State Street Alpha in Chinese is a research project I conducted to uncover design issues and ideas for Chinese users that use the asset servicing platform
Role
Research
Client
State Street Client Users
Duration
May-June 2023
Overview
Purpose
There are people on State Street who work in places where they use Chinese, such as Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Singapore. We aim to have a Chinese version of the Alpha Portal that can be used by Chinese speakers based on the Chinese language they use and the design trend in Asia.
Objectives
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Define what is a “Chinese Version” means
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Define the design trend in China
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Identify the value of an Alpha Portal Chinese version
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Identify the problems we have while translating English to Chinese
Challenge
How can we design a Chinese version of the Alpha portal?
Goal: Define Chinese Version
What it mean to design a Chinese version for the platform, State Street Alpha?
01. Translate English to Chinese
02. Design with a design trend that is more suitable for Chinese speakers
01. Translate English to Chinese
In China, people from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan use the traditional written form of Chinese, and Mainland China uses the simplified form. It would be better to have these two written forms for the State Street Alpha platform. Here is an example of a Chinese company website that uses these two written forms.
From my research and observation, PingFang SC is a font that "writes" Chinese correctly compared to other fonts. Here is an example of how Chinese characters look different on different fonts.
Chinese characters are different from English. Chinese character looks like an image. We can not use a font size that is very small because we will not be able to read the words. From my research, it is suggested never to use a font size smaller than 12pt.
02. Usability and Design Trends in China
A. China’s websites and apps are more feature-rich and information-dense
B. New Chinese websites are improving to become more modernized and aligned with Western design trend: "Less is more"
C. QR codes are used everywhere and are part of people's daily life in China
A1. Functional Density
Besides the primary function of a Chinese website or an application, they will have more features that people can use within an app/site. Therefore, they would have more information, text, and buttons compared to the U.S. websites.
A2. Information Density
Older websites have all the information at the center of the screen, while more recent sites use more width to lay out the information. New sites use different text sizes to create hierarchy and space to make reading easier for people.
B. Aligned with Western Design Trend
Chinese people are used to complex and dense websites and applications. However, the website and app have been updated to use more negative space and look cleaner and easier to understand while maintaining their multi-functionality.
New websites are trying to align with Western design trends, which include:
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More space between contents
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More creative interaction
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Better in visualization
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Information is more spread out – the layout changed
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More design involved
DiDi is a leading mobile transportation platform that offers a full range of app-based services to users. Websites like DiDi display their information in a creative and interactive way for people to read and engage with their website.
C. QR codes are everywhere
Chinese use QR codes everywhere, for example:
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Mobile payment
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Track data,
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Login
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Download
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Sharing documents, slides, short videos, etc
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Bike-sharing
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Add social media contact
User Interview: What I learned
I was able to interview a current client manager who works in China and uses the Charles River Investment Management System(CRIMS) to share his experience and ideas
Here are the findings from the interview with the user
Insights:
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During the interview, I found out a client used a different Chinese character for the same English word. For example, duration in Chinese have two way of writing it: 持续期 and 久期. They both mean the same, but the characters are different. However, from the interview, most people tend to use 久期 for duration. Therefore, when translating, be sure to determine which terms are widely used locally.
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It would be great to have a Chinese version of the platform because some traders and people in the middle office are not experts in English, but we need to do it well for it to be useful.
Next Steps
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Focus on the translation – the use of Chinese characters and the font. Make sure people translating understand the industry language and the appliction
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Translate everything or nothing. If we did a good job at translation, users would use it or else, the users would not want to use it.
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Different clients use different terms for the same word. So, localization allows us to use different custom terms for different clients in the same language or allow different sets of terms.
Wireframe
I tried to translate the current (unoffical) design to Chinese
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