Growing up speaking three languages at home, and learning four more as an adult (not including coding languages) has earned me the title of polyglot. I’m not perfectly fluent in every language I know, but can’t seem to help myself from picking up more ways to communicate with the world around me. I love that learning languages opens me up to a whole new way of thinking about and viewing the world around me. It promotes connection in more intimate ways, and ultimately helps me be a better user experience designer.
Speak their language.
As a kid, learning languages was a necessity due to my Spanish American heritage, and living abroad for years at a time. It was a necessity for attending school and making friends. I adapted to my environment and spoke the language that the majority of the people around me spoke. As an adult, I have found that knowing other languages goes beyond day-to-day life. It introduces us to understanding the culture, values, and points of views of others.
In my work as a UX designer, I am constantly code switching. The way I talk to other designers is not the same way I talk to engineers, developers, or stakeholders. All day, I am switching out the language I use to communicate with others. At a surface level, this helps me get ideas across to non-designers. But dig a little deeper, and it is apparent that in changing up how I communicate to others, I am showing respect, self-awareness, and empathy to my colleagues.
Make empathy actionable.
The motivation to learn other languages is different for everyone. For me, it is rooted in a desire to understand others. Learning a language helps me make empathy actionable – not just a thought or idea floating in my mind. If I truly want to empathize with others, I need to walk a mile in their shoes. I believe that learning a language is a great way to achieve empathy for others.
In the UX space, there is a lot of talk about being empathetic to our users. We tend to achieve this empathy by way of creating user personas, journey mapping, and gathering information through user research. If designers were to take empathy a step further, and have the resources to do so, they might put themselves in the environment of the user. This could mean using a different device with little to no internet access to see what it is like using your product, for example.
Be a sponge – listen.
The advice many language learners receive is to absorb the new language via reading and listening. Watch TV, listen to music, read children’s books – and if you can, immerse yourself in a community of the target language. Every week, I go to a Chinese language group and immerse myself that way. Why is this advice everywhere? Because being a sponge works. It encourages listening and having an open mind, and letting your brain absorb new sounds.
User experience design requires a lot of the same. In order to design anything well, we must listen to the needs of users. This listening goes beyond spoken needs, and requires us to observe behavior, record data, and really absorb all the information we can about users. In a team of designers, listening is essential, too. It makes space to share different ideas and perspectives, and create a more inclusive design world.
User experience designers find themselves acting as the bridge between lots of moving parts. We straddle user research and final product testing. We are constantly communicating with non-designers and finding ways to understand their perspective. We listen to users and team members in order to fully understand our environment. UX designers, in some ways, are polyglots. It is my experiences as a polyglot that have made me a more empathetic and capable designer.