Experiences: Global User Experiences

As enablers of online conversations between businesses and customers, Web forms are often responsible for gathering critical information—email addresses for continued communications, mailing addresses for product shipments, and billing information for payment processing to name just a few. So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that one of the most common questions I get asked about Web form design is: “How do I deal with international addresses?”

But before we get into the nuances of address variations, it’s worth pointing out that addresses have a commonly understood structure. Through years of experience with mailing and postal systems, people have a pretty concrete idea of what constitutes an address block. This common understanding is so definitive that eyetracking data suggests, once people begin filling in a set of input fields that make up an address, they often cease looking at their labels. The basic structure of an address is so familiar, people don’t need the guidance labels provide. Read More

In recent years, social ecommerce has rapidly emerged across the world by leveraging social interactions to drive online sales. Examples include influencer-driven shopping on Instagram in the US, Line Shopping’s chat-based social ecommerce in Japan and Thailand, and Pinduoduo’s group-buying model in China.

What I’ve found most interesting is the group-buying model in ecommerce, which originated in the West, but has become extremely successful in the East, especially with platforms such as Pinduoduo. I’ve explored how cultural factors influence this space and why they result in such different outcomes in the ecommerce industry. In this column, I’ll examine how Pinduoduo leverages social elements to design user experiences that influence consumers’ decision-making. Read More

When thinking about digital lending, we might picture a long journey—from onboarding, verification, and underwriting to repayment. But beneath these steps lies something that is more influential in shaping the lending UX design: risk culture.

Digital lending is not just about offering money online, then running the numbers. It’s about how people feel when they borrow, what they fear might go wrong, the level of uncertainty they are willing to accept, and the reassurances they need before committing. These perceptions and behaviors vary widely across cultures, largely depending on people’s levels of risk tolerance.

In this column, I’ll explore how risk-averse and risk-tolerant cultural mindsets shape digital lending behaviors, how the differences between them influence UX design decisions, and what UX designers should consider when building lending products for different cultural contexts. Read More