Unlocking native language content for Kindle users around the world.
Role: Lead designer, researcher, UX writer, creative director, visual designer
Team: 6 PMs, 1 marketing manager, 1 TPM, 50+ engineers, 5 QA
Surfaces: Desktop and mobile browser, desktop and mobile apps, Kindle e-reader
Until May 2019, all Chinese Kindle content was in simplified Chinese. This excluded readers from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and other overseas communities, who primarily read in traditional Chinese.
The goal: Launch traditional Chinese content on all Kindle surfaces, including e-reader device, mobile and desktop app, and browser.
Context
Background
Prior to our launch, Kindle only provided simplified Chinese reading content.
This excluded customers in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, who primarily read and write in traditional Chinese and also can be a point of political sensitivity.
Problem
How might we allow customers to shop for, purchase, and consume Kindle content in traditional Chinese so that they can read in their native language?
Challenges
Lack of research buy-in/budget
The team lacked a research budget. As the sole designer between the 6 Kindle International Expansion teams, I wanted to evangelize the need for research on top of owning the UX, marketing creative direction, copy, and visual design across 3 launches (Traditional Chinese, Arabic, and another highly confidential initiative).
The traditional Chinese character for “book” is very different than the simplified character
Process
Research
Generative + large-scale market survey
I traveled to Taiwan and Hong Kong to understand behaviors and needs around shopping, purchasing, and consuming reading content.
Without a researcher or budget, I sourced participants through family and friends and interviewed Amazon employees in local offices. I shared findings around content preferences and reading behavior and motivations.
My initial findings convinced leadership that user research was a good investment. I got funding to work with a research agency to conduct a follow-up large-scale market research survey (n=2000).
The results helped my PMs better define the scope of P0 launch by providing valuable insight into reading and purchasing behaviors and consumer perspectives on the current apps/sites in the reading space.
Amazon employee participant shows me the contents of his Kindle library
A traditional Chinese book
Post-it notes of research findings organized on a whiteboard by trends in Taiwan vs. Hong Kong
Process
Discovery
When investigating keyboard input methods, I realized that Cantonese speakers use different keyboards than Mandarin speakers. Our original plan to build a single traditional Chinese phonetic keyboard for the Kindle e-reader device would not work for most of our Cantonese-speaking users.
I researched major keyboard methods, launched an internal survey, ran an internal focus group session, and gave the team a primer on traditional Chinese input methods to help them understand the level of complexity.
Design
Many traditional Chinese speakers prefer to use the handwriting keyboard input method. However, Kindle e-readers can’t support that level of touch nuance. With handwriting no longer an option, we looked at the remaining wide variety of phonetic and stroke-based keyboard input methods used by Cantonese speakers*.
Paired with pinyin, our existing simplified Chinese keyboard, zhuyin would work for 97% of the Mandarin-speaking Amazon employees I surveyed. I proposed building cangjie as well, which would allow us to address ~50% of the Cantonese-speaking employees.
We built both the phonetic zhuyin keyboard for Mandarin speakers and stroke-based cangjie keyboard for Cantonese speakers.
*To give an idea of the range — Google provided a downloadable Cantonese keyboard app with seven different input methods.
Zhuyin and cangjie keyboard input methods
Process
I decided to audit our product for other ways we needed to adjust to include other Chinese language varieties.
When testing our alphabetical library sort logic, I found that Chinese titles and authors are ordered by their Mandarin pronunciation in hanyu pinyin, the romanization method used for simplified Chinese. This library sort logic excludes Cantonese speakers. Only about 8-15% of Kindle users order their library alphabetically (most order by recency), and when we narrow that down to non-Mandarin Chinese speakers, that’s a tiny fraction of our users. But with the political and cultural sensitivity around simplified vs. traditional Chinese, it was important that our features are as inclusive as possible.
Discovery
Design
The UI language at an OS level indicated a user’s spoken Chinese language and simplified vs traditional reading language. We also knew that users aren’t likely to change how their library is sorted.
For Kindle app users, this meant we could predict their locale and automatically default to the most likely sort order, limiting unnecessary choice and interruptions.
Users with any Chinese titles in their library could access the sort order setting in the Kindle app, but for users with non-Chinese UI, we triggered a dialog to request sort order preference if they met all of the following conditions:
Library sort order by author or title
<2 Chinese titles in their library
<1 traditional Chinese title in their library
UI language can help us determine the right sort order to use (zhuyin fuhao vs. stroke order. vs. hanyu pinyin)
Outcomes
In May 2019, we launched traditional Chinese content support on Kindle with over 20,000 books available on Kindle apps and devices.
We also introduced several new features to the Kindle experience, including large font management, two new library sort order options, and two new Chinese keyboards on the Kindle e-reader for Mandarin and Cantonese speakers.
“Bringing Traditional Chinese language books to Kindle is a step forward on our journey to provide more choice and selection to readers around the world.”
- David Naggar, Vice President of Books
“Vicki was a great partner who proactively took more than her role and helped PMs define the right CX for TCN customers. She was really helpful to define TCN keyboards and sorting method that later got compliments from Taiwanese media for high quality. Thanks to her, we never delayed any releases due to any ship blockers from KXBR reviews, and I appreciate her proactive attitude.”
- PM on Kindle International Expansion
Have any questions?