Internationalization and Localization

I used to be very active with BayCHI but I moved about 6 or 7 years ago.
I'm now living in Las Vegas, which isn't exactly the tech or software
development capital of the country. ;-) In reality, I'm quite isolated
and was hoping this list would still be active. It seems to be dead as a
doornail. So, aside from my main question, I'm also wondering where all
the UX people are networking these days? Linkedin? Somewhere else? I
need some online community!



Now, onto my real question....

I'm working on an enterprise application that runs hotels.
Internationalization and localization are big concerns.



Our current UX framework provides "just in time" task navigation, so
there is no persistent navigational schema. (This was not my design.)
This means, people can't develop spatial memory for how to get to tasks
as the navigation shifts and is contextually dependent.



My boss (not a UX person), wants to move to a fully iconographic task
navigation in order to meet internationalization requirements. I have
serious concerns that we will lose usability as this goes well beyond
standard, well understood icons like a magnifying glass, and into
conceptually complex tasks that won't easily translate to icons.



I believe we need to support the icons with some text, but of course,
German and Thai are the current bane of my existence. I already have a
20 letter word in German and unless I can break it up with a hyphen (not
sure if that's permitted in German), I don't have nearly enough room. I
have room for about 10 characters across.



I love the idea of icons supporting text. I think it would help the
problem of shifting navigation. But I don't see how there's enough room
on the task buttons for both.



The app is touchpad enabled, which would make it difficult to rely on
tooltips. Though I'm wondering if people could use a press and hold to
get a tooltip equivalent on a touchpanel.



If any of you have any thoughts on the localization problems or on where
to find some online UX community, I'd be grateful.



Best

Kayla



Kayla Block

User Experience Team Lead

PAR Springer-Miller Systems

702-375-0007 (cell)

702-896-8237 (direct)

[email protected]



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