User Interface

Maximalism vs Minimalism

Chinese UI favors high information density and a maximalist mindset, with all buttons and shortcuts in the main screen. 

It's the opposite concept of the Americas and Europe, which favor minimalism, with the information more sparse and isolated by empty spaces.

Applying maximalism will make the game appear chaotic, claustrophobic, and directionless, as if the UI doesn't know what you need and instead just blurts out everything, everywhere, all at once.

Example: The images to the right compares the use of empty space in an app. The Chinese version has much more text condensed together with several icons, while the English one uses more empty space to isolate the main information.

Solution: Consider an alternate UI design for the Americas and Europe. In our experience, adjusting the text alone is not enough to create compelling and pleasant UI. 

Truncation

Chinese is one of the most compact languages in the word. Any UI that only considers Chinese characters will face cluttered and overlapping text when it gets localized to another language.

Also, notice that among alphabetic languages, English tends to be one of the shortest. Therefore, assuming "if English fits, the other will also fit" will certainly lead to the same design issues.

Example: In the image to the right, you can  see that "Settings" occupies almost twice the size in pixels as 设置, and this length is almost doubled again for other languages like German's "Einstellungen" and Portuguese's "Configurações." In the bottom image, you can see the result: if the text box only considers Chinese, other languages very likely won't fit.

Solution: We noticed Chinese UI tends to use boxes and columns to divide content vertically. For alphabetical languages, keep in mind that the text length will make the UI more horizontal, and columns will inhibit this.

Using Character Count Correctly

Chinese has monospaced characters, meaning that all characters occupy the same space, so it's easier to predict the space occupied by Chinese text. 

Alphabetic languages often use proportional fonts, meaning the space occupied depends on the shape of the letter. These fonts tend to be shorter, but also harder to predict the word-length based on character count alone. There are also more spaces between words in such languages to bear in mind.

Example: In the top-right image, the word "mitten" is written in monospaced and proportional typeface. So in the space of "5 Chinese characters" (monospaced) you could easily fit than 5 or more letters (proportional).

Solution: Create length limits based off of fonts designed for non-Chinese languages, and do not assume that character count alone can determine if something can or cannot fit into the UI.

Reading Speed

Word length and grammar rules affect reading speed for timed text. If there is too much text in a short amount of time, players will not be able to read everything or will feel overwhelmed. Likewise, if there is too little text with a long pause between lines, players may get impatient. Thus, it is important for UI to account for reading speeds, which vary per language.

Example: In the images to the right, there is a huge amount of text in the subtitles, resulting in an overwhelming reading experience. In the lower-right image, the text is even white and almost bleeds into a white background, making it hard to read.

Solution: Do not overwhelm with large boxes of text, especially in videos with limited amounts of time to read the subtitles. For video subtitles, refer to the Netflix Timed Text Style Guides, which include language-specific guides as well as time markers. Generally, keep subtitles to one line, giving about 7 seconds per line. When possible, test it out with native speakers.