Chui Chui Tan
The Fundamentals of Cross-Cultural UX Research
In this episode of Brave UX, Chui Chui Tan guides us through some of the fundamentals of cross-cultural UX research, how to navigate cultural complexity in our own countries, and shares some challenging stories from the field.
Highlights include:
- Where do you start when trying to understand another culture for your product?
- How do you look after yourself when experiencing intense situations in the field?
- What are the ethical considerations when studying people from less wealthy cultures?
- What role does politics play when researching the people of another culture?
- What is the most important thing to do when designing for a different culture?
Who is Chui Chui Tan?
Chui Chui is the Founder and Director of Beyo Global, where she focuses on bringing organisations closer to their global customers. Her clients include companies such as Marriott, Spotify, Netflix, BBC and Google.
Before starting Beyo Gobal in 2017, Chui Chui was Experience Strategy Director for CXPartners, a UK-based experience design consultancy, where she led engagements for clients such as Asana and eBay.
Chui Chui is also the author of “A Pocket Guide to International User Research”, and has spoken at conferences and events across the world, including UX Live, eCommerce South West and at Google HQ.
Transcript
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, Managing Founder of The Space InBetween the home of New Zealand's only world class UX lab, enabling brave teams to de-risk product design and equally brave leaders to shape and scale design culture. Here on Brave UX though it's my job to help you to put the pieces of the product puzzle together, I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings and expert advice of world class UX, design and product management professionals. My guest today is Dr. Chui Chui Tan. Chui is the founder and director of Beyo Global where she focuses on bringing organizations closer to their global customers. She does this by generating market behavioral and cultural insights that help her clients to make informed business and design decisions with clients such as Marriott, Spotify, Netflix, BBC, and Google. It seems to be going fairly well before starting Beyo Global. In 2017, Chui Chui was experienced strategy director at CX Partners, a UK based experience design consultancy, where she led engagements for clients such as Asana and eBay. Chui Chui is the author of a Pocket Guide to International Research and has spoken at conferences and events across the world, including UX Live, E-Commerce Southwest and at Google HQ. And now she's about to speak with me on Brave UX, Chui Chui, welcome to the show.
- Chui Chui Tan:
- Thanks Brandon. Thanks for having me here.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's great to have you here. Chui Chui. And something that stood out for me when I was doing my research for today's conversation, and it's not something that's uncommon with UX practitioners, but it's that you didn't start out in UX, you actually studied mechanical engineering in Malaysia and you went on to work for Panasonic. But that's not the thing that really stood out for me. It's that you only worked for Panasonic for a short time before you moved halfway across the world to Belfast, Northern Ireland. What was so terrible about mechanical engineering that prompted you to move from nice, warm, sunny Malaysia all the way to Northern Ireland?
- Chui Chui Tan:
- Yeah, that's interesting questions. So yes, I did my undergraduate in mechanical engineering in Malaysia and that was mechanical industry engineering. And I did work for Panasonic for I think it's a year and a half if I remember correctly. I love that job. I do, I did love that job because I was kind of being part of the team to build older set. That was how many years ago, 17 years ago probably is kind of building a3 and CD and disc players and everything else. The reason I moved to Belfast, it was because, I dunno, for many years I felt like I always want to see the world. At that time my geography was very, very bad, to be honest. I'm very ignorant in terms of world outside Malaysia and I wanted to go out to see the world and the world being, I dunno why the UK and then part of me feels like if I don't do it now, I probably wouldn't do it in the future.
- So for a long time I tried to convince my friends to backpack with me to the UK or to the world, wherever that is. But in Malaysia, especially at the time backpack and leave your job, your life and go backpack is not a thing that you do. You normally will finish your school and go to university or colleges and then find a job and then get a car and the house and then get married or not get married or whichever is quite, you know, don't take break in between. So I get to a point that I feel like I really wanted to go out to see what the world is like and I decided to say, okay, the easiest way for me to do it is to study again. And I always wanted to study something more creative. I'm not very, I'm creative but not creative enough to be a professional what I thought at the time.
- And to be honest, before I got into the mechanical engineering course, I actually already applied and accepted and paid the deposit to do animations as my main course and in one of the private university mmu multimedia university in Malaysia. But in Malaysia don't, many people might not know because Chinese Malaysians and so in the government, if you want to go to government public university, it's quite hard to get in because they have quarter for bui, Petra Malay to get in and then the rest, you know have to fight for that and space and you have to do very, very well if you are non bui Petra and to be able to get into public government university. And I was lucky to be accepted and the university I applied at the time was the only university that doesn't require me to do a level. So after all level you can go straight and that university is university technology of Malaysia.
- So all the courses they have is technology is kind of engineering courses. Hence I went for mechanical engineering, not that that was my first choice, I wanted to be engineers so I always wanted to do something creative animations or something to do with music. So I decided to study something completely different since I'm going to the uk. So I chose music technology. So I got into Belfast to do master music technology. Why Belfast? My dad asked me the same questions when I told him I'm going to Northern Island [laugh], you can read that memories of your father. It's just like you could go to Australia cheaper and closer and why do you have to go to Northern Island? And I have no idea. I think that at that time they were only to university that do music technology, which is University of York and Belfast Queens, university of Belfast. I already missed the opportunity to apply for University of York since I went to Belfast. To be honest, I actually didn't know about anything about Northern Island at the time. I didn't know about the conflicts or anything. I was so in annoy. So hence
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What was that like for you? Let's go into that a little bit. So you arrived, you are Malaysian Chinese, you've sounded like you'd not really traveled widely beforehand. You move all the way to Northern Ireland to study something that you hadn't studied before, [affirmative] didn't know the culture that you were moving into and you then experience what was called as far as I understand, the troubles. What was that experience like for you? What was it like on those first few weeks when you arrived in the country? What did you think? How did you feel?
- Chui Chui Tan:
- It's funny, I have been thinking about that because now you asked me to do something like that, I probably would say, oh, maybe not. You think too much when you're younger you kind of don't think about anything like that. Yeah, I think apart from the only trip I have flew out internationally, before that was to Perth and B, that was just holiday with my family. So that was the first time I flew to the UK on my own. And yeah I got here and to North it was good because they actually look after international students quite well. So they pick you up in the airport and have the student union or things like that. And they were a big group of Malaysians also in the hostel or the hall student hall, although there's probably a bit younger than me because I was like allowed, didn't go there to do medicine.
- But I remember very, very vividly I went to register to for the course and it was just a very, very small class. It's only 11 or 10 of us, a few of them already did Bachelor of music technology in Queens be already, so this is their stepping stone. And so they have a group of friends. So there's a younger group which is two years younger than me and then there's a older group people, more mature students. I'm kind of in the middle, although I tend to kind of mix with the younger group as well. But I remember be Nelson Island, have very strong Irish accent. [laugh], no I Irish accent [laugh]. I couldn't really understand them. They were very, very nice, those course mates and they were trying to talk to me because I was the only international student in the 10 or 11 people. I spoke English but very much Malaysian English.
- And to be honest, I don't think I can, I'm quite shy as well at that time shy in a way that I'm not confident and not confident with my English and everything else. So it's quite, I dunno, I don't think tend to think about that as memory as it was hard at that point to communicate with my coursemate. What was hard was my course itself because like you say, I never studied, I play piano but classical music but I actually hated computer at that time so I never doing programming or anything like that. And that course is because it's master in music technology, they assume everyone can do programming already. So maybe six courses in the whole year, maybe three or four are actually programming related Java and it's super collider and a lot of different type of programming language. So that's one thing already they assume we already know.
- So they went straight into coursework and I have no idea how to write Hello world even. And then worst case, worst thing is actually I don't understand the lecturers accent. [laugh]. So we have not Irish and Spanish, Portuguese and American, but I just can't understand, I couldn't understand them, couldn't understand what they're teaching and couldn't understand what the coursework was. So that was the hard part for me that I remember if I recall the whole whole year, that was the hard part because I have to work so hard to understand what I need to do from the very beginning.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- [affirmative], it's reminding me of something that I just saw on LinkedIn last night and I won't be recalling it verbatim, but it was a picture of a gentleman who was holding up a piece of paper which I think said something to the effect of if you hear an accent that's the sound of bravery. And he was obviously an immigrant to wherever [affirmative] he was living at the time. And I think what you've just told us there is really a good example of the level of bravery you have to move all the way around the world to a country where you don't speak the language firsthand and then you have to put in all this extra effort just to comprehend what is being asked of you to pass this course that you've invested your time and energy into. And it obviously worked out fairly well for you because you did graduate with your master's Chui and then you went on to also do a PhD [affirmative] in hci. How do you go from not understanding really what is being asked of you to being a PhD in human computer interaction at this university?
- Chui Chui Tan:
- That came by chance really. So yeah, I did finish, I did complete my master in distinctions so as good as I could get [laugh] which surprised me. And then because my master's dissertation was about audio games, so I created audio games and one of my lecturers approached me to say actually they got a projects or a funding projects across collaborations with university and companies like BT Siemens and University of Lund and different people European projects and they have three years project and they can fund PhD students to do the work as well as to do do the research as well as to do the work as part of the packages. And that project is about helping visually impair people to access graphics or anything text or using multimedia interfaces because of my dissertation. So my supervisor were asking me if I'm interested to be honest, at that time I didn't really like research [laugh] I, I'm not researcher is very boring [laugh] and
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hopefully you don't feel the same
- Chui Chui Tan:
- Way [laugh]. So I thought do I want to do that three years in the same topic and I did this music and I always wanted to be creative and everything so should I go to explore being intern in somewhere, music label company or whatever to do music recordings or anything like that. But it feels like really hard to say no to an offer to pay you, especially for international students. Quite expensive as well, the fee and everything and not only they pay for my fee, they give me one grant 1000 pound per year at the time it's quite big for a student in Del so you know can live on that. So I decided to do that. It's funny, when I leave the country my dad say one year you're coming back after one year. Very typical Asian parents when their kids have been. And here I am in the UK for almost 18 years now. [laugh]
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Your relationship with
- Chui Chui Tan:
- Your father. Still good, still good. I think they give up asking me when if I'm coming back for good. But yeah, so I decided to do that. But it was another challenges again Brandon and because okay fine, I know how to do a bit programming but then this project means that I have to do c plus another language, which I kind of have to read learn again. But not only that, my brain wasn't trained as a researcher at that time I was engineer and to be honest, in Asia, I think still the case less so now but still the case where in Asia the way we are educated very much on copy and paste, just sit and listen and you don't have opinion. And even in our culture you don't have a lot of opinions in Mandarin there's a words if the kids are good means they are obedient.
- So in Chinese the translation is like you listen to what you are being told. So that's considered as good kid. So I don't have much opinion on anything and I don't have, I dunno how to think about opinion, but when you do PhD, the first year is about literally chair review. You have to review what you read and I have opinion for the whole year. I keep reading and reading and reading. I have nothing to say and my supervisor was struggling. It's just like what do you think? I just, I have nothing to think about. It was really, really hard to switch that although now my friends say what happened in between then you have so much opinion [laugh] from no opinion, so much opinion [laugh]. Yeah and then because it's about helping visually impair people to kind of access graphics using multi-med interface like tactile haptic and audio and things like that.
- So it kind of touched upon HCI to be honest at that time. HCI still quite newish. There's no such, I think don't think usability exists yet at the time or definitely not UX. So you have HCI or CHI Conference computer Human Interactions Conference, which is a big thing. So I cannot accidentally get into this area really because it's about testing with visually impaired people and getting understanding how they use technology, how they use screen reader and all these things. So that is how I fall into this area. And then when I start finding jobs and there are a few usability company at the time and CX partners as one of them and that's how I get into it and start to evolve together with the industry really
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, let's fast forward 12 or 13 years from that to the current day. From your time at university, you're obviously someone that's not afraid of a challenge and someone that can face adversity and face it well. You are now three years in or so to your own cross-cultural design and research consultancy, BEO Global, Beyo Global about what do you help your clients to do
- Chui Chui Tan:
- Basically is to help them to have a holistic view and a full picture about their customers in different markets really and then kind of use those insights and the knowledge and understanding to say okay, what does that mean to our business? What does that mean to our design, our products or our services? So yeah, that is essentially the key of it is kind of like to see things from a very different angle to have a proper view of okay, you are not talking, your ex is talking about user experience or customer experience. You kind of understand your customers. That is one layer of it. And then the cultural elements and the context of the countries actually add to another layer, layer again because that is obviously it's going to influence how people behave and what they need and their mentality and what they are familiar with. So that is essentially what I global is kind of help the customers do to understand what aspect they need to look into and then say okay what we should deal with that. So it could be touching on their design of their products or could be on their marketing materials or how they market or could be their business proposition, how should they promote their products or how should they sell their products on and should they have a different propositions, different strategy for different countries
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And that there are obviously some big challenges that you are helping organizations to overcome. Why did you start this? Why did you create be global? What is the mission that you are on?
- Chui Chui Tan:
- I think that has to go back to, I dunno, it is interesting. I was thinking about it the other day, how did I end up doing this? Because from UX I start off just doing a general generic, I say general as compared to kind of specifically on culturalization general user experience into what I'm focusing now more I think when I started UX and or usability and UX and others, we are very much on doing understanding users and testing and then wire framing and all IA information architecture and company want to re-platform and you just do the design, everything else. But when I was in CX partners, me International was one of our key clients and there was one of the few companies at the time that understand there's a need to understand their customers in different countries. So I was being lucky in a way, but also I speak different languages that helped to put me into say okay you might be the right person to take up this project.
- So I kind of start working with them as the key consultant or expert in global insights. So I travel with them to Germany, China and Japan and different countries for me and Reese Colton and kind of help them to understand and work together with them to understand their customers. Just not just on the website but also when they get into the hotels, what does that mean and what is the differences between media eastern guests that is important to them as opposed to Japanese guests or people from Russia and Latin America and so on. So that is get me into starting the book about international user research and the pocket book that you talk about is to understand how you actually set it up to do the research and how do you choose which country to go for and how do you implement your research, analyze your insights and to find similarities and differences between different countries.
- But at the time very much on just doing the research and then say what does that mean? And then the design of the website and it's very light touch if you like. So I left the company not having a plan actually to say I know I wanted to work for myself but I don't actually know what I really wanted to do. I thought of doing training for ESO therapies because I kind of like as sometimes researcher could be a therapy anyway, but then eventually I say actually I'm quite good in what I'm doing internationally and actually quite niche and my background and my knowledge I can pull together international research project very easily and very no matter which country. So I thought actually, and I have a big network as well in terms of local teams and who I work with and everything else. So I thought actually I'm just going to do what I'm do well and good.
- So that started three and a half years ago and it has evolved since then to be in terms of how I see internationalization and also the things I offer. So like I said earlier, before that was just doing research and understanding what our people in different countries need and then say okay and most of the time the clients actually took it back and say what do they mean? I don't really involve as much on that. So since I work for myself and start working for company Spotify in different teams and different countries and everything, it kind of evolved in the way that the framework I'm using not just about what users said in user research but also looking into more, as I mentioned, a little holistic view about the country look into their history, what does that mean about their history what happened to them in the last 200 years or hundred years and how did that affect the way people do things or their mentality and political issues and their infrastructure set up and all the different elements that could touch on how a society being shaped into, because that's important because otherwise you kind of go in and say okay, people say this, they want this and okay you ask why because they want this but you actually didn't know why exactly they want this.
- So under having those elements is really important to spot the opportunities that you are the competitors might not see because they actually didn't see as deeply into that and you might be a company could be more ahead in terms of what they offer but also to fill in the gaps in terms of not taking everything on the surface level
- Brendan Jarvis:
- [affirmative]. So let's have a chat about culture then before we dive into the depths of cross-cultural research in UX. What is culture? It seems like such a complex and massive topic. How can we help our listeners to wrap their minds around what it is and how in the context of creating products and services you can work with culture or work to understand culture to do that effectively?
- Chui Chui Tan:
- Yeah, you're right, right. Culture itself is really big word. It could mean anything even sometimes if you Google or if you put it in podcasts and say you want to listen to any podcast about culture and a lot of them came out as organization culture. It's not like company cult a country's culture or anything like that. So it's a very, very big word and what does that mean really? Sometimes I kind of try not to use this word, but if I don't use this word it's hard to convey that message about the differences between different society or culture or countries. What is culture? So I think there are a lot of definitions but for me it's more about how different society or community behave and aspect and think that could be culture could be their social norm or could be their religions or could be like I said, the history of the countries that put where they are in the context of where they are. So it could be anything that kind of influence people's conversation and how they interact with each other. I dunno whether I answered that well but it's a big word. It's really hard to, if you look at dictionary, everything it's, it's not capture everything that you touches on especially when it comes to different countries. And this culture means language as well. Could be language, could be a subset of culture.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So let's think about a specific engagement then. So culture in itself is a really broad topic as we've just discussed. Let's bring it down to thinking back to your last exam, last engagement perhaps where the client came to you with specific need to know something about a culture. What was the approach or the methods? How do you figure out where to start with such a large potential subject area?
- Chui Chui Tan:
- First of all, always it's depending on where they are with that market. So it could be they already haven't launched yet they are about to launch in that market or before they launch they want to know what happened, what do they need to know about the country and their culture. Again, culture is that word or it could be they're already there but not doing very very well, they want to do better or it could be they do very well already, they want to see what is next step. So when they come in it's normally is to say okay and also that is one of the thing. And then the other thing is the objectives of that help that they need and also the products they are selling or the service they're selling. So it's kind of a lot of different area to say okay, what do we need to know and how much do you know about that market already or that culture already?
- And it's kind of break that down to say okay, maybe it's about launching a new market. For example, I work with, for example, I work with Spotify in a few markets that before they launch they launch in the last year or so like South Korea and Russia and Africa as well. So it's kinda understanding and also it depending on which team I work with. So if it is work with product team, it's about what product features they should look into and how people listen to music. So for example in South Korea it's a very different world when it comes to music and they have this super fun, they buy CDs, they can buy 200 c copies of the same CDs and then throw the CDs away and then keep the carts inside because of the idols that they have. And you never know which idols you're going to get within the band.
- So you will buy a lot and then you go and exchange and things like that. And then they have this competitors for Spotify five called Melon, which is a local ones, but everyone use that but in a way that you can go in to say okay we need to compete with Melon. But actually after the research we understand that there are different things. They use it as a different thing. So they use it to stream constantly 24 7 in the background in that at home or in the background and the phone just so that their adult can go the top chart. So they have not used that to listen to music as such. So they use other apps for example could be Spotify to listen to the music as a daily basis. So it's kinda understanding the different culture or different things that they need to do.
- Whereas for Japan, Spotify was already there few years ago but not doing very well, not just because Spotify not doing very well but any Apple music or any streaming are not doing very well. So we wanted to go in to see okay, why and to understand the culture really like music listening experience and culture. That's because in Japan people still using CDs and buy CDs and play Cs and you can rent CDs from the record shop or library and every bit off and then return it back again is legal. It could possibly like to euro roll or something like that. So we went to understand why the culture that is and how that experience could be translate into digital experience and what are the things that we can understand the things that because they keeping in Japanese Japan they have this culture or they keeping things as old things and broken, they kind of sell it back with gold as a art. They like having that kind of ownership as well. And also, yeah, so it's a lot of cultural elements within that and then what does that mean? And then they have this karaoke culture that they go singing even though they work really hard until night 10, they go karaoke because it's so
- Brendan Jarvis:
- On the ground. What does that look like? What does the research method or methodologies or mix of different research methods mean? Is this a combination of market research, user research, some other kind of research that we are not familiar with? How does it look?
- Chui Chui Tan:
- So yeah, you're right. So it's a combination because I say it's is holistic view, you need to do a lot of things to fill in the gap. User research normally will tell you quite a lot already but I used to say just do user research and that is enough. But actually slowly last year I wrote an article say actually user research itself is actually not enough anymore because you need to fill in the gaps that the users actually might not tell you because, because they don't want to tell you because they actually didn't aware what they're doing is a bit unique or why they behave the way they behave. So user research is one of the big things that we are definitely do. So that could be, it could be one to one research it could be end, it could be diary study, it could be anything that we think is useful to have.
- So music listening is good to have following them around to see where they listen to music but it kind of not possible because they might be doing in the gym or in the shower, listen to music, you can't follow them on that. So we actually get them to do diary study and to write journals and things like that and send us photos of the one karaoke and the South Korean project that I talked about, we actually have a Superfund day so we follow one superfund per day to their house, take photos of all their merchandise products and talk to them, go to the activities they go to. So one of them we have to queue up at six o'clock in the morning to go to a recording. Their idol was going to just record five minute sessions, pre-recording sessions we have to queue up and we have to go through the process like buying the CD so that we are allowed to queue but we are at the back of the queue because we didn't buy download the songs or we didn't stream the songs.
- So we follow every step they go through and understand the excitement they have in terms when they're follow their adults as well. So that is kind of user research part and that research sometimes is important as well to talk about, to understand the elements, what actually angles we should go in and have a look and that normally you do that before you go into user research. So to have a basic idea. So which area you might want to prop into or might be interesting to find out more. Having said, I also sometimes do some death research after that. So for example, one of the research I did with baby health digital health company, we went to Rwanda and Kenya to kind of understand how people with HIV and TB and mental health and their journey and their pinpoints and what happened and how to support them.
- So that was part of the Gates foundations to funding to kind of see okay, what can Babylon Health do to help them? So instead of creating another digital services without understanding the ecosystem of medical health and everything, we went into people's houses. Some of them car can't even get in, we have to walk 10 minutes to get in and it's quite heartbroken to hear a lot story and see what happened. But one of the insights we get was people saying, yeah we have this support group that we always collect money together to the group and we just like why? And then they say we stop. I stopped going because I don't have the money to contribute, which is not great because the support group is really good for them, but the money they use, it wasn't to pay for and to anyone, it was a community so that they can use it to pay for someone might need more help than others so they give all the money to that person or they do a project together like sewing any projects.
- But it wasn't clear to us why they do that. Money is already quite tight, why do you do this kind of community? It's not until I kind of come back and do more research. This there's a culture, I can't remember the name of that there's a name for that activity where when they start to be independent Kenya, they prime minister or president actually kind of can build the countries by the government themselves. So they kind of create this culture so that everyone helping each other. So it kind of start to embed in the community and society. But they didn't even realize that was because of that whole thing started years ago when they said independent. So that kind of death research after that kind of feel in the gap as well. So that is death research and then use the research sometime we do expert research as well. So we talk to expert before we talk to the users. And for example in Kenya and Nigeria for Spotify, before they go in we say okay, we actually dunno much yet even where to start. Let's do that. Obviously Spotify have their own data scientist team as well to look into different data and they buy data for, but we company with the qualitative insights from the experts could be lecturers or professors, could be DJs or could be journalists and different people to give the insight from different teams. So yeah, it's a combination.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It sounds like you're tri. Yeah, it's a combination. You're triangulating these different sources to try and identify what you don't know and also the opportunities that might be interesting for the organization to probe into and then apply a different method to learn from [affirmative]. I'm interested in something that you said there. You touched on going into, I think you mentioned it was Rwanda, [affirmative]. Yeah. And you mentioned dealing with people that are living with HIV and that at least to me that sounds like a relatively heavy and could be quite confronting situation and it's obviously quite a personal situation, [affirmative] to be invited into someone's home. You've just described there as the person that's leading that research, how do you look after yourself and how do you deal with some of the things that you see and learn out in the field? How do you put them in perspective? How do you look after yourself in situations like that? Which seem quite intense.
- Chui Chui Tan:
- Yeah, no that's a very good questions because so when we went out, we have the main clients from London and then we have some clients in Rwanda as well. And they did come along and we did tell, kind of warn them in a way that it's going to be heavy even we do that. Some of them really take it really hard because it's not just hiv, it's the mental health in Rwanda. They have genocide happen actually not very long ago. And the impact that people have, it was really hard to ask question, not ask question. But to be honest, a lot of some people actually really glad we were there because it feels like no one actually listened to them before we were there. A bit of therapies and some of them even asked us when you're coming back again kind of have a way for us to talk to listen to what they are going through.
- It's hard. Each sessions coming out, we all went very quiet. [laugh] in a car for a while and it's funny to think back as well, it's kind of like, it's not funny but it's when you ask me what take away I take out from that and it's two level really. One is personal and one is more the research work related. On the personal front is it makes me think us living in this world, in our world in the small things that we nervous about, we take advantage, we kind of like, oh it's that first world problem that I'm and oh what should I eat? Or I'm annoyed with this, I'm stressed out with that. But you look at the way they live, they hardly have anything and they can stuff and they have a lot of people to do. One of the old lady, she was only 39 and I just like 39 kg kilogram and I just like, I'm thin and I'm slight and I can't believe she's even lighter than me.
- And some of them quite similar to me a few years older than me and they are grandmas and they have to look after their grandchildren because their daughters has hiv and it's just really hard to see what to be first kind of when I came back I kind of changed my perspective again but it's really annoying in a way that when we are in our own world we slowly forget about it. That was a year ago. You slowly forget about it and then slowly to start to complain back again in your own world about same thing. And sometimes I have to think back again say okay, stop complaining or stop being stressed out about these things because there are a lot more you are grateful for than other people and the mental health story that you listen to them, the consequences that they actually have to get back, that go through now is horrible. I can share one or two but I dunno whether we want to go to that deep. But baby loan health has been good because they did offer say they because they're actually on the virtual health services in the UK as well. So they did give me a family code where I can call if I want to get some therapy or to talk to some counselor or anything like that, but I didn't use that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So in a situation like that we are getting into some fairly heavy territory here in general with research, there's a level of power imbalance between us as researchers and our participants. [affirmative] and ethics and ethical considerations often guide some of the behaviors and practices that we put in place like informed consent. But in a situation like that where you are someone from another culture, well predominantly a western culture or working for a western organization, [affirmative] and you are entering someone in this case from an African culture who is comparatively less advantaged in their economic and social and health situation In that aspect, what were the considerations that you built into your research plan or how you conducted yourself in that situation from an ethical point of view, how did you think about that and what did that look like?
- Chui Chui Tan:
- Yeah I think first of all we went in wasn't in a way that we are experts. When we went to talk to them, we didn't go in as like expert, we just come and learn and trying to safe you or safe find way to solve all your problems. We didn't go in as that. We have local teams that my local teams actually help out to organize everything and we have their social worker, which who they trust very much in that society and community. So we went in with very ground, very grounded in a way that we would just sit on the floor if you want to, it is nothing and we kind of do whatever that's make them feel better. And I think it's being very empathetic and being there and the questions we ask is very soft to get in to ask the questions and very polite say, oh not touching in a way.
- And sometimes they very emotional and we cannot be there. And being empathetic, I think that is very important rather than trying to, I have this research, I have to find out what is happening and talk about that just solely on that. If they're comfortable talk about it, they will share if they don't and we kind of said that is fine and we kind of look into that. We are very, very cautious about the photos we take as well. Obviously us if we can take their environment some is kind of very anything in the house, just very dirty mattress. Mattress And that's how we very careful in a way that we need to take it so that we can bring the story back to the people that actually went there and to bring their story to life. But in some way when we get there it's kind of very careful to gauge how they feel about that sometimes they actually so have that rapport with us.
- They offer to give us anything they might need to. I like we don't have a tactic ucd, we have a procedure or something like that. We don't because we just all very grounded and go in as a very and we love and we kind of together with them and sometimes some of them very more light weighted and we love if they love and we get very quiet and down if they are quiet and we kind of follow where they are and kind of be like you said, energy together with them. You have to be keep sharing. Yeah, no it's interesting. I'm really glad that you brought this up again because it's easy to do one country on country and then you have that and then kind of forget and this is really good to remind myself again personally as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, I'm really pleased that you could share that with us And also with the people that are listening to this episode as well, there are gonna be some people out there that are skeptical about cross-cultural research and design. They might say things like, why should we invest all this time, energy and money into localizing our design and our products? How are we gonna know if it's gonna pay off? What do you say to them? Are they just being arrogant? Is this stupidity? Is it another form of western cultural imperialism, [affirmative]? What it, what do you say to them?
- Chui Chui Tan:
- I think it's really depending on where they're coming from. Some is arrogant, some is I know it, it should be fine or stereotyping, I know all English speaking is the same or I know in this country they all behave like that or we have enough and some of them just can't see the ROI directly to say okay, how much would that bring me? So I was actually about to post an article because this one audiobook company came to me and that post actually look after the immediate eastern market and he said we know nothing about our Saudi Arabia. Do people even listen to audio book or anything like that? So I kind of say, okay, this sounds like anything about the market and we can start from the ground. And actually even with research we do a bit of research. It actually give you a lot of insight in terms of not just your products or propositions but also your marketing give enough insights.
- But when he proposed to their top management in Sweden and they kind of say why is that roi? How much will we get? Why is the percentage of increase of retention or how much churn rate we can lower down and everything else? It doesn't work like that. It's kind of like what is the impact in terms of if you don't do it, you just go out and do whatever strategy that you think is going to work. And it feels like a bit like you kind of shoot a lot of arrows and just hoping one of them will get into the board or center of the board and he actually came back to say, oh they said we did very well in investing in Facebook ads in the other markets and we have chin rate or we have increase of subscription rate, we should just do that in Saudi Arabia.
- But it feels like that is the case in the way that there's a lot of perceptions that if this work in one country, it works in another country and it doesn't work like that because people behave in a different way. Do they even listen to audiobook and if they are like what are they using for and who is that? The woman that is a listener but woman in Saudi Arabia probably don't have a credit card. So is the man who pay for credit card, who are you targeting to, are you targeting to, and there are a lot of all these questions that you couldn't make a decision. You couldn't just say, okay, we are going to do this and do that. You can invest a lot of money on that and you might be lucky you get one of them with the investment back. But if you kind of focus on understanding your users first or your market first, then there are a lot of elements that you can kind of understand on that.
- I was talking to someone the other day, so it's like sometime the ROI could be direct in indirect when you understand your customers and in different culture in the countries, one direct ROI is you thought you were going to spend a lot money on changing your subscriptions plan for example, or changing your price or whatever and you think such changing it will save money or introducing a new payment method in Romania or in Czech Republic or whatever. But actually after you do the research, you turn out actually people don't care everyone actually using credit card because when it comes to music or something they use regularly or their book where they use, then actually it save you money from implementing something that you don't actually need to implement. That is already a direct roi, right? And then you have an indirect ROI means you do the research, you kind of find the insights and then see okay, what does that mean?
- And then you have strategy and then you execute the strategy and that will brings you growth or lower rate lower churn rate or whatever rate that they're measuring. A lot of times some companies they were asking, okay, how much can I have the rate gone out? I can't promise a certain rate because once you do the research and we kind of work with you together say what does that mean? You have the strategy, it's up to your team to execute that. If you don't execute it that it's not our responsibility to say, oh, I'm going to give you 10% and it's kind of educations in some way to tell them that it's the case and changing their mindset. But people who actually come to, I'm being lucky, a lot of my clients actually when they came, they already understand their benefits and everything. I have odd cases like the audio company and it's trying to have to convince them and let them see there's a benefits of doing this. Before with those kind of company I probably will go slow and small packages first or small, let them see there's a benefits and then say, okay, how do that? And then they might be more likely to invest a bit more understanding their customers and users.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I think that sometimes some people are just so afraid of finding out answers to questions that they're not sure about, that they find comfort in charging ahead and not asking those big questions. And sometimes that makes me wonder just how much, and it's something that I've talked about on the podcast with other guests before and we don't necessarily need to go into it in detail now, but just how much of that is a result of our education. And you mentioned your education in Malaysia and also some of the impact that the Malaysian Chinese culture has had on you in terms of not having an opinion. We get very much conditioned to behave certain ways and it sounds like you've found clients that believe in this type of work and don't need to necessarily quantify everything when it's very, very difficult to quantify. You also mentioned that there is a cost of not doing this research that's very difficult to prove in advance, but that cost is that you might fail in that market by not understanding. Mm-hmm [affirmative] the culture of the people that live there. Now something that's been in the media of late is organizations from one culture having to backtrack, apologize or alter their position when they offend people of another culture. Now the example that comes to mind for me is the NBA's drama at the moment with China. How does politics affect or what role does politics play in the considerations that organizations need to have when adapting their products or services for another country?
- Chui Chui Tan:
- Politics is definitely, you remember a little on, we talk about holistic view and we talk about history and we talk about political and context. So is definitely one thing that you don't want to offend and do do it wrong because sometimes you can just apologize and back again and sometimes it's hard for you to get back to where you have to be because the damage has been done. So one of the very obvious one is geo political when it comes to China are a lot of companies make a lot of mistakes by, for example, married a few years ago they commissioned a survey being done by our agency and the agency accidentally put, I can't remember Hong Kong or Taiwan or Macau as a country. And that backlash and married website in China has been closed down for two weeks and outside the uk married China is the most sales.
- They were shut down by the government for two weeks and had to apologize. And following that, Zara and Dell Tech, I remember they make similar mistake and by doing that, so that is kind of your political issues that you have to be very, very careful, especially in countries that are very sensitive on that. And I think there's another one is politics is one thing and all. Then the other thing is I saw is religion as well. And because it's really important that you don't want to offend anything that is, people care about that. And I think there's one example I used to use is kind of, it's a games I can't remember which game, one of the shooting games that they have Quran in the toilet and that kind of raised a lot of anger recently. Aldi the supermarket in Aldi as well, they kind of have a curry beef ma curry and from India and Hindu actually didn't eat beef.
- So it's kind of like people actually be a bit cross and feel like it's insensitive when you do the marketing incorrectly. So those are the things that, it's kind of basic things. I say basic, so it's important and fundamental that you don't want to get it wrong because that is a back backlash on that. So I come up with a ladder called three level culturalization, which the bottom bit is this kind of fundamental things you shouldn't do wrong if you go to a countries you shouldn't offend anyone or politically kind of offend any government or any parties within that countries. And then the second level is level where it's kind of the basic things that you should give your customers uses the basic experience that for example, you want to address them in the right names, you want to capture their names. And last name and first name in Malaysia, I'm called [inaudible].
- In the UK I'm coach 10. So you want to make sure your fields are putting properly so when people don't read label, they put in their names correctly and you kind of address them correctly. And then numeric format or the address and also payment method, those are the things that, basic things that you should make it right to your users. And then the third level is more cultural elements that I talk about. You delight people them by providing something even more that they need and delight the experience even in a matter. For the second level, actually I created something called Global design guide and for different countries where people could to follow from naming to font and to payment method to social network that they using which hopefully will be helpful for people who actually trying to design or serve their users in different countries.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That sounds really useful and I will definitely link to that for people in the show notes. There's obviously some really low hanging fruit that just makes sense for people to get right. And I'm just conscious of time so far we've been speaking about cross-cultural design in the context of an organization from one country trying to appeal to people from another country. Something I've been wondering is how the practice of cross-cultural design applies within a country. For example, my assumption is that western countries are less homogenous than non-Western countries with multiple large growing and vibrant ethnic communities. How are we best to navigate that level of cultural complexity within our own countries?
- Chui Chui Tan:
- I kind of want to challenge one of the statements you make in the Western countries. People sometimes people feel like it's more homogenous. If you take America, it's definitely not homogenous at all. And in such a big countries even everyone speak English most well. But then if you stick one state to the other, there's a lot of change changes in terms of how people behave, their mentality and their thinking already. And to be honest, in a lot of American small cities or villages or town if you want to call it there, a lot of people actually could feel similar in a similar environment as Africa in certain area. For example, a lot of people are actually still didn't read or write in America and we done some research for one client. So some of them actually, they live in the trailer, they actually, they don't know how to read or write.
- They can call, they have letter from the government, they dunno what that means. And they are leaving contact and situation. It's actually not great. They don't actually have medical health and from insurance or any government or private support. So if you're kind of comparing with Africa, actually there's certain elements that you kind of can share the similarities between them. But those are the things that you don't see when you talk about America as a whole. So every country is, no matter how big or small, there is always certain elements that there's a differences between them. And in certain aspect everyone should be, could feel the same or look the same or behave the same. But in another aspect it could be different. For example, when it comes to buy booking holidays, it might be all the same within the UK for example. But then when it comes to buying insurance, it might be different from the north to the south or it's kind of depending on, oh when you buying food or grocery, the mentality of the west and the east might be different again.
- So depending on what we are looking into and the aspect and the area and the industry and all the elements, they're always the similarities and differences. When we always talk about cross-cultural differences as well, it's not always trying to find the differences, but sometimes it's also find a similarities as well because then with that you could say, okay, these are all the same. We can apply similar strategy or design, but then we have some small tweaks to cater for the unique differences between the country as well. Yeah, I used to hear sit in a shared office area and then I can't hear someone say, oh, Australian New Zealand is very the same. We can group them in the same together. And I kind of really wanted to go there and say no, it's not. Depending on,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- As a New Zealander, I can tell you we really don't like that [laugh]. So if anyone's thinking about launching a product in New Zealand, please don't lump us in with our Australian cousins. We are very similar, but we also have out state
- Chui Chui Tan:
- Differences. Differences, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for shout that [laugh]. Yeah, it's so easy people to make and you know, used to be, oh, Africa, the whole Africa is the same. It's so different. South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, run that, all these different countries. And then Asia itself is so, it's so different. Even Southeast Asia, every single one is very different in terms of, I'm just about to start a research with a online job board company in Southeast Asia and Australia and New Zealand. And for the recruitment itself, there's so many different elements you have to look into finding the right people and right groups and all the differences so that we can capture as well as a whole as possible. So yeah, never group anything. It's fine to say, okay, once you do research, you have similarities and that is fine, but there's always, there's a slight differences that sometimes would make the big difference in your business.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Big time. So [affirmative], this seems like a good time for us to bring things down to. My final question for you is thinking about all the things that we've spoken about today for the design and product leaders that are listening to this conversation, what is the one thing that you hope they take away and apply to their products and services and when they're entering another culture?
- Chui Chui Tan:
- One thing [laugh] probably, how do I group them into one? So it's kind of being curious and don't make assumptions based on your own stereotype or your own subjective view. I think that is the most important because you have to be open mind to be say, okay, I'm happy to invest a bit of money. Sure you invest is, but then down the line, if you're thinking in a long, long term, it's actually going to be good than seeing money for the short term. Short term as well. And so it's kind of like, one thing I'm really cautious as well is sometimes a lot of companies or clients come to say, oh, we already done research and we already learned this and do that. But then when you look at that research it's kind of very on the surface and doesn't really tell much and or it's not very deep dive.
- And so that is a danger as well sometimes is to, people thought they already done the research or they kind of commissions agency or whatever to do the research, but actually they think that they already done the release research and then have this inside. They are going to make the informed decisions. And actually that is a danger, a risk where the research is not done properly that kind of could harm them as well. So yeah, I think it's really important to make sure the insights that you're getting as well. Once you open up your open minded and do the research and understanding your culture and the different culture and countries then also making sure that they are valid and give you a full question. Keep asking questions. I think that is the whole thing about being curious. So keep asking questions, is that right? Is that true? And then why is that? And eventually you actually could see a full circles or the puzzle. If you think of a puzzle, you can see more bigger and bigger picture rather than just a small picture that you make a conclusion. But then when you see actually it's a leg or someone rather than it's a hat it's their shoes rather than a hat. So
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, Louis Rosenfeld tells the story of the blind men and the elephant. I'm not sure if it's his own parable, but it's a very apt example to what you're trying to illustrate. Now it sounds like from what you just said, it's know what your assumptions are, be curious. Don't be afraid to go deeper than you think you need to. And very much make sure that you are approaching this research with Claire understanding of what it is that you don't know so you can uncover that value.
- Chui Chui Tan:
- Yeah, don't save the money for the sake of saving money in the short term [laugh]. I think that's important.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That's right. Take a long term view. Yeah, very important. Yeah. Chui Chui, what a great conversation. Absolutely packed full of meaningful stories and practical insights for people to take away. Thank you for so generously sharing those with us today.
- Chui Chui Tan:
- Thank you. Thanks for having me again, and thanks for your great questions as well because that make me think and kind of bring out a lot of good insights that and memories as well going to these places and do research.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You're most welcome, Chui Chui. What's the best way for people to find out more about you and Beo Global?
- Chui Chui Tan:
- My website is beyo.global. So you can find a lot of articles that some, some of the points that I talk about earlier as well. And the global design guide. Or you can find me on Twitter on @ChuiSquared [laugh], or I'm quite active on LinkedIn as well, so that's a good place to find me as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Perfect. Thanks, Chui Chui, and to everyone that's tuned in, it's been great having you here. Everything that we've covered and that Chui Chui has just mentioned will be in the show notes. If you've enjoyed the show and you want to hear more great conversations like this with world class leaders in UX design and product, don't forget to review and subscribe. And until next time, keep being brave.