Global design consists in creating interfaces and products accessible to all, without being limited to a culture or a region. This includes the use of coherent models, intercultural collaboration, adaptation to markets and appropriate management of languages and accommodation.
In today's society, we must be constantly listening to our users. To do this, there is a whole bunch of Good practices to be respected when designing a website In order to adapt to any user, it doesn't matter where they are. For example, the “mobile-first” design, visible and understandable calls for action, colors, texts, etc. In short, a global consistency at the site scale.
To design a website accessible to everyone, it is essential to understand the behavior, needs, objectives and frustrations of users, even if they vary considerably in function of their location. This is where the global design comes into play. In this article, we will define what the global design is and the elements to take into account to succeed in place.
What is global design?
The global design, or a global design, is a term that designates an interface design centered on the user, created to be used by a group of people worldwide. Therefore, both in definition and in practice, design cannot be based on a personal feeling of a designer or the culture of a country. On the contrary, it must be usable and practical for any user worldwide, regardless of cultural differences in design.
Concrete example of global design
An airport is one of the most telling examples in global design. The airports welcome a colossal number of people from all over the world. In the vast majority of cases, they all look alike. They use the same font and the same iconography. This is how the airports must be accessible and functional, In order to serve people of very different cultures who all try to achieve a similar goal: to take a plane to travel.
This philosophy is found not only in the architecture of a place, but also in the design of websites and products. For example, Airbnb is like an airport: it welcomes people around the world, but the only difference between regions is the language. The overall design of the site remains the same.
What are the elements to take into account to achieve a global design?
Although each website is accessible to everyone as soon as it is put online, there are few that are designed by thinking of the whole world. In other words, they do not think of the many changes that must be made To take into account different languages or even geographic and cultural requirements.
The overall design of a site: adopt a “global” template
Over the past decade, companies have adopted global design models in order to present a coherent user experience. The value of this approach is all the more important since companies manage more and more “local” websites, that is to say countries per country.
For example, if a user arrives on the .com site then goes to the site of a specific country (in .fr for example), A global design is much less disturbing ; The user does not have to relearn navigation.
The overall design of a site: collaboration is the key
The creation of a global template that works on a global scale requires the contribution of all, countries by country. Many errors come from the idea that a conception that is popular in a country or a region will necessarily be in other places. Consequently, companies sometimes try to impose the same design in all countries and all regions without taking into account local opinions.
For example, if a website uses photos of people, these photos are not always well optimized. The ethnic origin of models, their poses and their clothes can lead to unexpected negative consequences in different countries. Likewise, some local websites may not offer the same diversity of products or the same degree of customer assistance. These limitations must be taken into account when designing a global design.
The overall design of a site: watch out for e-commerce websites
In June, an e-commerce site that sells clothes can promote swimwear in France, but winter coats in Australia. A global design must be flexible enough To support completely different products or services on different markets, so that the elements can be simply replaced according to needs.
In addition, images specific to a culture must be avoided and navigation must be limited to the most global elements: “who are we”, “products”, “services”, etc. This model can then be available in more “local” models.
The overall design of a site: think of the texts
When a text is translated into another language, it is rare that it keeps exactly the same size. A few minutes spent on Google Translate are enough to illustrate the expansion or contraction of a text chain in different languages.
Translation from a single word from one tongue to another, while respecting a strict length, can be extremely difficult. For example, “Search” in English results in “searching” in French, which is almost twice as long.
To take care of different languages, You have to understand the different fonts and the way they appear according to their size. One cannot assume that a given font size is readable in the same way in all the fonts, especially when working with Asian writings.
To facilitate the process of translation of a web page, Google has integrated translation functionality into its Chrome browser, so web pages can be translated automatically. Be careful however: this feature does not work if the text is integrated into visual elements or flash modules.
The overall design of a site: think of accommodation
Certain accommodation solutions are simply not sufficient to manage world -scale projects. In addition to server resources and traffic considerations, there is the very concrete question of distance.
Take the example of a French site whose product is in great demand in Canada. The accommodation supplier he chose does not have a single server near Canada, because all of his servers are based in France. The high volume of traffic due to Demand seriously compromises speed and experience for their Canadian market. So make sure:
- You use an accommodation provider whose servers are distributed worldwide.
- You have chosen a accommodation plan capable of managing this level of traffic.
- You fully use a content diffusion network (Happy Delivery Network)
The success of a global design project is also many other things : a strategic reflection, established objectives, the definition of a target market, define the values that we want to convey, etc. For this, we advise you to get closer to professionals, such as the webdesign Churchill, specialist in website creation.
