Bio

Marc Peter is the creative director of on-IDLE, an independently owned and managed design and web development agency. Originally a Swiss-trained typographer, Peter worked as a typesetter and electronic publisher before training as a web designer and freelancing for five years in Zurich. A move to London in 1998 saw Peter graduate with an MA in Interactive Media at the London College of Communication (LCC), from where he co-founded on-IDLE in 1999 with Ane-Mari Peter.

WD. The web has become the world’s first truly internationally accessible media platform. As web designers, how can we communicate visually to all without running into cultural problems of interpretation?

MP: A website is by default international, as anyone can find any site on the web. Before starting work on a product that will have to appeal to different cultures, do your homework. When on-IDLE started work on the Saudi British Bank (HSBC Saudi) retail banking interface, we allocated research time into the project specification and completed telephonic interviews and a physical workshop with both customers and banking personnel to get a sense of cultural implications that went beyond the implementation of Arabic as a language (eg, green is the colour of royalty in Saudi, weekends are on our Thursdays and Fridays, images need to be treated with great care as they carry symbolic reference). Cultural and linguistic references can cause basic navigation and usability problems if the issues are understood (eg, the concept of ‘go’ rather than ‘search’ on a button caused great confusion as the content of ‘go’ in English does not exist in Arabic). Where possible, use text rather than iconography, which is open to misinterpretation unless you are designing a site for a niche market sector.

WD: The web is awash with graphics, but text is still the main way of communicating information on a site. With a tiny proportion of the world’s population having English as their first language, how is layout affected by different languages? For example, Hebrew reads from right to left…

MP: Using a grid-based design layout that can cope for different displays ensures a large number of common problems are solved, particularly with regards to language. Through using various style sheets or allowing the user to customise the interface (colour, text size, etc), the majority of colour and layout issues are solved. Applying good usability and structured design layout (including navigation) applies always – whether a site is international or not. When using images, ensure that Alt tags explain what that image is – and ensure that they are available on all the languages the site is available in, as well as the meta-data for search purposes.

WD: Babel has a good attempt at translating web pages into other languages, but should web designers be producing websites that offer their pages in a wide variety of languages?

MP: on-IDLE also obtained the HSBC Saudi insurance site (SABB Takaful) interface design contract as a result of our work on the retail site. The primary problem was with the concept of insurance as we discovered that it does not exist in Arabic, but the concept of responsibility does. This goes further than design and must be reflected in marketing and communications materials also. The briefing of the translators and copywriters had to include these cultural insights and a glossary of terms and their meaning within the project context. There is no program on this earth that is robust enough to deal with language’s cultural context. If you do speak another language, use Babel to translate a complex grammatical sentence from English to that language – refresh your browser and now translate that sentence back to English – you be the judge of the result. A human is needed in this process. The website produced in multiple languages is not enough – on the web development side, it must be as easy as possible for the customer to manage the languages, eg, news or press releases (any frequently changing content) via a CMS and well-planned workflow. Interaction and interface design play a large part here.

WD: Colour has a huge impact on understanding. For example, in many Western societies, white is seen as clean and pure, whereas in other parts of the world, white is associated with death and mourning. What are the key issues that web designers face today when specifying a colour palette for a website aimed at an international audience?

MP: Colour is highly subjective without the cultural connotations – brands and sites’ colour palettes can often be traced to the MD or project leader’s personal favourite. For a site that will have a very large target audience where, for example, red means death in Japan but money in China or dynamism in the West, do you have red on the site? A global organisation such as HSBC has decided that their corporate branding translates globally with minimal impact. At the end of the day, the subject matter of the site is also very important – the colour palette should complement the brand and have a base of neutrals to use on text.

WD: Many brands are so closely immersed in their home country’s culture that the iconography that their use isn't understood very well by anyone outside of that culture. Do we really have an international design ‘language’ that any web designer can use to make their websites as universally understandable as possible, or are we still struggling to create this international design language for the online world?

MP: An international design language is difficult to determine as there are many interpretations of, eg, an eye. It means a different thing to a digital camera user than to a Hindu or Greek Orthodox individual in a spiritual context. A universal language is almost impossible – we cannot even agree on a universal spoken language such as Mandarin, Spanish or English. Sensitivity to the cultural context, the brand, the product and good design principles will guide you. Common symbols are developing out of social networking and eCommerce such as the icon for a shopping basket.

Colour and culture are not the only issues to consider – use visual guides that are universally understandable where it may not be necessary to understand the language to use the application, such as a world map to find a local Leister distributor.

Other universal are things such as the @ sign, which explains ‘email’ or ‘contact’ to any website user.

WD: Websites are usually designed for a specific audience (read customer) in mind. But how might something in its metaphors, mental model, navigation, interaction or appearance confuse, or even offend and alienate, a user? Can we design to avoid these issues, or is the cultural diversity of the world simply an insurmountable problem for one version of a website?

MP: During the research phase, on-IDLE contacted Arabic font specialists and Flash specialists when working on HSBC Saudi’s interfaces, as we needed to use Flash for interactive online tools that ‘flips’ Arabic when used on multiple lines. Also, Adobe PDF did not support Arabic so we had to find an alternative solution for download document templates. Interactive tools were used to reflect life stages rather than typical banking concepts to allow users to select the most appropriate product without needing to ‘read’ text as well as using widely understood symbols such as a telephone.

Videal specialise in high-speed cameras, which is a niche subject matter, but as a global leader the concepts are difficult to translate technically. on-IDLE developed a visual language for use on print and online that includes moving image (video) and iconography that is understandable to most individuals within the sector.

Working on a complex product, such as paint – Sto UK – the workflow and product is ‘high-involvement’ as a number of choices need to be made prior to paying for the product. Buying paint is not quite like buying toothpaste, but on-IDLE aimed to make it as easy within the context through the use of an innovative colour and texture-selection tool, integrated into the eCommerce process.

Working with Sto UK’s in-house designer, the interface clearly indicates the expected process to the customer, has extremely clear navigation and allows backward and forward movement through the buying process at will.

This is the second phase of Sto UK’s online shop, where tools and safety clothing were added as products, but more importantly navigation was redesigned to counter problems experienced on the first store, which were that users found it difficult to navigate. A second problem was the registration required prior to purchasing a product – users were led away from the shop to email to confirm their registration (validate email), but this caused disruption in an already complicated process. By moving the registration and login box to a permanent position onscreen, users are encouraged to log in on arrival, with the added benefit (a new feature) of having access to their previously stored information, such as orders and their wish list. The Phase II workflow and design will work internationally also when Sto is ready to delivery, and distribute to other countries via an online shop, which at present is not the case.

WD: In the commercial online space, there is clearly a drive to ensure that an eCommerce site is attractive and accessible by a global audience. What factors now impact on designers when they are looking at eCommerce sites for an international customer base?

MP: It really depends on where your market is located geographically and what the regional / local regulations and practices are – as a designer you must be aware of these. Within Europe and the US, cross-border eCommerce is quite simple, provided you selected a payment gateway that is supported widely. Of course, you also need to ensure that the workflow of the selection and purchasing process works for the product and the target audience.

An example is that in mainland China, it is not recommended to use eCommerce payment gateways due to the high incidence of fraud – users select and order a product online, but pay for that product via telephone banking or more commonly at the ATM. Once confirmation of payment is received, the product is dispatched. This causes all sorts of workflow issues on eCommerce, much more than colour or layout.

WD: We now have platforms that can allow a website¹s user to change how they view a site and choose a set of preferences such as which language or currency a website uses. The advances we are seeing with Web 2.0 technology can deliver this level of customisability. Will Web 2.0 technology deliver a set of tools that web designers can use to create truly international websites?

MP: As Web 2.0 matures into Web 3.0 with desktop-style applications and wikis becoming more readily available, it will become easier to display the language version and currency selected by the user. Where content has to appear in a specific language, however, it is advisable to use human translators who speak the language into which the translation should be on a first language level. You will always need to feed the data from somewhere – the quality of that data cannot be solved by technology alone.

What an international website is needs to be defined – does it mean global deliveries, is it international as soon as it has another language? The large corporates such as Amazon, Adobe and Apple have global sites – but they also have huge resources to keep these sites maintained and current. Before embarking on an international site in the enterprise sense, the developer and designer must make sure that the client has the resources to support the site.

It is also up to the development agency to supply different display interfaces such as for .mobi versions – international does not just apply to browsers and languages, but also devices. For example, on Leister, the customer is most likely to be physically in a space where a computer is not accessible, such as a rooftop. A mobile site version allowing customers to find contact details of local distributors has had a major impact on site traffic and usage in all of the global territories.

WD: What does the future hold for international web design? Globalisation (in its social sense) continues a pace, but what does this mean for the web designer working in an international market?

MP: If you want to work in a global market, you must be aware of the issues – and continuously learn about those markets in addition to your own. Subscribing to media or design literature and email bulletins dealing with these markets is a good way to stay up-to-date, eg, AdAge has an email newsletter dealing specifically with China.

As more and more businesses trade internationally online, standards are emerging but basic issues need to be resolved. For example, Chinese is differently used in Hong Kong and mainland China: simplified vs traditional. You and the client must decide how to approach this issue, or provide a style sheet catering for both.

A portion of this interview was originally published as part of the ‘World Wide Design’ feature within Web Designer issue 143 (April 2008).