You’re an excellent designer. Don’t let your English limit your potential.

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs,

The definition of design is continually changing and evolving — at least in the public’s perception. But the design will forever remain a problem-solving process. As a design community, we have always designed for a global audience, for which English is their first language. But, today, we must think about designing for the next billion people. As we progressively focus more and more on inclusive design and diverse cultures, we must accept that 98% of the population are not native English speakers. Designing for this broader audience has become an imperative.

For designers, communication is a key facet of everything we create. The entire design process is predicated on systems requiring clear communication between clients, stakeholders, teams, and users. The language barrier seems bigger than ever when we’re designing for an audience with whom we don’t share a common language.

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Designing for an Audience of Non-native English Speakers

Let’s look at just a few of the difficulties that can arise when designing for an audience of non-native English speakers:

1. Conveying signals, messages, instructions, feedback, and system status to people who are not proficient in the language.
2. Conducting user interviews that achieve any significant degree of clarity and detail, then being unable to interpret users’ feedback accurately.
3. Having difficulty expressing one’s design ideas fully or having to find workarounds or quick fixes rather than creating complete design solutions.
4. Time constraints that are exacerbated by the need to take extra steps in completing what would otherwise be simple tasks.

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_Effective Strategies for Designing for Non-Native English Speaker Audiences

With the use of these strategies, you can not only enhance the quality of your final product design but also ease the design process. This will make it more accessible to a broader audience.

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Using familiar iconography:

First, when designing for non-native speakers, leverage the familiarity of past designs that users are likely to have encountered. The use of common iconography can act as a lingua franca for you and your users. The language of technology and modern design have permeated far more diverse pockets of society than the English language has, making it possible for diverse audiences to benefit from the use of a common visual language.

Common icons for functions such as Power On / Off, Upload / Download, Like, Share, and Comment have become universal. For this reason, most people are able to recognize them based solely on what they represent visually.

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During onboarding, use animations:

You can use other visuals to overcome gaps in understanding that result from users’ lack of proficiency in English. Onboarding is such a vital part of any design solution that it can single-handedly make or break the rest of a user experience. If you can onboard your users effectively, the chances are that users would have fewer misunderstandings and make fewer mistakes throughout the remainder of their journey.
You can use animations to convey the functionality instead! As well as helping to overcome the language barrier, animations may also assist native English speakers to gain a better understanding of the concepts you are teaching. Animations do not require knowledge of the language and can be used to convey plenty of information to a wide range of audiences entirely through the language of visuals.

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During interviews and other user research, rely on translators:

The importance of simplifying user input cannot be overstated for designers. We approach every aspect of our design process, from concept generation to prototyping, with the user in mind.
But it’s important to recognize that the design process itself is bookended by user interactions — beginning with user interviews and culminating in usability testing. It’s easy to understand how much of a hindrance not being able to communicate with your users efficiently could be.
The use of a translator at these critical moments can be far more effective than you might think. The ability to communicate clearly with your users during user interviews and usability testing lets you not only construct a stronger foundation on which to build your designs but also improve upon them far more effectively throughout the iterative design.

Meanwhile, translation can be a tough process, and you can lose a lot of meaning when switching between languages, so be aware that the language you’re receiving and that which a translator is transmitting might be far from perfect.

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Lastly…

Designing for an audience with whom you have no common language can seem like a frustrating experience. However, if you dig a bit deeper, you can find unique and tantalizing opportunities in the challenges of designing for this audience challenges that push your problem-solving skills to the limit. When you are designing for an audience with whom you do not have a common language, it can be challenging.
However, if you dig a bit deeper, you may find that designing for this audience presents unique and tantalizing challenges that allow you to develop your problem-solving skills.

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