Global Design for Global Product Teams

Rachael Freeman at UXDX Community: Enhancing Product Teams with Ethical and Universal Design Principles. Video: https://youtu.be/ZO3cAwQMg1w

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Introduction: what global product design means

[00:00:00] Hi everyone, thanks for tuning in. I'm Rachael, I'm based in Utah in the USA, and it's morning time here, so good evening to you if you're watching in Europe, but it's definitely still daytime here. My presentation today is about global product design. A little bit about me: I moved from New Zealand to Utah, USA, when I was 19. I packed a suitcase and moved over here for school and have been here ever since. With that insight and experience, it has made me more aware of cultural differences and ways of designing for global products and solutions that work across different regions.

[00:00:43] To get started here, I'm going to give an introduction, of course, to global design, and then I will share a case study. I hope it's a fun, nostalgic case study that you can relate to. With that case study my goal is to highlight some of the product decisions that were made and how that ties in with global design principles that you can apply to your own projects and work that you have in your product jobs. After that we'll go into some research methodologies and how those can be adapted to work well on a global scale, and some things to be aware of.

[00:01:24] The way I think about product and product design is that it is about being human. It's about the human experiences and things that connect us, things that are similar and also things that are different. As a product designer my goal is always to empathize and understand that user journey, and try to identify my own biases and assumptions as much as possible and try not to let that interfere with truly empathizing and understanding the human experience and how to make that the best it can be.

[00:01:57] When it comes to international or global user experience design and product, it's not a replacement for your traditional UX principles or product principles. Instead it aims to integrate UX design principles with globalization, localization and translation. Those three different terms and concepts are going to be throughout this presentation. There are nuances to each one and they're a great way of thinking about products that will reach different people.

The McDonald's case study: the in-person experience

[00:02:32] I'm going to start with a case study that is going to highlight some of these key principles. The reason I chose this brand, which I'll reveal in a moment, is that I think they do a good job of realizing that each user will have their own experience with their brand and it's influenced by their traits and cultural expectations. This might be a left field example, but I'm loving it, I guess. Here's McDonald's.

[00:03:00] The reason I chose this is because when I moved to the United States of America I noticed quickly that the food was different, even when it came to the experience at global restaurant chains like McDonald's that's very iconic in the United States. I thought it would be an interesting case study that shows how cultural context and market strategy can change the product decisions that you make and the design decisions that you make. To do this, for this case study, I'm going to compare three different global markets. First I'll look at the in-person experience and how that is tailored for each culture and the context of its users, and then I'll look at the website and the app as well.

[00:03:47] So McDonald's was founded in the United States. It's known for its burgers, the Big Mac, its fries, and its specialty blend of Diet Coke. I'm from Utah so I know my Diet Coke very well. And it's also known, of course, for those iconic golden arches and the soft serve machine that may or may not be out of order in a location near you. It started in the 40s in California and it soon expanded to become the global brand and restaurant that it is today, and it is in more than 100 countries with more than 2,000 locations around the world.

[00:04:23] Some of those locations are found in my hometown and my home country in New Zealand, and I think we kind of took McDonald's and ran with it, because some of the experiences there are very much unique experiences that are tailored for the culture in New Zealand. For example, there is a unique experience where you can eat McDonald's in a decommissioned airplane in Taupo, New Zealand, and it even made it to Business Insider who reported on it. On the right you'll see images of the traditional Maori carvings that you can see in some locations in New Zealand. This is just very different. I've never experienced something like this in the United States. It has different things that are iconic, of course, but this was unique to the culture and tied in and made it feel a little bit more like home even though it obviously wasn't founded in New Zealand.

[00:05:19] And the last market to look at is in France. I have not personally visited this, so I'm relying on my research here, but in France McDonald's is a different in-person experience again. The menu items are different, more pastries, croissants, macarons, as you can see in these images, and even the branding and positioning is just a little more upscale than what you might expect in other parts of the world.

Three product decisions: the call to action

[00:05:46] So that's the in-person experience, and I find it fascinating to start there because you can see some of the cultural influences that are tied in with some of those choices. Of course it would make sense that on the website and the mobile apps there would also be opportunities to tailor the product decisions to the cultural context. Again looking at these three different markets, I'm going to illustrate how three key product decisions illustrate some of these product principles. I'm going to focus on the primary call to action, the name of the mobile app, and whether there's an option to order directly from the website.

[00:06:30] Starting in the USA, the primary call to action on their website is "order now." It's direct, simple, there's a sense of urgency, and it's transactional. The placement of this primary call to action is in the top right corner. It's one of the first things you see and it has that primary button style in that bright yellow color.

[00:06:50] Compare that to New Zealand, where the primary call to action is lowered down on the screen. It's also more of a question: "hungry? let's fix that." It's not your traditional button style that you would expect on a website like this, but it's certainly asking you to order food, that's what they want. So the tone here is indirect, informal, and it's a little lower down on the screen.

[00:07:16] And then the last example is in France, and even just looking at this one snapshot of the home screen of their website, it's definitely marketed differently, and there are definitely some product decisions there that are different based on the market strategy as well as the research on this region of the world. For their primary call to action they have an icon paired with simple text that says "order." This is a great way of communicating action in more than one way, which is a good technique when you are working with sites that need to be translated easily from one language to another. Having recognizable iconography is also great for accessibility, and communicating in two ways is also a great tool for accessibility.

The name of the app, and what copy tone teaches us

[00:08:08] So the next thing I wanted to look at is the mobile apps by region. Even just analyzing the imagery that they use, the colors and the name of the app tells us a lot about those product decisions and principles that drive global design. The name of the McDonald's app in the United States is simply McDonald's app. Again, direct, transactional in nature. In New Zealand and France, however, they capitalize on the colloquial terms that people refer to this brand or company as. In New Zealand it's called My Macca's Rewards, and in France it's McDo+ loyalty. Both of those two examples also stress the value of having the app, whereas in the United States it's more implied that there's value in having the app.

[00:08:57] So this teaches us a couple of principles that are applicable to our work. The first one is that copywriting and tone should reflect how people really speak. If they use certain words, if they use certain phrases or slang or colloquialisms that work well for your product, then that could be a good opportunity to tie in with how they speak and to potentially use that in your designs. The tone should also reflect whether people are more direct or indirect, whether they have a sense of urgency, and so on. And another technique, of course, is to think beyond words. Words need to be translated, but if you can use icons that are universally recognized, that's even better. It's a lot more global.

Ordering from the website, device types and bandwidth

[00:09:43] And the last product decision for this case study is whether you have an option to order directly from the website, and I'm comparing the same three locations. So in the United States there's no option other than getting the app or using a different app, a third party app like Uber Eats or DoorDash. In France you first have to choose your specific location and then from there you'll have some options, so there are certainly constraints on whether you can order online. The banner at the top is highlighting that the app is available and asking you to install it, so there is some emphasis on getting the app but it's not the only option. And of course our last example, in New Zealand, you can order right here from the website. Here are our options, and if you were to scroll down there would be a call to action to get the app, but it's not the first thing.

[00:10:42] So what does this teach us about principles? Well, the third one here is think about the device types that people are using in the regions that you're designing for, and what bandwidth or cellular data, for example, that they would have access to. So for mobile apps, in countries where mobile devices are very accessible and people typically have cellular data, then you might consider the app being the most important call to action, whereas in countries where desktop is more of the primary device type then your design is going to change accordingly. Bandwidth is also important. You'll notice in the USA version of the app there are media rich animations throughout the app that just wouldn't be as accessible if you didn't have a good cellular connection.

[00:11:35] And the last principle here is your global design should be deeply informed by culture. We don't want to design from our own perspective if we're trying to design for different cultures around the world. And so to do this I wanted to look into some research methodologies that are applicable to the work that we all do and that will help us to understand those cultures so that our design can be deeply informed by it.

Global user research: understanding values, and the Hofstede model

[00:12:03] With that I'm going to transition to this next section about global user research. The good news here is that a lot of the user research that you do day to day in your work is applicable here, but there are a few additional steps or cautions that I would add here to make it more global friendly.

[00:12:27] So the first research tip is to seek to understand the values and perspectives of real people. This is about understanding how people think, how people behave, what their values are, what their morals are, and so on. There are a lot of ways to do this, and if you're able to experience it firsthand then that is certainly helpful. Sometimes our budgets or logistics don't allow for that and so we have to conduct research in other ways, so speaking to real users is a great technique.

[00:13:01] Other ways that you can understand users as well is by using models such as the Hofstede model. This is a well documented model where it basically outlines different values and it ranks different countries based on where they would fit on these scales. There are six different scales here to consider. Power distance index: this is the level of acceptance of an unequal power distribution in society. I think it's kind of funny that I apologized there, that might tell you some insight about my cultural background. Anyway, the second one here is individualism versus collectivism, so this is whether a culture prioritizes individual goals or more the goals of a group.

[00:13:53] Masculinity versus femininity: this is whether a culture is more driven by competition versus cooperation. Uncertainty avoidance: desire to accept or avoid unknown or uncertain situations. Long-term versus short-term: this is about planning and the way you value short-term versus long-term factors. It's kind of like, do you eat the marshmallow up front or do you wait and have two marshmallows, that type of psychology. And indulgence versus restraint, so the extent to which people try to control desires and impulses.

[00:14:29] So these are scales, you can Google them, they have world maps and it color coordinates the world maps based on where different countries fall on each scale. The caution I would say here, with this as well as any other research technique that you apply, is you want to try to get as specific as possible if you have a target audience. Of course cultures aren't all homogeneous, they don't all think the same way or value the same things for every single person in a certain region, but it can give you a good starting point by which to form your line of questioning and your discovery questions as well.

Elements that need to be localized: names, states, countries

[00:15:07] Okay, the second tip for global research here is to be aware of elements that are likely to need to be localized. So these are things like addresses, date formats, even currencies, and the number of digits or the number of characters that are typically used for different parts of the world and different languages. With this tip I'm not even saying to know everything off the top of your head, it's more just to be aware of elements that are likely to need to be adapted for different locations so that when the time comes you can do your research on what the expectations would be for that part of the world.

[00:15:45] A great example of this is addresses. They are almost always tailored depending on where you are, and for this a key consideration is whether the address field you are designing, like this one, is it supposed to be universally used, or are you tailoring it for a specific region? So let me tell you what I mean by that.

[00:16:09] If you wanted to make this first field of first name and last name more universally or global friendly, then you could change this to be one field and the label could be full name. This means that if you're in a country that lists your names in the opposite order of what is shown here, that it would still work for you. You also want to make sure there are enough characters available for longer names as well.

[00:16:36] Not all locales have a state or a province, and this is one that I've personally run into myself. I've been asked to put in a state and it's a required field, and perhaps I don't have a state if I were living in New Zealand or entering a New Zealand address. So this is something to consider. You have a couple of options here. You could either tailor it very specifically if you know your users are in a certain country, and find out which fields they will actually need and use. Or if it needs to be more universally used or globally used, then you could consider asking the country first and then populating fields like state, province or zip and postal code based on the country that's selected.

[00:17:20] When it comes to country, there are even different ways of listing out the countries to be the most inclusive. So this can be listing countries like Japan, USA, or you can also list sovereign countries like the United Kingdom that has countries within that country. There are different ways of listing it, so to be more globally accepted and inclusive you could update this label to say country/region, and that would include places that are autonomous regions like Hong Kong.

Test your assumptions, and test your designs

[00:17:57] And the last principle here is test your assumptions when you are analyzing your research. Just like with all user research, we have to figure out what our own biases and assumptions are and try not to allow those to influence the way we use the data, the way we ask questions, and we have to try to avoid that kind of seeping into the methodology as much as possible. When it comes to cross-cultural communication there's just more opportunity for those biases and misunderstandings to happen, so it's even more important to test your assumptions.

[00:18:32] An example that I've experienced: when I worked on some global research around the world early in my career, we had affinity mapping as a tool that we used to understand different values. So we had focus groups in different countries and they were asked to respond to a few different prompts with sticky notes. One method that worked well was not only having the users write down their notes on sticky notes but also to have a go at organizing the different ideas into categories that made sense to them.

[00:19:07] As soon as we start interpreting the ways that different ideas group together, this can also introduce bias, and that's what we were trying to avoid. So even though we might also have a go at sorting things ourselves, it was nice to see the users organize it in real time and see how they would correlate ideas and what made sense to them, so that was also another data point we could make. This is an example of taking those UX research tools and methodologies that you have in your toolkit and then adapting them on a global scale, thinking through ways that we can reduce some of the cross-cultural communication or miscommunication and biases from seeping in.

[00:19:50] As much as we love to do as much research as we can and understand as much as possible during the research and discovery phases of our product design, ultimately, just like good UX design, we want to test our designs with real users. We don't want to just assume that we have done enough research and that we don't need to test. So just as you would test everything with your regular designs, this is just as important, if not more, when it comes to global design strategy. You want to test with real users in the specific target audiences, and that will help to ensure that you are on the right track by validating and testing your designs with them. I'd like to thank you for listening in. I appreciate your time, and please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow up with any questions. Thank you.

Q&A: when do you go from localization to a separate experience?

[00:20:44] Host: Excellent, thank you very much, Rachael. A great case study of the different Macca's and McDonald's and McDo. Thank you. I only heard the Kiwi twang come out every so often, particularly I think it was "call to action."

[00:21:03] Rachael: I apologize. Yes, it comes and goes, but I've been in Utah for about 10 years now so it's changed quite a bit.

[00:21:16] Host: Brilliant. One question that jumps to mind, and if anybody out there has any questions, so I know Rudra Prap[?] has said nice case study, so he was enjoying it. If you have any questions please do comment on whichever channel you're watching on and I'll put those questions through to Rachael. But the question I have is: it seems like it would get very expensive to start creating a separate product as much as McDonald's have. It's not just a separate website, it's separate mobile apps, and the whole messaging and flows are different. So at what point, and I don't know if this is something you can answer, but at what point do you move from localization, which you mentioned, where it's kind of okay let's get the address fields right, to let's change the entire experience?

[00:22:04] Rachael: Yeah, that's a great question. Certainly McDonald's has the budget for separate apps and websites across the world, and that would be a great ideal situation, but of course that's not always possible. As you were asking that question, things that came to mind were what I was saying about designing, whether you're being more specific, more tailored to a specific region and just making everything match their experience perfectly, or are you focusing more on those universal design principles that are global friendly? I think that's probably more realistic in a lot of cases, where you can't just have a separate website for different locations. So I'd say focusing more on those universal principles can be great if you are unable to separate out those experiences.

[00:22:56] Rachael: I've also seen, worked in product design where, based on the location in your browser, there are some obviously language translations but also some other product decisions that were made to slightly adjust the experience based on that browser location, rather than having a completely separate experience. So I think there are some intermediate steps that are more realistic for a lot of companies.

[00:23:23] Host: Awesome. Yeah, it's a difficult decision because you're introducing more technical debt, I guess, by making your product more complex, but then you have duplication if you decide to run them as separate products.

Q&A: libraries for addresses, and applying the Hofstede scales

[00:23:39] Rachael: Yes, absolutely.

[00:23:43] Host: The other one I thought, because I have made all of the mistakes with addresses, with phone numbers, with even first name, last name, I've made all of those kinds of mistakes. What I rely heavily on now are preconfigured libraries, because these are problems that a lot of other people have solved out there. Are there any tools that you can recommend, or that you use, that you think are good that you could recommend to people?

[00:24:13] Rachael: Oh, that's a great question. I'm going to be honest, I rely a lot on my collaboration with the engineers and developers that are on my team. They often are more up to date on great tools and libraries that we can tap into. So that's probably an area that I myself could use some recommendations as well. But I do rely a lot on my engineers, I trust them, and we kind of look over different libraries that we could consider using. Of course that's a process in and of itself: how do we, do we build our own version of this or do we just rely on a library, they've done this before many times. So I can follow up on that one if anyone's interested, but again I do rely on that collaboration with my engineering team, I have to admit.

[00:25:03] Host: No problem. And it's always changing as well, as you say. But what I think is great, I saw there's a new initiative for a global design system where they're trying to solve a lot of these recurring problems, so that instead of every single team around the world solving it over and over, you have something that you can adopt. And the question that I have is around Hofstede's laws, was it laws or principles?

[00:25:34] Rachael: Yes, I can go back there.

[00:25:37] Host: Yeah, for sure, so this model. My question was around how do you actually apply them? A lot of these principles, I think they're great to know, but I've often struggled to figure out, okay, the individualism, how do I apply that? Is it just pure copy, or is there something else on how I can try to apply those to my designs?

[00:26:02] Rachael: Yeah, with that individualism, let's take that one. So for that scale it's individualism versus collectivism, and that one's interesting. I think one of the techniques that it can help with with design is thinking about the copy, for example. My background is also in journalism, so copy and language is really fascinating to me. With that, thinking about the way that we speak or the tone of voice that we have in our products, an example that's coming to mind is if you were creating gamification or rewards, for example, you might want to consider, in societies or cultures where it's more individualistic, maybe the way you get points is more for achieving personal goals, whereas in perhaps cultures that are more collectivist, more group goal oriented, in that case you might consider having like "invite a friend and get points," or something that's more of a group mentality.

[00:27:08] Rachael: So, let me rephrase that. I think it's a good starting point to get an idea of how people might think. I still think it relies a lot on testing and just double-checking that it actually does resonate with people, but I think it can help as a starting point to your research.

[00:27:26] Host: Brilliant, no, that was actually a very good example. I really like that, the loyalty approach, different angle, I didn't think of that one before, so thank you for sharing that.

[00:27:36] Rachael: Thank you.

[00:27:39] Host: And that actually brings us to time, so I just want to thank you once again for sharing. I really enjoyed it and I hope everybody out there did as well. Thank you.