StrangeLoop 2017: Wait, it does ??THAW

Summary

When you are forced to reconsider your product’s UX to account for the needs of some languages, you are better suited to confront the underlying issues that hurt your interface for all.

As the popularity and reach of Open Source grows, so does the need to support more languages, scripts, and directions. One of the most challenging problems in language support is dealing with languages that are Right-to-Left, where the effects are not just limited to translations, scripts and fonts, but also require a complete change of thinking about how and where to place almost every single element of your product on the screen.

Right-to-Left support helps the creators of a product — developers, designers, product managers, etc — expose usability concerns that could be fixed to make the lives of your users better, regardless of what language (and direction) they speak.

This lecture will focus on the common challenges involved in supporting i18n in general and Right-to-Left in particular when building user interfaces. It will showcase examples of how, by working towards supporting solutions for these challenges, we can uncover underlying problems with the interface in general, and how we can fix them. Fixing those issues doesn’t just mean supporting the important goal of making your software reachable and inclusive – it also means making your code stronger, and your user experience smoother.

Video

Slide deck

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