International symbol, icon blunders can be avoided

Some of my European colleagues still remember when the old Macintosh operating system of the 1980s used a trash icon that Apple’s European users confused for a postal box. Why was the icon confusing? People across the globe have different cultural ideas and assumptions about what things are supposed to look like. In other countries, trash cans and mailboxes look rather different than they do in the United States and, in this case, the drawing resembled a European mailbox.

The use of universally understood symbols and icons presents many benefits for users of software, websites and other products. Aside from being visually appealing, the right symbols and icons can reduce the time and cost required to adapt a product for other markets by instantly communicating a message without language-specific words.

The standard triangle-shaped “play” symbol on media players will be understood in most markets without further adaptation. By using the symbol instead of the word, the company producing the media player avoids translating the word “play” when adapting the product to every new market. The symbol also takes up less room on the product interface, and the button does not need to be resized with the text expansion and contraction that often accompanies translation.

However, like any other international endeavor, verification is critical to ensure your message will indeed be understood by other cultures. Symbols and icons – like images, colors, flowers, gifts and idioms – often contain cultural references that international customers may understand differently or not at all.

Sun Microsystems learned their email package for an old product called SunView used an icon that confused people outside the United States. The icon was a U.S.-style mailbox with a red flag that was raised and lowered to indicate the presence of new messages. Most people in other cultures had never seen a mailbox with a red flag and thus had no idea what it was supposed to mean. Never mind that the red flag metaphor was incorrectly applied even for a U.S. audience. Since that time, most software and email providers have found opened and closed envelope icons to be more universally understood across cultures.

Graphics can be individually adapted for specific markets or internationalized to reduce the need of adaptation. This internationalization, or preparation and standardization, includes using symbols that are likely to be universally understood and avoiding those that are likely to cause problems.