Designing — Vernacular Applications

The Need for Vernacular (Multi-Language) App in India

India with a population of 138 Crore people, is a diverse country with over 22 recognized languages. Hindi, despite being the most widely spoken language in India, is used by less than half the population. English, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, and Tamil top the other more commonly spoken languages in India of which the population that speaks English is only about 12.5 Crore. So clearly, there is a huge need for non-English and non-Hindi apps in India.

When the content to be consumed is in a language they can understand — they Trust, Connect and Engage better with it.

Is there a need to design your app differently to accommodate multiple languages?

Yes, let’s explore the 3major differences across the scripts of various languages that are potential challenges to the layout and structure of your design.

1. Expansion Ratio — When text is translated from one language to another, the length of the source and translated text is likely to be different. In addition to the unpredictability of the number of characters resulting from translation, there are other factors that complicate the management of text layout.
2. Character Width — This can mean that even if the number of characters in translation remains the same, or even slightly less, the horizontal space required may be much larger.
3. Text Direction — The direction in which content is displayed is the opposite between left-to-right (LTR) and right-to-left (RTL) language scripts.

Design Guidelines

1. Flexible layouts: In general, the more flexibly you can design your layout, the better. Allow text to re-flow and avoid small fixed-width containers or tight squeezes. The text should not have space constraints and should be allowed to flow freely. This is the most important guideline considering varying character width and expansion ratios for Indian languages
2. Use Icons: This is a smart way of avoiding the challenges that languages can create, achieved by simply not using text. Use icons to replace text wherever possible.
3. Discourage Typing: This is where you need to be innovative. See how you can bypass the traditional search forms or text input fields with more creative ways to solve for the user’s needs without them having to type. This is important because while they might be comfortable consuming data in their regional language, they might find writing it hard, especially on a keyboard that was not designed for such languages. You could use voice as an input, or have options for the users to choose from etc.
4. Don't Abbreviate: Avoid using abbreviations in English like FAQ, OTP, etc. that are meaningless in regional languages. Expand the term, if it needs to be used.
5. Be Elaborate: When choosing keywords for CTAs, avoid single words that might not have a direct translation to a regional language. Rather use sentences or a combination of words that explains the action with ease even after translation. (eg use- I will do this later, instead of Skip). Also, try to avoid words that have multiple meanings.
6. Ordering Lists: The ordering of lists if sorted alphabetically would vary across languages. Don’t design interactions around it assuming it to be constant.
7. Lower Case: ALL CAPS, Sentence Casing, etc. are methods to bring additional prominence to a design. However since regional languages do not have such a concept, don’t depend on such a style for your design.

Note: This list is a Work in progress, being updated based on the challenges I face when I work on such projects. Hope this helps :)