WEBVTT 00:00:02.960 --> 00:00:06.800 As you're designing, it's so easy just to design 00:00:06.800 --> 00:00:10.720 for the people that you know and for the culture that you know.  00:00:15.040 --> 00:00:19.503 However, cultures differ. Now, that's true of many aspects of the interface; 00:00:19.503 --> 00:00:25.323 no[t] least, though, the visual layout of an interface and the the visual elements. 00:00:25.614 --> 00:00:29.385 Some aspects are quite easy just to realize like language, 00:00:29.385 --> 00:00:32.081 others much, much more subtle. 00:00:32.081 --> 00:00:35.564 You might have come across, there's two... well, actually there's three terms because 00:00:35.564 --> 00:00:39.600 some of these are almost the same thing, but two terms are particularly distinguished. 00:00:39.649 --> 00:00:43.239 One is localization and globalization. And you 00:00:43.239 --> 00:00:48.257 hear them used almost interchangeably and probably also with slight differences 00:00:48.257 --> 00:00:51.840 because different authors and people will use them slightly differently. 00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:56.566 So one thing is localization or internationalization. 00:00:57.200 --> 00:00:59.680 Although the latter probably only used in that sense. 00:00:59.680 --> 00:01:04.320 So localization is about taking an interface and making it appropriate 00:01:04.320 --> 00:01:08.799 for a particular place. So you might change the interface style slightly. 00:01:08.799 --> 00:01:11.253 You certainly might change the language for it; 00:01:11.253 --> 00:01:15.230 whereas global – being globalized – is about saying, "Can I make something that 00:01:15.230 --> 00:01:18.568 works for everybody everywhere?" 00:01:18.568 --> 00:01:21.955 The latter sounds almost bound to fail and often does. 00:01:21.955 --> 00:01:25.700 But obviously, if you're trying to create something that's used across the whole 00:01:25.700 --> 00:01:28.483 global market, you have to try and do that. 00:01:28.483 --> 00:01:31.560 And typically you're doing a bit of each in each space. 00:01:31.560 --> 00:01:36.960 You're both trying to design as many elements as possible so that they are globally relevant. 00:01:36.960 --> 00:01:41.200 They mean the same everywhere, or at least are understood everywhere. 00:01:41.200 --> 00:01:45.440 And some elements where you do localization, you will try and change them 00:01:45.440 --> 00:01:48.853 to make them more specific for the place. 00:01:48.853 --> 00:01:51.360 There's usually elements of both. 00:01:51.360 --> 00:01:55.251 But remembering that distinction, you need to think about both of those. 00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:59.200 The most obvious thing to think about here is just changing language. 00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:02.880 I mean, that's a fairly obvious thing and there's lots of tools to make that easy. 00:02:02.880 --> 00:02:07.171 So if you have... whether it's menu names or labels, 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:11.594 you might find this at the design stage or in the implementation technique, 00:02:11.594 --> 00:02:14.000 there's ways of creating effectively 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:18.366 look-up tables that says this menu item instead of being 00:02:18.366 --> 00:02:24.160 just a name in the implementation, effectively has an idea or a way of representing it. 00:02:24.160 --> 00:02:27.460 And that can be looked up so that your menus change, 00:02:27.460 --> 00:02:31.040 your text changes and everything. Now that sounds like, "Yay, that's it!" 00:02:31.040 --> 00:02:35.229 So what it is, is that it's not the end of the story, even for text. 00:02:35.229 --> 00:02:38.342 That's not the end of the story. 00:02:38.685 --> 00:02:42.960 Visit Finland sometime. If you've never visited Finland, it's a wonderful place to go. 00:02:44.211 --> 00:02:47.280 The signs are typically in Finnish and in Swedish. 00:02:47.280 --> 00:02:50.806 Both languages are used. I think almost equal amounts of people 00:02:50.806 --> 00:02:55.228 using both languages, their first language, and most will know both. 00:02:56.205 --> 00:03:00.640 But because of this, if you look at those lines, they're in two languages. 00:03:00.640 --> 00:03:06.480 The Finnish line is usually about twice as large as the Swedish piece of text. 00:03:06.480 --> 00:03:09.760 Because Finnish uses a lot of double letters to represent 00:03:09.760 --> 00:03:12.073 quite subtle differences in sound. 00:03:12.073 --> 00:03:14.560 Vowels get lengthened by doubling them. 00:03:14.560 --> 00:03:17.346 Consonants get separated. 00:03:17.346 --> 00:03:20.200 So I'll probably pronounce this wrong. 00:03:20.240 --> 00:03:25.440 But R-I-T-T-A, is not "Rita" which would be R-I-T-A . 00:03:25.440 --> 00:03:27.520 But "Reet-ta". Actually, 00:03:27.520 --> 00:03:31.680 I overemphasized that, but "Reetta". There's a bit of a stop. 00:03:31.680 --> 00:03:34.240 And I said I won't be doing it right. Talk to a Finnish person, 00:03:34.240 --> 00:03:37.788 they will help put you right on this. But because of this, 00:03:37.788 --> 00:03:41.270 the text is twice as long. But of course, suddenly the text isn't going to fit in. 00:03:41.270 --> 00:03:45.920 So it's going to overlap with icons. It's going to scroll when it shouldn't scroll. 00:03:45.920 --> 00:03:50.240 So even something like the size of the field becomes something that can change. 00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:52.720 And then, of course, there's things like left-to-right order. 00:03:52.720 --> 00:03:55.440 Finnish and Swedish both are left-to-right languages. 00:03:55.440 --> 00:03:58.320 But if you were going to have, switch something 00:03:58.320 --> 00:04:02.320 say to an Arabic script from a European script, 00:04:02.320 --> 00:04:06.080 then you would end up with things going the other way round. 00:04:06.080 --> 00:04:10.274 So it's more than just changing the names. 00:04:10.274 --> 00:04:15.200 You have to think much more deeply than that. But again, it's more than the language. 00:04:15.200 --> 00:04:19.737 There are all sorts of cultural assumptions that we build into things. 00:04:20.080 --> 00:04:24.640 The majority of interfaces are built... actually the majority are built 00:04:24.640 --> 00:04:27.840 not even in just one part of the world, but in one country, 00:04:27.840 --> 00:04:31.080 you know the dominance... I'm not sure what percentage, 00:04:31.080 --> 00:04:34.640 but a vast proportion will be built, not just in the USA, 00:04:34.640 --> 00:04:37.767 but in the West Coast of the USA. 00:04:37.767 --> 00:04:42.320 Certainly there is a European/US/American 00:04:42.320 --> 00:04:45.388 centeredness to the way in which things are designed. 00:04:45.520 --> 00:04:51.520 It's so easy to design things caught in those cultures 00:04:51.520 --> 00:04:56.281 without realizing that there are other ways of seeing the world. 00:04:56.281 --> 00:04:59.040 That changes the assumptions, 00:04:59.040 --> 00:05:02.000 the sort of values that are built into an interaction. 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:05.183 The meanings of symbols, so ticks and crosses, 00:05:07.840 --> 00:05:11.502 mostly will get understood and I do continue to use them. 00:05:11.502 --> 00:05:15.114 However, certainly in the UK, 00:05:15.280 --> 00:05:18.693 but even not universally across Europe. 00:05:18.693 --> 00:05:22.403 But in the UK, a tick is a positive symbol, means "this is good". 00:05:22.403 --> 00:05:24.960 A cross is a "blah, that's bad". 00:05:24.960 --> 00:05:28.640 However, there are lots of parts of the world where both mean the same. 00:05:28.640 --> 00:05:35.006 They're both a check. And in fact, weirdly, if I vote in the UK, 00:05:35.006 --> 00:05:39.884 I put a cross, not against the candidate I don't want but against the candidate I do want. 00:05:39.884 --> 00:05:43.920 So even in the UK a cross can mean the same as a tick. 00:05:43.920 --> 00:05:47.996 You know – and colors, I said I do redundantly code 00:05:47.996 --> 00:05:52.800 often my crosses with red and my ticks with green because red 00:05:52.800 --> 00:05:57.748 in my culture is negative; I mean, it's not negative; I like red (inaudible) 00:05:57.748 --> 00:06:02.378 – but it has that sense of being a red mark is a bad mark. 00:06:03.200 --> 00:06:06.367 There are many cultures where red is the positive color. 00:06:06.367 --> 00:06:10.132 And actually it is a positive color in other ways in Western culture. 00:06:10.132 --> 00:06:15.165 But particularly that idea of the red cross that you get on your schoolwork; 00:06:15.165 --> 00:06:18.000 this is not the same everywhere. 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:21.204 So, you really have to have quite a subtle understanding of these things. 00:06:21.204 --> 00:06:23.320 Now, the thing is, you probably won't. 00:06:23.348 --> 00:06:28.483 And so, this is where if you are taking something into a different culture, 00:06:28.483 --> 00:06:33.482 you almost certainly will need somebody who quite richly understands that culture. 00:06:33.482 --> 00:06:36.082 So you design things so that they are 00:06:36.082 --> 00:06:39.522 possible for somebody to come in and do those adjustments 00:06:39.522 --> 00:06:43.904 because you probably may well not be in the position to be able to do that yourself.