Customer's Voice(Microsoft Development Co., Ltd.)

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Case Study-Microsoft Development

Info Cubic Japan researched issues from a designer's perspective that a non-native would never have imagined. Based on their findings we helped to develop guidelines for marketing to Asia countries.

Client
Microsoft Development Co., Ltd. MSN Research and Development Department User Experience Lead, Fumiko Ogawa

Solution Offered
Global Web Project Management Support

Overview

The project was to apply universally common guidelines to the interface of the Microsoft-operated portal site "MSN." However, applying uniform guidelines to all the Asian sites might have gone against traditions and customs in certain nations. What was needed, therefore, was an individualized product approach.

Outcome

Info Cubic Japan has the know-how to create websites in multiple languages, and they also have a large native-speaking staff. We requested they conduct research and present a proposal. Apart from creating mock-ups that reflected culture and traditions of respective countries, Info Cubic Japan also studied sites of different competitors from each country.

Result

We gathered opinions from our in-house staff based on the mock-ups prepared by the native designers and country-specific information derived from the study of the competitors' sites. This helped Microsoft Development successfully formulate the guidelines for the Asian countries.

Customer's Voice

What was the purpose behind the recent renewal of MSN?: MSN has a site for each country in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia through which it releases respective news and contents. The purpose behind renewing MSN was to migrate these sites to a common platform for brand uniformity and to rationalize the development process. For instance, features developed for the Japanese website might also be used for the English website in the future. To deal with such situations, the features have to be developed considering a possibility of them getting deployed in several other languages. We have also completely changed the logo and UI as a part of this renewal.

Why did you require "Global Web Project Support?": Unification of rules is important; but while working on user interface, we must respect country-specific cultural differences and their customs like cultural connotations behind different colors, etc. Including infrastructural differences, there are country-specific reasons why the same interface may not be used for another country. In fact, when the respective country representatives reviewed the initial prototypes of the global guidelines, their feedback was negative, saying it could not be used as was. Especially, in the case of Asian languages that use double byte characters, the specifications for spacing between lines or characters and number of characters per line are totally different. Thus, we decided to develop customized guidelines for the Asian countries that use the languages with double byte characters.

What were the bottlenecks in implementing the "Global Web Project Support?": Based on our universal guidelines, we customized sites for Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese languages. We received a variety of feedback. Some commented the line spacing in Chinese has to be 13 pt, while for Korean it should be 14 pt. Another said some colors liked in the People's Repblic of China are disliked in Taiwan. After compiling the opinions of all these stakeholders in Asia, we then had to negotiate with our company. But, as it was difficult to quantify the supporting data, we could not arrive at any agreement. So, we started looking for a global Internet marketing company that had a good knowledge of cultural backgrounds, competition, etc.

What made you choose Info Cubic Japan as your partner?: When we consulted a couple of our existing vendors, they said they had no problem localizing our website and translating the guidelines, but offering proposals and devising original ideas based on different cultural backgrounds and competitive conditions was not their cup of tea. Also, had it been just one language, it could have been manageable; but there were four languages. Simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese. Even the major production companies told us they would need to outsource the work. We then discussed the issue with several other companies and finally decided to partner with Info Cubic Japan, as they appeared to be the most reliable.

What kind of work exactly was Info Cubic Japan requested to do?: We requested Info Cubic Japan to prepare multiple mock-ups for different languages. Unless we showed concrete visual samples of the guideline contents, we would not get feedback from the respective country representatives. Hence, we had to ask some actual users to select multiple patterns and tell us why they were selected. Based on their responses, we finalized the details. It was not that we just placed an order and Info Cubic Japan delivered a guideline document. They helped us compile opinions from each country point by point. We also requested them to study how contents were presented on competitors' sites.

Specifically, what was the most helpful deliverable from Info Cubic Japan?: Responding to our request on very short notice, Info Cubic Japan conducted a study about how things were presented on the competitors' sites in different countries. However, what really helped us was that they researched certain points from a designer's perspective that a non-native would have never thought of. For example, the two-line navigation that is frequently seen at the top of all Chinese portals is very unique in comparison with other languages. However, this interface is quite usual for Chinese users, as is also evident from competitors' sites. In absence of concrete data, it was difficult to justify the opinions of our local representatives. Nevertheless, the data regarding the competitors' sites we received from Info Cubic Japan provided a strong base for our smooth negotiations with the company.

What are the good points of Info Cubic Japan?: From our first meeting, we could discuss in detail the contents and scope of their work. At a very early stage, Info Cubic Japan already understood their task was not just limited to translating a document into Chinese or designing a website. On the other hand, other companies gave us page-count-based estimations without realizing the true scope of the project, which rather made us feel doubtful about their performance . Even after we actually started working, Info Cubic Japan's response was always very courteous. They didn't force their way on us, but they presented solutions corresponding to our needs, which made everything very easy for us. Although the project scope changed frequently, they always handled it flexibly. We are grateful to them for that.

What do you expect next from Info Cubic Japan?: We can create good designs for the Japanese language, but our concern is how to create the same base for the languages like Taiwanese, Chinese, and Korean. It is really very encouraging to have a partner like Info Cubic Japan, who has the ability to understand all four Asian languages and suggest to us the best suitable specifications. In the future, there might be cases where creating a feature will require us to think about supporting it across multiple languages. At that time, we would like Info Cubic Japan to help us out again.