Fixing things #3: Switching languages

2025/04/03 #uiux

There is no doubt that language is central to almost any user experience. Regardless of how well an interface may be designed, if the user who interacts with it does not understand the language that interface is displayed in that is probably a non-starter (and iconography can only take you so far after all). But if language is so vital to the user experience, here's a question for you: Have you ever had a great user experience switching the language of a website or software? Like a truly great one? I'm not sure I have.

Finding and identifying the language selector is often the biggest challenge.
As someone who not only has to switch interface languages on a daily basis (I live in bi-/trilingual Hong Kong after all) and who sometimes is also responsible for actually designing those experiences I think that is saying something.

But why does the user experience of switching the interface language suck so often? What makes this so uniquely challenging to design and implement well? Let me list at least a few of the reasons that might explain this:

But if all of that is true what's the fix? After all, this series "Fixing Things" is not supposed to be about complaining but about trying to find solutions. How can all of this be solved once and for all? Well, I admit it can't but I have at least come up with a couple of things to avoid which would improve the current mess we see out there in the wild: