PRODUCT INCLUSION ACTION

Design for the Global Customer

Product Inclusion Action - Design for the Global Customer

Look at your user journey with a global lens to remove financial, technological, language, or identity related barriers to entry. Ensure your data & feedback channels include players from around the globe to identify ways you can reach and engage them. 

Customer Challenge

Including players and creators from around the world is an important part of Globalization. Understanding their experiences can help us identify what makes them feel at home in gaming.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Business Impact

​​​​​​​There are over 3.2 Billion gamers in the world today so there is a huge market opportunity to engage gamers from all over the world. 

  • In markets like LATAM, Middle East and Africa, and Southeast and Central Southern Asia, on average 35% of non-players intend to get started with playing a game on PC, console or mobile within the next 6 months as of the survey time, as compared to the 14% average for the same in markets like NA, Europe, East Asia, and Oceania.

As we continue to open doors to our platforms, services, and games in new and existing markets, it is critical to understand global player behaviors and perspectives and to intentionally include these in our experience designs. ​​​​​​​

Graphic showing that Gaming is widespread today and global! More than 75% of players are outside of NA and Europe.

Source: Newzoo Global Games Market Report, Jan 2024 Update​

Questions to Consider

Bringing globalization into the development process:

  • How can your team be intentional in the design process to 
    ensure that global customer needs are accounted for? 
     
  • Are global customer voices reflected in user research, focus groups, A/B testing and other signals that help you make 
    decisions about business or feature direction? 
     
  • Are you speaking to international customers in a way that resonates locally (with the local language, culture, etc.)?
     
  • Are your global customers' needs known and prioritized by 
    teams that you partner with to ship your experiences end to end? 
     
  • Do you have a process to review key decisions with the lens of global customer success?

​​​Customer needs and experiences:

  • What countries and regions are your team working to engage?
     
  • What listening systems do you have in place to understand the needs of customers in these regions?
     
  • What kinds of games, devices, and gaming experiences are most common with players in different markets?
    • Why are certain experiences more and less common?
    • Are there common UI or usage patterns that differ from our traditional experience that we need to take into consideration when designing for that market?

Steps to Achieve It

1.  Set Goals for what you want to achieve & share them with your project stakeholders

  • Do planning at the start of projects to identify opportunities & obstacles. 
  • Go through the 10 Product Inclusion actions to bring intentionality into your designs. 

2.  Identify & Utilize resources to help drive success

  • Help team members understand key differences across markets that need to be considered to deliver customer success; such as payment systems, language, internet availability, media channels, etc.
  • Create ways for local creators to engage in content creation to bring more local experiences into the product.
  • Leverage inclusive Listening systems to ensure that you are including a global perspective in your feedback channels  
  • Look at data using a global lens to see how different geographic locations or language spoken might be resulting in different experiences for our users.

3.  Create & release experiences that helps our global customers feel at home