Design language and color choices by geography
We were doing a study/survey recently on an app which is expected to be launched globally (North America, Europe, South/East Asia).
The current design favors cleanliness, white space, and muted colors.
The feedback seems to be that North American and European users find the design appealing whereas South East Asian users find the design bland and boring. Looking more closely, the whole thing about clean design and ample use of whitespace seems to be common in apps coming out of EU/US, and apps popular in India/Indonesia etc. seem to be very colorful and cluttered in general.
Even though we are a cross cultural team, and would like to design for all geographies, it is difficult to decide.
- Should we have two different design styles based on geography?
- Is it even relevant that surveyed users seem to prefer a colorful/busy design? Perhaps usability is higher in clean designs, regardless of what people think is more appealing.