A blog about designing global user experiences: beyond language, location & culture.
Famous Birthdays has been described as a “Wikipedia for Gen-Z”. It’s an insight into popularity across the internet of influencers, not just from traditional stage and screen but also social media channels such as TikTok and Instagram. It’s also available in four languages: English, French, Portuguese and Spanish. The site presents options to these language Continue reading Famous Birthdays and…
The latest version of Apple s macOS, Monterey, has removed one of the longest and most prominent examples of using flags for languages: on the macOS language selector. New language selector from macOS Monterey The new UI is purely text, whereas previously flags were shown in this selection screen since macOS s release in 2001. Previous macOS Continue reading Apple removes flags from macOS
What if a user visiting an e-commerce site wants to change the language of the site? Or the currency? Thinking about currency, the main reason a user would change currency is because they re viewing the site from another country. So often currency and country selection are very closely tied. Language, however, can be less straightforward. Continue reading Revolve and G-Star Raw: country and…
In 2012 I wrote about Deezer mixing up ISO country codes and languages codes specifically Montserrat for Melayu and as a result using the flag of a small English-speaking Caribbean island for the Malay language. (Deezer has since replaced their flags and languages with a simple list of languages presented in their native name). Continue reading ISO language codes and country codes don t mix
Computer game companies seem to be repeat offenders when it comes to using flags to represent languages: Bethesda and Steam have both been featured on this blog (but to their credit have since removed their use of flags for language selection). However Canadian-based game maker Bioware has really set the bar high with this almost Continue reading Bioware s Canadian English
A useful article from Responsive News on implementing multi-lingual websites: 13 tips for making responsive web design multi-lingual.
The UK Post Office serves Scotland (and Northern Ireland) as well as England and Wales which makes this literal choice of flags for languages quite inappropriate for users from those countries: (H/T to @aledpowell for noticing this one)
Babbel show the Brazilian flag on their site for their Portuguese language lessons. Obviously they re teaching Brazilian Portuguese so what not actually emphasize that without just relying on a flag (and of course having the added confusion of a Brazilian flag with Portuguese underneath). This blog has discussed the confusion and annoyance that using Continue reading Babbel.com: regional language…
memegenerator.net really does what it says on the box: lets users generate memes with a variety of templates. But it has a really annoying feature: you must select a language (English, Russian, Spanish or other) first. If you don t select a language, an alert pops up with a meme demanding Y U NO SELECT LANGUAGE? Continue reading memegenerator.net and overcomplicating language input
Key lessons learned (the TL;DR version): users are easily able to find translation links in footers language names work well at communicating links to translations – but only if the user is familiar with that alphabet (for instance, as English-speaking user won t recognize Chinese lettering if Chinese is the current language) the use of flags Continue reading Case study: onefinestay.com and…