[Sigia-l] International Interface Design?

[Duich McKay]

> On 22 Apr 02, at 10:24, Donna wrote:
> But what do you mean by an 'international website'. When is a
> website not international??

When it is created without an awareness for its audience, wherever they are.
Whether this is a street, town, county, prefecture, state, occupied
territory, colony, federation, continent, the world.

US does not equal world. Ignorance and arrogance has caused the US awful
trouble recently.

I worked in the UK on the UK version of Microsoft's Expedia online travel
agent. While the company had already learned the hard way about localisation
of its software, we hit some weird cultural blocks with content where the US
office simply couldn't conceive that a travel guide written for someone from
US  could not be relevant to someone from the UK.

Ironically we wanted to license content from a San Francisco company who had
licensed content written for the British market and had created an online
version with a well thought out IA suited for un-branded licensing,
cross-sells, up-sells - and the user! - a task well beyond any UK agency at
that point.

Interestingly for non-US English speakers this problem didn't emerge with
the DE version where, because they didn't use English, it was allowed they
would need their own content.

Note also, from the perspective of a large US software company, it was only
worth bothering with a couple of territories in Europe. (Each EU state has
it's own travel laws.). Resources drive such localisation. Note Apple's
withdrawal of a British English version of its operating system.

I have worked in the US and can decipher most US sites but many English
speakers who haven't with exactly the same experience and education would be
unable to.

---
Duich McKay
http://www.duich.com
+44 (0)141 332 5707
+44 (0)7958 744984