Designing Cultural Experiences

It’s the importance of reflecting and celebrating culture in a respectful way with a lot of empathy. If you don’t have cultural expertise, you need to listen, research, and collaborate with people who do and let go of your own perception of the culture all together. If you skip that part of the process, the work will not be relevant to its audience and therefore not successful.

Tone plays a unique role when designing a cultural moment. When designing for Diwali, it was vital to workshop with teams in India to fully understand the key themes and use these to shape the tone of voice, as well as establish terms that resonate most with our audience. I was then able to develop a tone of voice framework which shaped the narrative of the in-app Diwali experience and messaging.

It’s so important to learn to de-westernize our perspective when designing for local culture. Doing so allows us to become better listeners and storytellers, which leads to a more relevant product experience for our users. As designers, we have the amazing responsibility of showing our users how important it is for us to celebrate key moments alongside them – how cool is that?!