We pop up in the strangest places
From a user test in Mexico to a card sort in Moscow, we’ve been there and done that. We’ve tested on every continent except Antarctica (although we’ve nothing against penguins or snowmen).
We’re also fascinated by how language affects user interfaces.
Clients like Intel, Marriott, Dell and Peugeot have given us the chance to compare how the same user experience plays around the world.
So, if you’re trying to figure out whether an idea will work somewhere else in the world, chances are we’ve been there and can tell you how it differs from yours.
Local knowledge
One of our secrets is that we use local guides to help us test.
Our customer experience experts partner with local customer experience professionals. They know the language, they know the culture and they know our discipline. They discuss the results to look for those subtleties that make the difference between knowing and understanding.
Our buddy system means that we get to understand a culture from the inside and the outside. So we can translate it and explain how it’s different from yours - in reports you’ll find easy to digest and language you’ll find easy to understand.
Meanwhile, back at base, we’re able to manage and translate our clients’ requirements so they always feel in touch.
Knowing where to look
One thing we’ve learned when working internationally is that there are is always something important to learn - but you can’t predict what it might be.
So we work hard to figure out where to look.
We’ve modeled the factors that influence user experience and we begin our analysis by looking at how these things differ.
For instance, when one of our clients asked us to run a user test in the UK and Germany, we began by predicting the ways in which the two countries would be similar. We then predicted how those similarities might show up on their web site log file data. Sure enough our predictions held true.
Armed with that information, we were able to concentrate on other areas of the test - and uncover important differences that were genuinely surprising.
We’ve already packed our toothbrushes
We love international work. It’s hard work - waking up at 5am for a conference call with Sydney and hanging on until 9pm to talk to San Francisco demands dedication. But the chance to see and think in totally different ways is what appeals. And we try to bring that to life in every project we undertake.
