Beyond Translation: Getting Cross-cultural Design Right Miniclass
FEB 17th 8:00AM PST; 11:00AM EST; 4:00 PM GMT; 8:30 PM IST
30 min
Getting your focus right for Localization UX
If you ship your software, product, or service to markets outside your country, you probably do translation (or outsource it). You probably think you have localization covered. You’re probably 50% right in your approach.
The opportunities for reaching the Next Billion users are vast, but what stands between your company and that opportunity is not language translation. Instead, it is the ability to offer an experience that is culturally sensitive that makes the difference to global user adoption. Users in local markets will struggle to adopt your product if it does not feel right, feel local, or feel understanding of their cultural needs. Therefore, a UX localization strategy is crucial.
The Lunar New Year celebrated throughout Asia, aka Chinese New Year, is always a good reminder of cross-cultural design. Chinese exchange red envelopes or ‘hongbao’ with money for good luck. The most popular app in China, WeChat, attributed its rapid growth and adoption to the use of the red envelope metaphor (a virtual red envelope acts as the confirmation of money sent/received). That’s a very real example of cultural fit and a reminder of why so many American companies have failed to compete against local solutions in China and India, the two largest populations in the world.
Cross-cultural UX design starts at home
Cross-cultural design is about crossing borders. The first border is your company culture (how you think they do things) vs your users’ culture (how they actually do things). This is why user contact is vital in healthy UX efforts. Next, we cross the regional borders to learn that people in the South, North, East, or West think, speak and act a little differently. Here we can look at who we missed out, and which user groups or communities we have left out. This makes Inclusive Design critical to your cross-cultural design competency. Finally, we cross the national borders to explore other user groups in their locales, with the dynamics of national, regional, and local user culture all at play.
In this Miniclass, short 30-minute webinar, we will cover distinctions in localization that bring access, digital literacy, cultural norms, inclusion, and cross-cultural user advocacy into focus. Based on his 20 yrs experience with global UX projects, Frank will make the case for the need for a UX-led approach to localization that reframes the goal of translation into one of cultural fit.
Topics we will cover in Beyond Translation: Getting cross-cultural design right:
- How to do Cross-cultural design “Beyond Translation”
- Examples of cultural sensitivity of culturability in localization UX
- Managing localization projects (and vendors) with a UX-led approach to culture
- Q&A
About Miniclasses:
A brief, but deep-dive into a topic, led by Frank Spillers. The sessions provide an orientation to key points on a topic. The sessions are FREE to members of the UX Inner Circle.
| Date: | 17 Feb 2023 |
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| Time: | 08:00 am PDT 11:00 am EDT 04:00 pm BST 05:00 pm CEST |
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