The Language You Have and the Language You Want: Babylonian Confusion of Language Selection on Websites

// Translation of my 'How hard can it be?'-column in this weekend's de Volkskrant

My gaze shoots to the upper-right corner of the university website I'm browsing, searching for the little flag icon. I want to view a research group's profile, but in English. Apparently, I've learned that it's quicker to look for the language settings in the upper-right corner rather than too look at the language in which the texts are displayed. Besides, the top part of the website mainly consists of images with occasional titles sprinkled in, so not that much text to assess anyway. In the upper-right corner, I see an English flag and the word 'English,' so I assume I'm good to go and scroll further down, only to be met with a Swedish website.

The English flag turns out to indicate the language you can switch to, not the language the website is currently in. In interaction design terms, the language indicator doesn't provide feedback—a confirmation of status or action—but feedforward, an indication of an action to be performed or a status to be reached.

It's a classic issue, and there's still a wide variety of solutions. For instance, the Dutch online retailer Bol.com has a different approach than the Swedish university website: their website displays a flag in the upper-right corner to indicate the current region of the website. So in Bol's case the 'NL' next to it, has a different meaning than the 'English' on the Swedish university website. Bol operates in Belgium and the Netherlands and, therefore, has not just a language setting (French/Dutch) but also a regional setting (Netherlands/Belgium). So on their website, the flag stands for the region you are shopping from, and the 'NL' next to it stands for your language you want to see the website in.

Bol also includes a small arrow, indicating that more options are available. So, in this case, the flag and country abbreviation provide status-feedback, and the small arrow provides feedforward that more options are available. Clicking on it opens a dialogue box where you can choose both your country and your language.

University websites don't need a region selection and typically offer their site in a limited number of languages, usually the language(s) of the country and English. I once had a discussion about language selection with one of the website designers at my own TU Delft, and he eventually came up with an elegant solution. He opted not for flags but for a circle containing 'NL/EN.' The language you've selected at that moment is displayed in bright white (feedback), while the possible language to select is more subdued (feedback and feedforward). Hovering over it with your cursor brightens the other language that the website can be displayed in (feedforward).

These may seem like small things, but reducing such 'friction' leads to a more pleasant and efficient visit. After all, I didn't visit the university website to set a language; I came to learn more about a research group.

>> Read the column in Dutch on the website of de Volkskrant