Culturalisation and International UX
It is important to ask: What are the embedded risks if culturalisation and international UX is not being considered in your product, service and business? A question worth pondering for all businesses.
Different stages of culturalisation and international UX
Culturalisation and international UX can happen in different stages, in any forms, in various depths. Therefore, there really is no excuse to not include it into your decision-making processes.
I also offer private (in-house at your workplace) and public workshop on Culturalisation and International UX online and in-person. If you’re interested in the workshop, please get in touch.
A holistic approach
“A holistic approach looks for fundamental underlying issues, rather than only addressing symptoms” - Fran Sussman
I’m a strong believer in a holistic approach to many aspects of life. The same should be applied to research and understanding people, their culture and context.
A holistic approach to culturalisation and international UX involves looking into what you comprehend, observe and hear from different perspectives, digging deeper into the roots and origins, and to spot relevancy.
Solely looking at the collected data and/or analysing what you gather from user research is no longer sufficient, although it is the common approach applied by many. The underlying risks are either you address only the obvious and miss out the opportunities to be innovative, or what you think you know might not accurately represent the full truths (hence insights being misinterpreted).
That’s why my approach is about connecting the dots between pieces of information or insights that initially may be unknown or might seem unrelated.
My experience in the past 15 years helping companies with their businesses growth across 42 countries has equipped me with the unique skill in finding and recognising patterns of activity (or meaningful intelligence) comprised of data from potentially disparate sources, collected by a variety of means and subjected to a myriad of analytic processes.
Such a frame of mind and looking into a bigger picture of a culture and its community is how I approach the various forms of support I give to my clients: Be it a quick expert/heuristic ‘fit-for-market’ review or in-depth research.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.” - Steve Jobs
It’s about having a comprehensive, integrated and complete understanding of your customers and what driving their behaviours, needs, attitudes, motivations and expectations.
The ultimate outcome/impact
As a trained engineer (before embarking on my journey in UX and culturalisation), the ‘so -what’ mentality is strongly ingrained in me. Planning and executing carefully-planned research then putting together well-analysed insights are important. To me, what is even more crucial for each piece of work I do with the teams is to have the actions and plans in which clients can be concluded, further explored or implemented.
Depending on the teams we are working with and the scopes and objectives, the outcome includes:
Quick and long-term fixes What should be revised, enhanced, added and removed on the existing experience?
Product roadmap What new product to build and how it should be built for a market? How to enhance the product for all markets as well as for individual markets? What features should be prioritised for each market?
Marketing strategy How best to communicate with customers in different markets?
Business proposition What is the best strategy to position the business in each market? Could the offering stay the same or require some levels of adaptation?
Subscriber growth strategy What could improve conversion and retention? What are the growth opportunities?
Infrastructure and partnership What are the key and alternative payment methods to offer? Who to partner with to improve reach and engagement for each market/region?
Growth strategy How to penetrate existing markets further? What are the new customer growth opportunities?
New markets plan Which markets to go next? What are the underlying opportunities for these markets? How to prioritise spend and target? What is the potential infrastructure setup for these untapped markets?
Teams alignment How best different teams can work together to maximise efforts and to avoid duplicate or contradict efforts
Clients include:
Spotify (for fifteen countries, four continents across seven teams and counting), Marriott International, Asana, Babylon Health, HealthVenture, TransUnion, St Giles Hotels, Real Journeys and many more
Culturalisation and international UX for you
Get in touch if you’re interested in chatting more about:
How we could help you to have the answers to the questions you might have about your global customers and markets
How you can provide your customers with the best experience they desire and matches to their context