track things. I did mostly reports – I could generate custom reports. Then I was offered a job straight out of the army. I never went to university, I’m self-taught on everything. But I was offered a job and became director of a company, sort of a partner. I started doing some work directly for Apple and I was one of the evangelists. They would fly me most of the time to Hong Kong to do talks. OG: You came to the United States in 1993 which eventually led to you obtaining a specialist visa. From there you helped Boeing with virtual modelling and even exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art of New York. Where do you get the inspiration for such developments? HN: That’s what we do and that’s the kind of stuff that I do. I solve problems. As a user interface person, I always say that my challenge is the last six inches – the space between the screen and the human. What I try to do is not change the human but change the computer, because process is important. It’s like when we designed this thing for the New York Stock Exchange, for Goldman Sachs. I worked as a surrogate expert. I worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for several weeks shadowing brokers and clerks, then I went upstairs to talk with the traders, to understand how they think, how they visualize a trade, how they do their job, what the process is. My belief is that with any process that has been around for so many years, so many decades, there has to be some intrinsic value that has evolved into the process. It would be arrogant for us to think that we can do better than that process. What we did was, instead of trying to replace it, we wanted to understand it and then think about how we could make Hai’s first computer was an Apple II bootleg