The penchant for cuteness, especially in Japan, is well known. So I wasn’t surprised to see these emoticons on dongA.com. Much better than the western popular varieties, that tend to be quite boring.

I love checking out Japanese websites, even though I still don’t speak Japanese.

I went to check: it turns out Yahoo’s country list doesn’t have Iran in it anymore. Here’s a screenshot:

And the Iranians are understandably not happy: Letter to Yahoo: "Yahoo mail has recently removed "Iran" from the list of world countries in its signup page! We, the nation of Iran, assume it contrary to professional ethics to deny a nation and violate fundamental human rights for any reason, including the so-called political tensions between states and governments."

So what internal or external politics caused this to happen? Are other US-based companies doing this? I don’t think it’s right, and I would be *very* offended if this happened to my country.

I was playing around with the excellent Google translate tool, and I noticed something cool:

They let users suggest better translations. Nice example of crowdsourcing translation!

(I’m not the first one to notice and be fascinated, either.)

(via Silver Oliver who works at the BBC): Do tag clouds work in Chinese? (Chinese translation of this article). Rex Wong talks about the alphabetical ordering problems of non-alphabetical languages, problems sizing up Chinese fonts, and the mixing of Chinese characters and English words.

At the end of the day, though, tag clouds do seem to work fine in Chinese, as they do in Japanese. The alphabetical ordering algorythm is kind of irrelevant because tag clouds guide the eye mostly by size (a tag cloud is not used for known-item searching, where alphabetical ordering matters, but for serendipitous discovery).

Also, collation algorythms that order these languages in a “good enough” manner already exist and are built into the infrastructure we use (programming languages and databases), so you can probably safely forget about this.

I’ve been told that in Japan, tag clouds are pretty popular and work well.

Chinese tag cloud:

Japanese tag cloud:

How about tag clouds in other languages? Please point me to examples of tag clouds in as many languages as you can find, I want to try to make a collection.

Another issue of course is if you aggregate lots of content and tags, how do you deal with mixed-language tag clouds? Here’s an (older) example of mixed languages in a tagcloud:

The best approach seems to be to separate out tagclouds in different languages. There are automatic ways to do that (I have to research some more what the best ways are), and then present a tagcloud to the user in their language. (Some more thoughts on this.)

A note about alphabetical ordering of none alphabetical languages (like Chinese or Japanese): it often is possible to order these languages, using an alternative collation system called radical and stroke ordering. Below is a screenshot of an “alphabetical” index in Japanese.

And a question to finish this off: for our Japanese speakers: what is Taggy?

I am not sure of all the implications of this story (these types of stories are too often abused by consultants and such who make them fit whatever message they want to get across), but the Ilkone i800 mobile phone is definitely an example of culturally appropriate experience design. It’s not a new story, but worth repeating.

The Ilkone i800 generates five automated reminders a day at prayer time, points Muslims in the direction of Mecca and contains a complete, authorized version of the Koran in Arabic and English. And it gets better: it automatically goes to "silent" mode during prayer time, and has an Islamic calendar built in.

The phone seems to fit in a larger movement of Muslim-oriented services (aka the Muslim lifestyle market), like matrimonial websites, Muslim social networks, specialized travel services and such. It reminds me somewhat of the specialized services around the Jewish communities in places like New York. In Belgium and Europe, meanwhile, there is a growing market for "Halal" meat providers.

So as I said, I don’t have much analysis or thoughts on this, just saving it her for later reference.

A lot has been written about exporting of or copying of successful models of online businesses from the west to the east (or from the US to Europe), but the opposite also happens. Om Malik: “The six year old company has made a successful business out of bringing hit South Korean
games to the West”.

An excellent overview of languages and countries by John Greenwood.

Inspiring: “His first loan consisted of $27 in total, which Dr. Yunus used to
help 42 basket weavers regain their dignity and independence from creditors (who charged exorbitant interest rates and yielded mere
pennies in profits). What followed was a lifelong pledge and journey of
an educator turned banker, who arms the poorest of the poor with the
tools and means to become financially independent. He firmly believes
that poverty is not created by the poor, but rather is a system we have
created. To prove this point, he has given loans to nearly 100,000
beggars and has seen 10,000 of them completely stop begging and 90,000
of them transformed into entrepreneurs in their own right. The Grameen
Bank has the highest recovery rate of any banking system in the world with 98 percent of the loans being paid back.

How does technology play a part? Grameen’s “phone ladies”
are widespread across rural communities in Bangladesh, offering the use
of mobile phones for a fee. By loaning out cell phones on a per call
basis and putting them in the hands of the rural poor (many of whom
have never seen a telephone before), these women become the central
access point to information technology and the rest of the world.”

A great podcast interview with Apala Lahiri Chavan about UX in India. Some salient points:

• Mobile phones are a business tool, which explains (partly) their popularity.
• Mobile phones empower women by letting them build social networks that they couldn’t build so easily before.
• On the differences between India and China: India continues to be very hierarchical and male-focused, whereas China has changed a lot in these two cultural aspects recently. “Very major differences in these two dimensions.”
• Indian Rasa’s are an Indian categorization of emotions, and when they try to solicit emotions from Indian users in tests, it’s easier for the users to express their emotions in terms of these Rasas.
• Major pitfall for designing for India: the idea that “Indians speak English, so we can just transport our product easily”. It’s true that a lot of Indians speak English, but most Indians still think in their mothertongue (usually non-English). And the culture is very strong and specific - you often have to adjust your product or service. For example, insurance in the US is all about individual risk management, in India, a group culture, insurance is all about your family and such - they’ll take care of you.

Apala is also the inventor of the “Bollywood technique“, which basically frames usability test scenario as a Bollywood movie in order to make it easier for participants to provide real feedback:

“What is the main challenge when you are usability testing in Asia?

In Asia it is impolite to tell someone they have a bad design. It is embarrassing to admit that you cannot find something. So it is very hard to get feedback.

Apala tested a site that offered railroad tickets for sale. She used the conventional simulation method and got little feedback. She could see that users were not succeeding. But they would not willingly discus the problems.

Apala then tried the Bollywood method. Now Bollywood is the Hollywood of India. They make more movies than Hollywood. They are famous for movies that have long and emotionally involved plots. The movies have great pathos and excitement. In the Bollywood method Apala described a dire fantasy situation. The participant’s beautiful, young, and innocent niece is about to be married. But suddenly he gets news that the prospective groom is a member of the underground. He is a hit man! His whole life story is a sham, AND HE IS ALREADY MARRIED! The participant has the evidence and must book an airline ticket for himself and the groom’s current wife to Bangalore. Time is of the essence!!!

The participants willingly entered this fantasy and with great excitement began the ticket booking process. Even minor difficulties they encountered resulted in immediate and incisive commentary. The participants complained about the button naming and placement. They pointed out the number of extra steps in booking. The fantasy situation gave them license to communicate in a way that they never would under normal evaluation methods.”

I’m looking for global usability and ux consultants: people and companies who specialize in providing usability, design, ia and such services for global websites. Contact me if you know any or leave links in the comments. Thanks!