Discussions

Catering delicious interactions for global palettes

Session Title

Catering delicious interactions for global palettes

Presenter

Lily Kenney + Nirali Patel, Razorfish

Session Type: Discussion

We had dreams of traveling the world. The farthest we got was Michigan in the dead of winter. We failed, but we learned a lot. We will share our globalization story, but most importantly, we want to foster a discussion with the audience so we can hear from others’ adventures and challenges.

We believe that User Experience professionals play a critical role in guiding global interaction strategy from the very beginning of the process.

It’s the Internet age. Everyone’s connected. We’re in a global economy. Every company is globalizing — it’s the thing to do. But once a company has decided to globalize their web presence, it’s not as simple as translating content and adding local images.

You still need to gather requirements and understand your users, but you also need to look at other factors — financial, technical, political, cultural, social, legal, and ethical — through a global lens. Our first globalization project failed because our client wasn’t prepared to take a step back to figure out the right approach. They weren’t ready to think globally.

If your company wants to jump on the globalization bandwagon, here’s a couple of questions to ask yourself:
- Why does your company want to globalize? Are they doing it for the right reasons?
- What is your company’s definition of globalization? Is your company ready to commit to that definition? Is that even the right definition for your company?
- Does your company already have a global presence? If so, are they utilizing the global knowledge already established? Are they listening and being empathetic towards their global partners’ needs?

Let’s chat and learn from each other!

Biography

Lily Kenney graduated with bachelor’s degree in computer sciences right in the midst of the dot com boom. She was lucky. For her first job, she worked at a company that emphasized the importance of user experience and had the opportunity to learn all aspects of user experience that they never teach you in college (or at least, didn’t teach you in the late Ô90s). Lucky again. For the last 12 years, she has been creating user-centric web and mobile software applications for start-ups, agencies, and product companies. She now works at Razorfish.

Nirali Patel is a Senior Information Architect. She has worked with a wide variety of industries with a primary focus on financial services. Nirali completed her master’s at Bentley University in Human Factors in Information Design. Her bachelor’s degree is in Architecture and Computer Science.

One Comment

  1. Anh
    Posted September 16, 2009 at 12:11 pm

    It would be great to hear and discuss stories from different projects’ failures (or successes) in globalization efforts and what are the pitfalls to avoid. I’d be interested in learning more about these experience across multiple platforms from web to mobile to product design.