Why Designing Across Cultural Context Matters - UXDXCONF Learnings

I recently attended the virtual conference presented by design leads from Shopify and here are my learnings.

As an UX designer we are often taught to zoom in on the users (learning about their motivations, wants and needs) but sometimes it is also important to zoom out in a global context when creating your product.

• It matters because it defines how product is perceived and used.

• It sets user behaviour.

• It will benefit you long term by being relevant to the market.

One of the examples given was that some places are mobile first. For example - India. Where most people do everything on mobile. So the Shopify team asked people to give their mobile number instead of email when signing in to Shopify websites/merchant sites.

Cultural context also subconsciously influences people’s decisions. In Indonesia a lot of people tend to change their phone choice last minute and the researchers quickly realized that it is because of bad traffic, so it happens very often the their ideal phone is not available by the time they reach their location. They also don’t want to go back home empty handed.

Though it is often difficult to bridge the gaps between the different cultural contexts, below is a framework that was shared to help in that process:

4 Steps to Design Cultural Context

• Acknowledge (Know cultural differences)

• Learn (Build cultural context)

• Ideate (Use cultural context to inspire innovative solutions)

• Prepare (Build a long term strategy)

Step 1 and 2: Acknowledge and Learn

Challenge assumptions - Where your product comes from (Pt A) to where/who you design for (Pt B).

Some tips include:

• Have a culture guide. Treat your local recruiting/research agencies as your guides.

• See things from other’s perspectives. Go into people’s life context to see things in their shoes. Observe their lives.

• Make sense of design principles through zooming out to understand the physical, social and cultural context.

There is often a match between the digital spaces and social spaces.

Based on the figure above it is pretty easy to match between different context to their digital space:

Cheerful and happy environment, used to a lot of text and content on the same page. - China

Efficient way of displaying information and very detail info. - Japan

Appreciate the shop and branding experiences. - Canada

Last but not least,

• Consider local laws and regulations

For example marketing is hard in China as Facebook is banned. So Shopify’s plug ins were not usable.

Step 3: Ideate From insights to actions.

• Elevate observations to insights to inspire design opportunities. Instead of generating solutions directly from observations.

• Co-create with people. Inviting people to work with you.

Step 4: Prepare Build a long term strategy to address cross-cultural audiences.

• Let local/regional teams lead the way. A full set of resources for each market space.

• Develop skills to unlearn and relearn. Make a culture “hat”: habit of thinking about different culture and nuances.

• Surround yourself with (digital) pieces of culture you’re designing for.

• You are what you consume. Consume books or other media that are more broad-ranging. Try more diverse authors. And travel!

• Build a constant connection to your users. A line of communication to users.

• Document learnings and share. Have a playbook to share.