UX Design for Eastern vs Western Markets w/ Liya Safina

​Earlier last year Liya had worked on Alibaba’s app and with Toyota on their new city set to be built in Japan next to Mount Fuji in 2025. While designing digital interfaces for 5 years into the future is a big enough challenge on its own, another significant task was embracing the cultural differences in digital interactions. Interface expectations and patterns of people in Asia differ quite a lot from Western practices. Design is a communication medium. As such it is deeply influenced by how we form and process thoughts. Eastern and Western cultures are quite divergent in this regard - take language, religion, and lifestyle as an example. Let’s explore the topic that will become increasingly more important as Asian apps beyond TikTok take over the Western market and the UX and UI designers in America prepare to design for global products. We will explore differences in:

• ​information architecture

• ​navigation

• ​iconography 

• ​content hierarchy 

• ​overall design

• ​and more.

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About Liya

​Liya Safina is a digital product and interaction designer with an academic background in architecture and educational methodology. She moved to Hawaii from Europe last November. Professionally, she has helped launch over 55+ startups, designed 12+ iOS apps, led UX/UI processes and conducted qual/quant research for Google, StreetEasy, Hinge, Bumble, Brandless, Asics, Equinox, Alibaba, Coinbase and Sotheby’s, as well as created projects for LeBron James, Bob Dylan and Pharrell Williams. Additionally, Liya has previously co-founded an accelerator-backed startup in the Silicon Valley and a digital educational platform in Moscow. She is a big fan of immersive theater and architecture, as well as spending her free time scuba diving and learning to surf in Honolulu.