Two years has past since we established the NING website (EuroIAnet.ning.com/) and began to invite people to join.

In the beginning, our plan was to establish a membership organisation for people who study and work with IA and UX in an European context. We have spend a lot of time talking bylaws, fees and membership benefits, planning for the legal and practical formation of such organisation. But we ended up asking ourselves if the world actually needed yet another membership organisation – or if we really just needed a single place to go to seek and share information, experiences and knowledge about IA and UX in a specific European context.

This lead us to the conclusion that we should form a centre instead, gather a few handfuls of designated capacities, respected within their fields of expertise of either research, education or practice. And have them run a platform dedicated to user experience (design) in Europe, to the benefit of anyone interested.

Thus, at the sixth European IA conference in Paris, we announced the founding of what will now be known as the “European centre for user experience”. And the legal formation of this entity is in process as you read this.

What is ‘European’ UX?

There isn’t really a certain European flavour of UX. But there’s a whole continent filled with constraints, exceptions and possibilities in relation to legal, political, educational, historical, lingual, practical and cultural issues which has an impact on user experience in almost any European context. And we thought (and still think) that we could all benefit from having a specific European approach to all of this, and not just a national or an international.

We want to establish a centre to promote and support the continuing development of expertise related to user experience in Europe: by facilitating and improving communication between practitioners, researchers and educators. By promoting events, initiatives and publications. By validating, acknowledging and recommending other initiatives related to user experience in an European context. And by providing the legal and formal basis for the interests of a European user experience community.

A place where we can share our thoughts across the continent. Where English is the second language to most of us, making us equally handicapped linguistically. And where we can benefit from our common background, present and future despite our many differences.

So, what’s the plan?

Stay on this platform. We will merge the content into one site; ecux.org, and new features will be added. We will keep you informed as things progress. Before the end of this year, the formalities are in place. And from the beginning of the next year, we hope to be able to offer you all of this in mention, and much more. Thank you for your patience and for being part of this initiative.

Judit Ponya (Hungary), Andrea Resmini (Italy), Peter Bogaards (The Nederlands), Joannes Vandermeulen (Belgium), Sylvain Cottong (Luxemburg), Jan Jursa (Germany) and Søren Muus (Denmark).

Hi Amy Knox,

Interesting question! I think the subject is worth a book, or at least an article. But for now I’ll just try to provide you with a sufficient answer. Apart from being the creative director at FatDUX, which is an international UX company, I’m also founding member of “European centre for user experience”, so I feel obliged to have some answers to your questions. I’ve also been working with several multilingual sites, latest with the ILO (UN), which they are about to launch.

I’m not sure if there’s a specific “European” UX – it’s mostly a matter of content and tone of voice, perhaps to the extend where this is reflected in IA as a consequence hereof, or from being multilingual in an area where language barriers don’t follow national borders. There are of course both national conventions and best practices that relates to specific countries or language areas that you have to beware of. I’ll give you a few examples in my attempt to answer your questions below.

Most of the problems you may encounter, would derive from either lingual, cultural, political or historical issues. And these challenges relates very much to who YOU are, or pretend to be.

If you are branded as an US organisation acting in Europe, you need one approach. If you are branded as an international organisation with local representatives, you need another. If you are branded as a local (national) entity, acting on behalf of an US or international organisation, you need even another approach.

Then add to this, that in some cases it’s an advantage to be “American” – on others certainly not. There are some “familiarity issues” about this euro-american situation: as an European, no Europeans are related to all Europeans, but we all have either American friends or relatives, so we can not all have opinions about, say Swedes or Croatians, but we all have opinions about Americans.

And finally you have to consider if you are going to have a website that consists of mirrored versions of the main site, or if you’re having independent versions for each area. And if these areas are separated by national boundaries or language borders (“French” or “France”).

However, working close together with someone from the areas you are dealing with, can prevent you from a lot of trouble, once you have decided the issues above.

Here are some answers to your questions:

Q: How you think audience expectations and user interactions (might) differ from country to country?

A: At least in three ways; take into consideration that band width may vary much from different parts of Europe, along with state of hardware (and thus ability to handle new internet software), and of course the general capacity for using the web (how web-savy people are in different countries). This may very much influence the way you should design your website. But again, it depends much upon what you are doing and what your website is about, and how the audience will know about your site.

Q: Are there any basic rules of the road for UX across the globe that are worth sharing?

A: As a UX professional you are properly already acquainted with most of them – there aren’t really any “All-European” exceptions, unless you think of Europe as being the only place in the world (at the moment), where you find such density of nations – in many aspects with much in common, in many other aspects with nothing at all in common – leaving you to find out what, and what impact that has on your project.

Be aware of legal requirements, both local (national) like the “Impressum” which you have to provide in Germany, as it states the exact ownership of the company running the site. And also EU requirements and restraints, such as it’s not allowed to make gender or age obligatory when filling out a form, unless its vital for the transaction. Mind that EU and Europe is not the same: Switzerland, Norway and quite a few central and eastern European countries are not member of the EU (European Union).

Be aware that many European languages has a formal version (often written) version, and an informal (often spoken) version. And that this can be directly reflected in various use of pronouns, and indirectly reflected in choice of words and much other.

Q: Anything you wish someone would have told you before you jumped into a multilingual site overhaul?

Be very careful WHICH languages you chose to use, and which languages you attach to what areas, especially as “replacement” language; Dutch and Flemish are the same language, and yet not. Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are “scandinavian” and very close, but they are actually three different languages. And although German is natively spoken by more than 100.000.000 and probably understood by just as many, NEVER NEVER NEVER use German as replacement language in smaller, countries surrounding Germany – use english instead. Most Europeans actually speak and understand English quite well – well you know about that.

Q: Any cultural quagmires that could be easily avoided?

A: Sure, but again it mostly relates to content and tone of voice. If you make sure to join up with local people you can avoid most of them; “Holland” is only an area in what the dutch calls “Nederland” like “England” is NOT the whole island, but only part of it. Both Italians and Germans often regard them selfs as part of smaller, local regions – or even cities. Slovenia is NOT part of the Balkans. Portugal is NOT a Mediterranean country (it has no costal line towards the Mediterranean sea). Europe is filled with these issues, and as I said; depending on who YOU are, this is more or less important.

People living in larger European nations (especially, UK and France) tends to be more “forgiving” towards “broken” english or french. Whereas small nations are very touchy about their language; it has to be absolutely correct. On the other hand; people in smaller countries are quite used to being “inferiorated” by larger languages, and often speaks more than two languages besides their native tongue.

To cut a long story short, there’s a multitude of issues related to planning for “European UX” – I hope that I gave you some food for thought. If I should give you only one advise, it would be to team up with some local capacities, IAI can actually get you very far, and I hope that “European centre for user experience” soon will provide a platform for getting in touch with such, besides being a place for exchange of experience specifically with UX in Europe.

Cheers!

Søren Muus

The initiators of the EuroIA/UX network initiative (who were present at the EuroIA 2010 conference) Judith Ponya, Sylvain Cottong, Søren Muus, Adrea Resmini and Peter Bogaards decided to move forward.