01 ‣ Welcome; cross-cultural design; user research with AI; & more
Hello and welcome to the very-very beginnings of the DESIGN IN THE WILD newsletter – a passion project I've been building the past few months. It's no secret I'm kind of obsessed with design and I didn't want to hoard to myself all the design awesomeness I find out there. And design is really everywhere we look. I'm suuuper excited to share this hand-curated design inspiration with you, and see where things go. Let's dive in! ✻
📱 Bento Create a personal page easily & for free, to share your content and resources. Perfect for creatives and creators!
📰 "ChatGPT can't produce user research" Can you - or should you - outsource your research tasks to a language model?
📰 Do gendered pronouns need their own glyphs? How can you, as a designer, investigate what happens if we go beyond the binary in the language we use?
📰 "Bridging the talent gap between Silicon Valley and Africa" Read this story on how bringing UX/QA careers to college-educated refugees can democratize work and offer opportunities to people who have been displaced.
📚 Serious Work A practical, informative and detailed book on LEGO® Serious Play® that is ideal both for beginner and veteran facilitators!
Marina Soriano Porcar is a strategic designer passionate about how culture impacts the way humans see and interact with the world. I've had the chance to work with Marina and I'm always blown away how spot-on is she with her insights. Hope you'll enjoy this DESIGN³ interview as much as I did! ✨
Being from the Valencian region of Spain, having lived in Austria, Germany, and now in Denmark – how has this mixture of cultures shaped you as a designer?
Living abroad for the first time, I moved into a student dorm - which was an intercultural melting pot. This further awoke a curiosity to understand how people from diverse cultural backgrounds read, decode, and engage with the world. I also got to experience how friends from some cultures would orbit toward each other. Flash forward (and a master’s degree in intercultural research later) to this day, I’d say that is that curiosity, paired with learnings on cultural bias and relativism, that has shaped me as a researcher and a designer. I continuously seek to re-learn and evaluate whether I am subconsciously putting myself (or those similar to me) at the center of my practice and seeking to understand and create from an uncentered and non-biased standpoint. It’s all about undoing default behaviours.
For example, if I’m designing screens only using Western names, just because those are at the top of my head, I’m uncentering all those names that won’t fit within the designed space. If I’m carrying out user interviews, and I don’t adapt my interview guide, nor have I done my research on what a company’s context is in a given country, I’m researching around myself and bypassing all contextual evidence. If I’m facilitating a session, and I don’t make an effort to shape the exercises around different communication styles, I’m sidelining those less likely to speak up in a group.
Which is your favorite example of a service/experience where they really nailed designing for a multicultural audience?
That’s a tricky one. I’d say to consider designing for a multicultural audience, it all boils down to internationalization: how flexible and resilient your service is to adopt local change and whether the experience can adapt to new cultures at scale. If we understand multicultural in terms of national culture, I think there are plenty of often highlighted examples, like McDonald’s creating local menus all around the world, and tapping into specific subcultures through celebrity meals. Ikea also made headlines about its repositioning in China. It’s all part of that Think Global, Act Local approach.
But in terms of digital services and experiences, I think Spotify did a great job, almost from the get-go. By designing a service that allows users to engage in value co-creation patterns, like creating playlists, they got to find and track rising local artists, and then promote them to a global audience. They blend in with the culture of every new market they enter thanks to their ability to spotlight local music and celebrations. They also nailed the interface localization aspect of it, not only translating the UI, but completely localizing their content strategy. Ultimately, you want to meet your users’ needs functionally, culturally, and linguistically. Yet, they also had some difficulties cracking some markets, due to cultural configurations. This was the case with South Korea, a country that birthed a strong K-pop subculture that is famous focused on cultural content, and with Melon, a local streaming counterpart with more localized features (such as karaoke).
For someone who wants to learn about multicultural and intersectional design – what are the top 3 resources you recommend to start with?
Cross-Cultural Design by Senongo Akpem
Userinterviews’ Awkward Silences podcast: Cross-Cultural Research episode
Pocket Guide to International User Research by Chui Chui Tan
...A resource that’s always there to get you started is the internet! Download and explore apps or websites from different countries (like a car-sharing service). How are they similar? How are they different? Why do you think that is? You can learn a lot about cross-cultural differences by exploring yourself!
Wohoo, thanks for reading the newsletter all the way here! 😋 I'd love to hear what you thought of it – drop me a line and let's chat. Got a friend who you know would geek out on content like this? Consider sending this edition to them 💌
See you next month!
Kinga ✻