Turning Language Barriers into Learning Experiences
A recent happy accident has turned into a new way for me to test digital products. As it turns out, using language and cultural barriers can be a great way to get fresh eyes and great insight into your design. Below is a quick breakdown of what happened, but for more details listen to my latest podcast episode after the break.
Diving into a Korean social platform
This whole thing started when I came across Naver, South Korea’s answer to Google (sort of). The search engine has been around since 1999 and has some amazing looking content from users in their blog and Pholar (Instagram-like) apps, so I wanted to check it out.
Not knowing Korean, I found it interesting how I was still able to use these apps due to the well designed hierarchy of buttons and pages. Thus began my quest to dive deep into the Naver platform to learn how to design a smooth experience without relying on words.
Testing a design in New Zealand
The second happy accident came shortly after when I unknowingly launched a quick user test to a “Worldwide” audience, instead of my typical “United States” audience.
Rather than discard the New Zealand and Canadian tests, I watched and listened as a truly fresh set of eyes looked at my design. These people had no context of the design, no familiarity with the brand or industry — just an unfiltered look at the information I was trying to convey.
Turns out that these tests were really valuable even though they weren’t my target user base in terms of geographic location. I learned what really worked and what didn’t with the design, beyond what an American user could point out.
This begs the question; is it worth testing our designs outside of our target demographics just to get a fresh perspective? I do believe it is at least worth trying apps outside of our native language to see how smooth and effortless an experience can be with just visual cues alone.
There’s a lot we can learn from each other and our designs once we get outside our cultural bubble!
