I Get Paid for This?
College basketball fans are sure to have heard Dick Vitale exclaim during a particularly terrific basketball game that he can’t believe he gets paid to do what he does. I had that feeling as I participated in pre-design user testing with a group of Chinese nationals.
Understand that I’ve done a lot of user testing over the course of my career. I always love it, as those who follow me on Twitter or Facebook probably recall. But nothing prepared me for the waves of learning that poured over me as I watched our Chinese friends do a basic card-sort exercise.
The cards were translated into Chinese, but the group spent 45 minutes debating the actual meaning of the translations. The two among them who were proficient in English would ask me questions about what we really meant, and then the group would engage in occasionally heated discussion over how to fix or improve the translation until they all agreed.
Imagine the ramifications for anybody who wants to translate their site into Chinese!
Just one example of the many interesting things I learned: In China, there’s a big difference between working for free and volunteering.
When they finally agreed on the translations, they began to do the sort as a group. It took some explaining for them to understand that we wanted to see how each of them might do it differently. That puzzled them, since they thought the group’s opinion would be of much greater value than their individual views. I almost wish we had let them proceed, just to see what came of it.
In the end, the English-speaking group bundled content very differently than the Chinese-speaking group. That probably explains my headache, and will mean some interesting challenges ahead as we redesign this client’s site.
And I get paid for this? (Note to boss: That is a rhetorical question, and yes, I really do hope to be paid.)