Conform to expectations
She could navigate through the site by depending on the visual style and placement of certain elements. Using her experiences from English and Chinese websites. The website conformed to her expectations. The links, titles, buttons, etc. where placed where she expected them.
Usability testing
This could be a good way of usability testing when you want to focus on the design of the website. Let some people who can’t understand the text try to complete certain tasks. If they succeed without to much mistakes, you’re sure you’ve got yourself a design that works.
Normally I’m very focused on visual appeal. ‘Does something look good?’, rather then ‘Is it clear to the user?’ or ‘Does it fits it’s purpose?’. But this photo ordering process showed my (once again) that visual appeal comes on the second place, visual function on the first.
Greg Scowen
26 February 2007
It is very refreshing to read a story like this, and even more refreshing to hear someone comment that design function is so important.
I have had similar experiences while I was living in Switzerland, before I spoke German, and admit that I returned to websites that achieved this regularly.
Now all we have to do is get the rest of the web to sit up and take notice.
Dr. Pete
5 March 2007
That’s an interesting observation, Rogier. As the web causes cultures to collide more and more, it will be interesting to see which standards are culturally-based (like reading left-to-right vs. top-to-bottom) and which are more universal (cognitively speaking). The emerging Asian market will be especially interesting to watch, as broadband adoption skyrockets and China increasingly becomes an economic power. We Americans are going to have to get used to the fact that we don’t get to make all the rules, standards-wise.
rogier
6 March 2007
Thanks for the comments Greg and Pete. It’s indeed a very interesting trend to watch. Asian websites work and look completely different. I think there hasn’t been much discussion about how this differences have come to exist and what they exactly are. Perhaps western web designers can learn from looking how eastern designers solve problems and vice versa.
peterpixel writings » Blog Archive » Making Text Hierarchy Clearer to Analyze
29 March 2007
[…] Some time ago Rogier wrote about his Chinese girlfriend being able to navigate through a site without knowing what it written (read it here). I thought it was quite helpful but at the time I couldn’t see how it would aid me in designing user friendly interfaces. Then, on Wednesday in the Interaction Design class Mr Boekbinder navigated to the Korean Philips site to illustrate how text are just being translated for location and how other content (images) is being ignored. This, however is a post on it’s own. Anyway, as I sat there looking at the site it was pretty clear to me where to click, so the hierarchy was very evident, even though I didn’t understand a word of what was being written. It immediately reminded me about Rogier’s post. So, I though, how can I apply this to my own work? Well, simply change the character set to webdings or any other character based font that isn’t readable! Simple as that. That way you are presented with an interface that you can’t read but it gives you the opportunity to analyze it without clouding your judgment with written text and thereby increasing the usability. […]