Portals: Chinese and India

2007

Project Description

In order for AOL to increase their market share, the EVP in charge of Internationalization wanted AOL to have a presence in the Chinese Community. The beta product worked so well, the product manager was asked to do something similar for the AOL Portal for China. Due my ability to understand Chinese and its culture, and the lack of design support on the international portal team, the product manager asked my help to create mocks for the executive team.

Contribution

Design Lead & Representative to the China Team
Because there was no design support and it was a project that sparked my attention, I worked with my manager to not have it affect my day to day duties to be able to offer my unique background and skills to this project. As a result, not only did I become the design lead, but the design representative to the design team in China. In April 2008, I was asked to visit the China Office to help them lay a foundation for a design driven process within the product. I was able to meet the rest of the team and give a talk on how to best create a design driven process.

  • Chinese Portal mockup   India Portal mockup

Learned

Product Internationalization
When I started trying to internationalize the AOL Portal for China, I took a straight port from what was existing in our site. However, I quickly learned that was a good starting point, I had to quickly adapt the design. I learned that internationalizations sometimes meant more than a mere translation of the content of the page, and that conventions and use patterns vary from location to location.

 

Articulating a Design Driven Process
Being the only design support, I was able to articulate and communicate methodologies and steps that our China Team could follow. This could help guide them into making their products and processes more design driven thus driving more usage.

Highlights

  • It opened up my perspective in the field of internationalization. It helped me when working on products like Mail and Pictures.
  • I get to go visit the China office in 2008. I gave a talk in Design Process during my stay.

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