Blog 1 ​

During today's lecture, we discussed how distinct tribes, each with their own languages, have shaped varying perspectives on the use of color palettes. I would like to expand on this notion, emphasizing the role of language in influencing diverse viewpoints, especially within the realm of information architecture.

In class, we observed that many news websites excel in organizing their content to align with the natural browsing tendencies of users, making it easier for them to navigate the page. They are also adept at disrupting this natural flow to draw attention to specific elements, such as subscription prompts. While this approach effectively caters to the audience of national news channels, which primarily serves readers from a single country, it may not be suitable for international applications.

In countries where languages are read from right to left or top to bottom, this design would deviate from the natural navigation patterns of users, making it less user-friendly and potentially confusing. This would be a huge problem for many social media apps, like Instagram and Twitter. For apps that can be used in many different areas, designing with internationalization in mind is extremely important to making a user-friendly app. Internationalization is the process of making your app ready for localization, by using standard formats, codes, and resources that can be easily modified for different locales. Thinking about the elements of visual design that we learned about in visual design, this example emphasizes the importance of adapting design and functionality to accommodate the linguistic and cultural diversity of users worldwide.