The purpose of this project is to investigate how a Chinese fitness app would differ in Finland, and what redesign approach would be effective to adapt this app to the Finnish market.
Introduction
Boohee薄荷 is a powerful Chinese fitness app for weight management and healthy meal planning; it is especially popular among young adults. The source language of Boohee is Chinese, and the word “薄荷” means “mint” in Chinese. Other than the language, the user interface design is clean and generic with simple color scheme and intuitive icons; it would seem that updating the language would be the only change required for the Finnish market.
This app is especially helpful for people who are trying to gain/maintain/lose weight and for people who are dealing with food-related health concerns like diabetes, cardiovascular conditions, and GI issues. In particular, Boohee薄荷 has several major features:
- record daily exercise and diet
- record body weight and body fat percentage
- search for food/food ingredients and their nutrition facts
- receive safe meal plan/recipe and support from dietitian and nutritionist online (members only)
Research
Fitness Activities/Sports
I researched several topics to gain some background knowledge. To begin with, I researched the fitness activities and routines that are popular in Finland. Unlike China, where most people like to go to the gym for exercise due to urbanization and air pollution issues, Finnish people like to take advantage of fresh air and clear sunny days to exercise outdoors. Some famous outdoor sports in Finland include: trekking, hiking, walking, Nordic walking, cycling and canoeing [1].
Units of Measurement
Next, I searched for the units of measurements for weight and nutrition facts since they are closely related to the features I’m planning to redesign. Most Finnish units of measurement are identical to Swedish units of measurement, for example, units of length being based on the Swedish “foot” (29.69 cm). In this project, I’m particularly interested in bodyweight units and nutrition/energy units in Finland.
Although Finland has its own traditional weight/mass units like “uoti”(~13.95 g), “unssi”(27.9 g) and “markka”(~213.8 g), weight units are standardized to kilograms [2]. In terms of nutrition/energy units, Finland uses the worldwide unit of energy: kilocalorie (Cal or kcal)[3].
Dietary Habits
Finally, I researched the dietary habits in Finland on the website of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Finnish cuisine has been influenced greatly by both Sweden and Russia. Finland is one of the world’s fittest countries, in that Finnish foods often contain wholemeal products, beans and berries, which is completely different from what people eat in China. Moreover, fish of different kinds is a mainstay of the Finnish diet [3]. Unlike in China, Finnish people tend to eat their biggest meal of the day at lunchtime. Dinner in Finland is usually a light meal and people usually have dinner as early as 5 pm. Most Finns eat sweet pastries for snacks, for example, korvapuusti (cinnamon whirl) or munkki (doughnut), and they tend to consume coffee throughout the day [4]. In contrast, Chinese people are not big fans of coffee; they prefer tea and their snacks can range from nuts and seeds to stinky tofu and spicy pickles.
Localizing Boohee薄荷 for Finland
Language
There are different languages used in Finland. According to BBC Languages, Finland has two official languages: Finnish and Swedish. Finnish is spoken by 93% of the country’s population. There is also a minority language called “Sámi” that is spoken by 0.03% of the entire population [5].
The authors of Global UX make a really good point that a product targeting a certain country can be further adapted with minor variations in order to meet the needs of the varies populations within a country [6]. This idea inspired me to include all three languages spoken in Finland this app. More specifically, I would like to add a pop-up screen asking the user to choose between Finnish, Swedish and Sámi when they first open this app. The default language will be Finnish and users will be able to switch languages in the settings module.
Color Scheme
The next step is to set the color scheme. According to “Vive la différence!: a survey of cultural-aware issues in HCI”, website interfaces designed for China tend to adopt a soft and pastel color scheme. The main color used in Boohee薄荷 is pale mint-green with a white background (see the figure below).
In Jill Morton’s research on global attitudes towards color, Global Color: Clues & Taboos, Finnish people are very sensitive to colors and the various shades of colors. All kinds of blue is especially popular in Finland since a natural phenomenon in Finland called “The Blue Moment” makes the landscape engulfed in blue light [7].
I believe the color scheme needs to be localized to a color that Finnish people would identify with confidence and health. Ultimately, I decided to use skyblue for icons and buttons and white for background.
Figure 1.3 is a draft prototype of how the new color scheme would look.
Information
Boohee has a really powerful database containing tons of foods/snacks/food ingredients that allow users to check the nutritional values of the food they eat. Moreover, Boohee’s membership program allows you to access different recipes targeting weight loss/weight gain/and other dietary demands created by health professionals. Although the information is helpful, most snacks and recipes target the Chinese population. As a result, I would like to add the nutritional information of Finnish foods/snacks to the app’s database, and include a variety of Finnish recipes.
In addition, under the Record Daily Exercise feature, most exercise/sports options are the fitness activities that are famous in China, for example, table tennis, jumping rope and Pilates. Also, most options are indoor activities. To localize the Record Raily Exercise function to Finland, I plan to add more outdoor activities that are popular in Finland (see figure 1.4).
Figure 1.4 is a draft prototype of the localized record daily exercise feature where several popular Finnish sports are added.
Discussion
The entire process of researching and designing was fun and rewarding. I truly enjoyed researching and understanding a culture that I have never learned about. The biggest challenge was the limited sources online about colors and their cultural meaning for Finland, but Jill Morton’s research was really helpful.
Citations
- Finland: The frontrunner in sports and fitness. (2019, September 24). Retrieved from https://finland.fi/life-society/finland-the-frontrunner-in-sports-and-fitness/.
- “Obsolete Finnish Units of Measurement.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 10 July 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsolete_Finnish_units_of_measurement.
- Finland. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/nutrition/education/food-dietary-guidelines/regions/countries/finland/en/.
- Lonely Planet. (n.d.). Eating in Finland. Retrieved from https://www.lonelyplanet.com/finland/in-location/eating/a/nar/fac9014e-8b44-4d76-9ece-e4b6e55d39b1/359152.
- Languages — Languages. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/european_languages/countries/finland.shtml.
- Quesenbery, W., & Szuc, D. (2012). Global UX: design and research in a connected world. Waltham, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.
- Morton, J. (n.d.). Global Color: Clues and Taboos. Retrieved from https://realtor.overdrive.com/media/59892
