Business: Localization

Today, the world of digital product design exists at the intersection of East and West, where the interplay between imitation and innovation has shaped the evolving digital landscape. As a UX designer experiencing various cultures, I want to explore how their intersections impact the user interface (UI), the user experience, and product strategy.

In this article, I’ll examine the historical trends of imitation and innovation between the West and Asia, explore how Asian user-driven approaches influence digital products in the West, and share how these insights have influenced my design choices.

However, before delving further into this topic, I must acknowledge that we sometimes overgeneralize in our discussion of cultural differences in UX design. To address this concern, I've gathered specific relevant case studies that provide holistic demonstrations of the points that I intend to explore. Read More

The definition of design is continually changing and evolving—at least in the public’s perception. But design will forever remain a problem-solving process. As a design community, we have always designed for a global audience, for which English is their first language. But, today, we must think about designing for the next billion people. As we progressively focus more and more on inclusive design and diverse cultures, we must accept that 98% of the population are not native English speakers. Designing for this broader audience has become an imperative.

For designers, communication is a key facet of everything we create. The entire design process is predicated on systems requiring clear communication between clients, stakeholders, teams, and users. The language barrier seems bigger than ever when we’re designing for an audience with whom we don’t share a common language. In this column, I’ll discuss some common challenges that you’ll confront when designing for an audience of users who aren’t proficient in English. I’ll also share my tried-and-tested strategies for solving this problem. Read More

Users want to work in familiar languages and environments, so companies that build and sell enterprise products to customers from different cultures and in different locales must support these expectations. Doing so requires localization—adapting documents or products to ensure they’re culturally appropriate. However, product teams often overlook this requirement or put off localization until late in the development cycle.

Even when localization is a formal requirement, a product team that is battling a tight deadline or budget constraints may choose to skip localization or defer it until a later release. Their localization effort languishes in the team’s growing pile of UX debt, remaining unaddressed until a senior executive receives an angry phone call from a customer, complaining about the product’s subpar experience in their native language or environment.

How can you, as a UX professional, support localization, help reduce the odds that your product might alienate customers, and avoid contributing to your team’s UX debt? In this column, I’ll provide a localization expert’s perspective on this topic, then describe some practical ways in which you can design user interfaces to better support localization. Read More