User-Centered, User-Experience Design of User Interfaces for Work, Play, and On the Way: A 40-Year Perspective
From CS160 User Interfaces Sp09
Lecture on Apr 8, 2009
Readings
Optional Readings
Saung Li - Apr 06, 2009 02:20:54 am
I thought this reading was very interesting in that it applies how the design of user interfaces should be geared towards the culture of the users. A website that works well for one culture may even be offensive for another, so it is important for global websites to address cultural differences. Since there are so many differences across all the nations of the world, multiple websites may be needed to address each difference. This may be costly, but it may be even more costly if the website offends a user. To summarize the important cultural differences that can affect interface design, power difference refers to how much people expect and accept unequal power distribution within a culture; individualism emphasizes the self whereas collectivism prefers the group; some cultures emphasize masculinity, some the femininity, and others neither; uncertainty avoidance refers to how people vary in the extent that they feel anxiety about things that are uncertain; and some cultures are long-term oriented while others are short-term oriented. The reading gives interesting examples demonstrating how these differences can affect user interface design. Addressing these cultural differences in the design can help gear the interface towards a more culture-specific user group to help those users perform their tasks more efficiently by not interfering with their cultural models and way of thought. These differences help explain why a lot of times global companies make multiple websites that look very different from one another for different countries instead of simply translating the websites.
Is it possible to make one website that works for all cultures? Is there a middle-ground for each cultural differences that can be used in website designs so that all users around the world can perform their tasks efficiently? How much are users slowed down by when the culture portrayed by the website does not match their own?
Ian Hildreth - Apr 07, 2009 06:47:07 pm
I found this reading to be very interesting -- I had acknowledged that different countries might contain different versions of websites, but I had never thought of its meaning being something beyond simple translations. It makes sense that different cultures would require different interfaces depending on cultural expectations. For starters, the simple fact that different interfaces are designed by people from within the different countries would demonstrate differences among cultures, regardless of intent. Some things that are culturally acceptable in one place simply are not in another (i.e. a fag in England). I really appreciated the examples in this reading. Some of the topics were a little confusing when just presented in text, but the examples always made the points clear. I was especially surprised in the topic of masculinity to learn that Japan's excite web page has a search engine geared towards women, as if it was normal for a man and a woman to want different results based on the same search. I would imagine something like that would be considered sexist and offensive here in the US. I would never expect to see a woman.google.com. The only topic that I did not completely agree with was the Uncertainty-Avoidance example. In presenting two websites of airlines for different cultures, one being very simple and hierarchical, the other being much more difficult, I would argue that the clearer website is simply a better design, not because of a cultural difference. On the other hand, maybe having high UA means a higher standard in designing a clear interface, so a country with a high UA is forced to make better design decisions.
Shoeb Omar - Apr 07, 2009 10:51:31 pm
This article was very interesting, and added to some stuff I'd already learned about cultural differences from psychology classes I've taken here. For the most part the examples were illuminating (with the exception of the UA one in which you couldn't really tell if the chinese website required more patience unless you could read chinese) and interesting to read about. However, I would argue that the relevance of developing different websites to serve different cultures is minimal with exception to specific niche websites. I would say that there is a more fundamental basis to designing good UI that surpasses cultural differences, and that what cultural differences are left by not pandering to different cultures is minimized by a new globally web-savvy culture. That is to say, those growing up with the internet today, are used to a certain form and function to their websites, that is part of a global "web" culture and not minimized to a certain geographic niche. Furthermore, I believe that most sites directed towards a particular geographic region are generally built by those people within the region (e.g. Indian people building a Bollywood website) who do not have to pay attention to the cultural background of those within their region because they are part of it and will include these biases in their designs. Thus I do question how relevant or important this really is in today's web design. Regardless, I think it's good knowledge to have and keep in mind because these questions do come up in designing globally, and although I don't think drastic measures need to be taken to pander to different locations, I think at least some should be.
Nalditya Kusuma - Apr 08, 2009 12:06:19 am
I had some feeling a long time ago that UI design in different country/culture will be different from one another, but this is the first paper I ever read to justify that. The reading was pretty interesting starting with some definitions and the outcomes of each type along with some example. I really wish I could understand the example with some Chinese characters because I could not quite understand the difference without knowing what the contents said. Simple reading, pretty straight forward. I just wish there could be more examples put there because it will surely help me understand faster.
Kevin Huey - Apr 08, 2009 12:07:36 am
Basically, the main point of this article was to point out that different cultures and societies have different values, and thus when we design the UI components for them to use, we must take into account these differences. The reasoning for this is to prevent any unintended smackdown, or to cater to that group of people. This brings me to one instance that interested me for a day earlier this year. I noticed the differences between the Chinese, Australian, and US Yahoo websites and tried to analyze why Yahoo would change the whole design layout in the way they did. I concluded that the reasons were to best reflect the target group's main interests, and to put those interests in the most easily viewable spots on the webpage.
To answer one of the questions from Saung, I don't think there can be a universal website that works for all cultures. There are just too many cultures to account for, so what we may think is deemed positive in most cultures may be crudely offensive to just one culture. So unless the cultures blend together and the world has just a few cultures (but ideally just one), a single website probably isn't viable.
Chris Thompson - Apr 08, 2009 12:10:03 am
The idea behind this article seems like a good one -- because websites are generally accessed globally, different features and layouts will be appealing to members of different cultures. It cleverly ranks different cultures on various metrics, to relatively determine which ones prefer an attribute more than the others. So far, I agree with the point they're making: different cultures will value different things, and that should be reflected in the design of a website or other user interface (promote the things associated with the values accepted by the target cultures). However, I don't feel it does a good job in linking cause to effect. The article says that one country values property A more than another country, then shows websites from each of them, and in most cases does no justifying that the design was a result of or has anything to do with the property in question. So while I agree that user interface design should take cultural preferences into account, I think more research needs to be done as to how to reflect these preferences.
Dwij Garg - Apr 08, 2009 12:14:54 am
This was a very interesting reading. As an immigrant to this country, I found this reading to not only be extremely helpful but also very valid for the globalized world we live in today. I especially found Hofstede's Dimensions of Culture to be of special significance to designers implementing websites and interfaces for a global audience. Hofstede's five points - Power Distance, Collectivism vs. Individualism, Femininity vs. Masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance, and Long- vs. Short-term Orientation - should all be taken into consideration while designing for a global audience. If any discrepancies are found, they should be rightly addressed by either incorporation in the mainstream product or through the development of a separate version. For instance, while designing a marketing site for a product sold both in America and China, the designer must be ware that China is a communist country. Thus, Collectivism vs. Individualism might come into play. Similarly, while designing products for Europe and Asia, Uncertainty Avoidance plays a key role, as most Asian cultures are much more religiously strict and emotionally expressive than most European cultures. Thus, I really feel that these five points are vital to all interface and website design, especially in today's globally tolerant culture.
Chunwei Lai - Apr 08, 2009 12:49:05 am
The idea that interfaces may differ greatly in different culture is pretty obvious. Social network sites like Facebook won't be popular in countries in Japan that have a drastically different view of how UI should be presented is an example I've heard often. Given that UI can changes rapidly over a short period of time, I wish for a more recent article but the article did show a wide variety of sites from that time. The concept of MAS was presented in a pretty interesting manner, it would be interesting to see what the current values are now.
Alexei Baboulevitch - Apr 08, 2009 12:58:13 am
The article brings up a good point: no matter how un-PC people may make it out to be, cultural differences do exist, and accounting for them in UI design will probably improve usability. However, I feel like the heuristics chosen Hofstede are a bit arbitrary. (The article even mentions that he didn't initially account for a significant dimension in Asian cultures!) Although the dimensions are useful, I feel like there needs to be significant research done into the heuristics alone before valid results can be gathered. Also, the article maps cultural dimensions directly to design changes, which seems rather arbitrary. The example websites in particular didn't convince me, as they were taken from completely different contexts.
The reason why this article was written was partly because UI designers tend to imbue their work with their own cultural traits. Therefore, a good solution to the problem would be to simply outsource website design to people living in the needed cultures.
Sean Ahrens - Apr 08, 2009 01:26:56 am
I'm not going to lie. I thought this reading was quite a stretch. Yes, Hofstede's cultural dimensions are great-- they are quite interesting, applicable, and insightful. However, the leap to make user interface claims from these is a large one. Take, for example, the claim that if a culture is a hierarchical one, users from that culture will like hierarchical navigation in their web interfaces. I'm sorry but that's laughably funny. I agree that some general conclusions about how content should differ between cultures can be made (such as images of students vs. teachers, language focused on the individual vs. the community), but to make as many claims about the actual interface interactions as this paper does is quite a stretch. Take one final example: that people in high uncertainty avoidance (essientially socially conservative) cultures would like a high degree of control in their navigation, whereas people in a low uncertainty avoidance (essientially socially liberal) cultures would like less control of their navigation (links opening in new windows are invited by them). To me that claim is just a laughingstock. Wooo. Haha.
Alan Young - Apr 08, 2009 01:17:23 am
This article presents a lot of important points especially since today more than ever, the world has become increasingly connected and the user base of most applications are diversifying. The article talks about individualism vs. collectivism, which is commonly stressed in American and Asian cultures, respectively, and masculinity vs. femininity, which I found to be too subjective. How does one create the MAS metric. The examples of excite.com's different portals in different countries and their MAS indices did not explain what qualities are exactly being measured. Uncertainty avoidance is another point that deals with how restricted or how many choices an interface allows for the user. Long vs. short-term orientation is about how one looks at practicality and relationships as a source of information. LTO stems from Asian Confucian philosophies of strong family, unequal relations, and virtuous behavior while STO is more similar to Western philosophies of equality, creativity, individualism, and the pursuit of truth. Long and short-term orientation offsets some of the effects of masculinity/femininity and individualism/collectivism. The siemens website in Germany and China illustrate this idea nicely.
Anatol Tsang - Apr 08, 2009 01:53:39 am
I thought this reading was pretty interesting, as it measures different aspects of culture and how it relates to user interface design. I thought it was interesting how you could gleam information about a country's culture from the websites from that country. Also, I notice that some country's websites had a disregard for certain user interface ideals. Perhaps if user interface ideals were more popular, then these differences between countries' user interfaces would disappear? Also, how would you measure a culture of a country and give it a number? I find that to be interesting.
Rohan Dhaimade - Apr 08, 2009 01:43:44 am
To be truthful, I didn't get much out of this article. I took all the sociology classes about the different emphasis different cultures put on different things. I mean, it was quite obvious that cultures treat things differently and how you would want to base a site on an international scale then you would have to make your site different for each individual culture. I think the one thing that he should have covered is that with the new web generation, you have to somehow avoid doing dramatically disturbing things in culture but you can't really build your website toward every nationality and culture. The only thing you should avoid in internationalization of sites is that you should provide native language support (whenever possible) and that you should avoid offending them considerably (dogs are dirty in Arab culture kind of thing). I think styling a website for an individual culture would cost too much to maintain multiple UI interfaces to maintain and deal with it reasonably.
Derek Liu - Apr 08, 2009 01:44:52 am
I thought this article provided some very interesting points, however I agree with Sean's point that the author makes a lot of stretches in some of his assertions. For example, the assertion that "Asian countries are oriented to practice and the search for virtuous behavior" linking to the Chinese website that may take longer to navigate than the German one. True, it would require more patience to navigate the Chinese website if it had a more complicated layout but the issues of practice and practical value of the content is never addressed. As far as the two examples that were presented, it seemed to me that one could not make a clear distinction between which site was easier to navigate through. I did think the section on power distance was interesting, though and one can see that the distinctions made between the websites are much more clear. One example I can think of is the difference between private school and public school websites. The private school websites tend to demonstrate a higher PD rating than the public schools and focus more on the prestige of the school while the public school websites focus more of a focus on the students. The article puts forth a valid point: cultural values will be reflected in interface design, even if some of the points it makes are a bit unbelievable.
William Cho - Apr 08, 2009 01:57:55 am
This article reminds us that it's always a good idea to be aware of different cultures when designing user interfaces, something we can keep in mind while developing our games with a purpose. I liked the side-by-side picture comparisons of various outdated websites tailored for different cultures; I could more easily see the different aesthetics that each website was trying to present, especially some of the unconscious design decisions influenced by the mindset of having been brought up in that culture. The author's conclusion of having multiple versions of a website for different cultures sounds nice, but would probably be a big hassle to constantly update and maintain across all the different versions. I would just focus more on the overall design and worry about the cultural implications afterwards.
Timofey Titov - Apr 08, 2009 02:25:00 am
Cultural differences might seem like a small deal, but in reality it is not. I remember a Microsoft presentation where they mentioned a user study in Thailand. It turns out that the Windows blue color was seriously affecting their revenues, because it is considered feminine. Strength and masculinity is associated with pink! As the internet expands, services and software will be more and more distributed to the whole world. That's why adjustment to each geocultural location will be of big importance, not just from usability standpoint of view, but from economical one.
Chao Michael Zhang - Apr 08, 2009 02:09:30 am
I found it very interesting how different cultures can be so different in how they develop websites. Some of the aspects of culture that affect websites were things I've never ever considered before, such as power distance. It's interesting how in the US, the power distance is very low, and college websites focus almost entirely on the students, whereas in other countries it promotes the administration and college itself.
In light of so many different conditions introduced by a particular culture, I wonder if a neutral website could be made to accomodate each of the various parameters. Is there a list of guidelines that a website developer could follow in order to build a user interface that is friendly towards each of the different cultures and patterns mentioned in this paper? What would such a website look like?
Building a multi-lingual website is one thing, but what this article suggests is something completely different, and quite foreign to me.
Jeffrey Patzer - Apr 08, 2009 02:45:38 am
I thought this article was pretty sweet. It provided a good method for a person to go about designing and tailoring their website for a more global audience. I wonder however if over time the mixing of websites and the ability to access other countries' sites will cause a general consensus in 'good' design. This is relative though, because each culture has different goals for a site. For instance, I want information to be found easily to I can quickly move on while someone else may want to see more artwork. I guess it depends more on the person than the culture though. Since this might be stereotyping people from a culture and there are always exceptions. Beyond these exceptions though, I think the article definitely provides a solid framework to begin describing the differences between cultures.
Sum Sum Wong - Apr 08, 2009 02:31:37 am
I was already excited even before reading the article since it appeared to be pretty new and up-to-date comparing to previous readings. The topic focused on how should website designs be altered in order to fit different cultures perfectly. Acutally, the five dimensions mentioned in the reading not only can apply on website designs, but also on User Interfaces of all kinds of products. The idea of five dimensions, to me, is very very brilliant because it systemized those fragmental knowledge about different cultures we got in mind. And applying the 5 dimensions in UI designs flexibly would definitely end up with nice interfaces for users in different regions. The text in the reading are sometimes abstract and hard to understand, but the graphical examples made everything just so simple. Personally, I found this reading very informative and I like it very much. (I especially like the sentence "In a multi-cultural world, it is necessary to cooperate to achieve practical goals without everyone to think, act and believe identicall." (pg. 25))
Sean Kim - Apr 08, 2009 02:34:47 am
I strongly agreed with the author about the relationship between local culture and interface to be used for there. I also think user interfaces are designed to be adjusted with the characteristic of cultures that the locality has. Literally speaking, it is because user interfaces are made to used by a "User". So when we tried to design user interfaces for users who are in different culture, we need to consider his five dimension of culture ,( power-distance, individualism vs. collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity, uncertainty avoidance, and long- vs. short-term orientation )
Moonway Lin - Apr 08, 2009 12:52:25 am
Culture vs. Corporate is quite an interesting reading! The emphasis on the individual vs. the collective in Western vs. Eastern cultures was something I learned about in sociology, but I never imagined that this would show up in UI design. It makes sense that in order to capture their audiences' attention, companies must appeal to their clients by advertising in ways that are consistent with their societal beliefs. The same explanation applies for the other contrasts: abstraction vs. representations, people vs. objects. When designing UIs, the cultural beliefs and attitudes of the target user must also be taken into account as one of the heuristics.
Stephanie Shih - Apr 08, 2009 02:43:20 am
I'd considered the idea that different cultures would merit different sites before - for example, in official video game sites, the layouts of the Japanese homepage and the English homepage are very, very different. But it was fascinating to see the differences quantified, and how the differences translated to the UI. The categories Marcus determined in the reading are in a way the pillars of a culture.
The question to consider is whether it is possible to find some style of interface that appeals to all cultures. Or will cultures adapt to make finding that balance less necessary? On the other hand, I think there are some basics of UI that apply no matter what culture, but to have an appeal to all cultures I think may be impossible to achieve.
Phiroath Chan - Apr 08, 2009 03:13:02 am
So i felt this paper was well organized. Topics were broken into sections and examples followed afterward in each section. I guess the topic of individualism and Collectivism stuck out to me because we are students at berkeley and we cant get more individualistic than here i suppose. Everyone does kinda look out for themselves due to competition between grades. The bell curve naturally put us together in this college student society. The section on how individualism and collectivism actually effect user interface design was even more interesting. Some to me seemed very far-fetched yet it fits in terms of interface design. For instance, when taking about youth vs the aged, its a natural question to ask yourself if your an interface designer since your target market is very important. Both groups have different responses so you might not be able to please both the youthful generation and the aged generation at the same time.
Cuong Ngo - Apr 08, 2009 03:49:10 am
The article turned out to be a good read despite its considerable length. I couldn't agree more with the author that "companies that want to do international business on the web should consider the impact of culture on the understanding and use of Web-based communication, content, and tools." This explains why international companies almost always have multiple versions of its corporate website, each of which specifically targets a country. For example, yahoo.com and yahoo.cn are completely different in every aspect of design principles from language to layout to UI elements. yahoo.com supports English whereas yahoo.cn is Chinese. It's important to keep in mind that culture does affect our user interface designs. Therefore, designers have to take culture into account whenever they go about designing a product.
Alexander Cho - Apr 08, 2009 04:16:48 am
I found the article quite interesting and relevant. I especially appreciated the different examples comparing differing levels of UI characteristics that were pointed out. A lot of these things I never really considered. I mostly thought the UIs or websites I create would be only for the US, but the author brings out a good point of how the website can and will be viewed worldwide. Though I don't see how I could offend other cultures with my content, taking other considerations like masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, etc is something to consider.
Jason Lo - Apr 08, 2009 04:21:55 am
I liked this article. Since it consisted of mostly pictures I did not feel like it was a long read, some more examples would have been interesting. I thought a lot of the differences boil down to the goals of the websites, for example, it is difficult to compare nature sites in Costa Rica versus United States. That seemed the case in the gender difference websites, which mostly depended on whether the sites had a male/female section, which for a lot of sites is unnecessary. I agreed with some of the issues in the articles. I sometimes go on Chinese websites from Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. They all have similar design styles, but it seems sites from mainland China are more likely to have more basic websites.
Ling Chen - Apr 08, 2009 04:53:59 am
I enjoyed reading the article because it brought up interesting points and was nicely divided into sections. I guess I have never paid much attention to how much culture has influenced my decision makings and my interactions with different interfaces. Of course, I thought even less about how my culture has affected my designs. I really enjoyed looking at the different examples of websites in all the sections. They provide concrete illustrations of the differences between cultures. When I first look at the examples, I only thought that they were simply different designs because different designers prefer different looks and feels. Now that I think about it, the designs were probably different because the designers were influenced by different cultures. I never thought before that what we choose to display and how we arrange certain things will send different messages to the viewers. After reading this article, I think I would be putting a lot more thoughts into my own designs and be able to read other people's designs better. There's a lot of considerations we have to take into account when designing a web interface for our users with different cultural backgrounds.
Kevin Nakahara - Apr 08, 2009 05:07:21 am
I greatly enjoyed reading about the connectedness of culture and UI design. Certainly, cultural differences manifest themselves in all sorts of way in various art forms and designs, and it appears that with UI design there is no exception. When I've browsed through Chinese websites in the past, usually for pictures, I was struck as how long it took to find certain pieces of information compared to US websites. The explanation offered about short vs long term cultural orientation helps explain that. I've also looked at Japanese auto company websites in the past, again mostly to look at pictures. At these websites, there is a great deal of hierarchy and subdivision within menus, and each trim level for each car can possibly get its own website niche. The prevalence of the notion of social hierarchy in Japanese culture is one of the explanation presented in the reading which helps to explain this difference. All in all, I thought this was a very enjoyable read.
Eric Hernandez - Apr 08, 2009 05:27:13 am
This paper introduces a metric to measure what the researcher Hofstede believed to be 5 dimensions that largely define any particular culture. The paper then makes the interesting jump from the recorded 5 dimensional metrics from 53 different countries to the design of user interfaces. It's very true that UI designers seldom take into account the preferences of other countries; a mistake that likely costs many companies millions of dollars. The two dimensions of Power Distance and Uncertaintly Avoidance seemed particularly relevant. Cultures with a distaste for uncertaintly probably should have more straightforward controls, even perhaps at the cost of GOMS time. I do have a small problem with this paper however, in that it would seem that many different sets of dimensions could be used to classify cultures, and the 5 given seem much less relevant to interface design than other possible sets of dimensions. I doubt that there is any metric that could produce a better interface than performing actual testing of the interface with members of the culture in question.
Chang Su - Apr 08, 2009 05:39:29 am
This reading provides a novel viewpoint on design differences. It has never occurred to me that design decisions (especially computer interface designs such as webpages) could vary according to cultural differences. However, my first reaction was to disagree, at least to the examples raised by the authors in the paper. In my opinion, not only can the author not claim that the examples are representative of all webpages from their respective regions, the differences are mostly due to poor versus good designership rather than cultural gaps.
To back up my claim, I took a look at a few websites. They do not show the diffrences proposed by the author.
Power Distance
- Compare the corporate information page of Siemens USA and Siemens China. China, which scores 80 on the Hofstede PD rating, uses a little smiling girl as the anchor picture, while USA, which scores 40, uses a picture of a city skyline. The webpages are otherwise similar in structure and design.
Individualism vs. Collectivism
- Compare two university webpages: University of Sydney in Australia, and the National University of Singapore. Australia scores a high 90 on the IC index, while Singapore scores 20. The University of Sydney webpage, however, draws viewers' attention first with the college's academic achievement ("Science gets close to invisibility", "Broadband revolution to come"), then with its chancellor's latest accolades ("Dame Leonie's latest honour"). On the other hand, the National University of Singapore showcases individual achievements ("Ling Pei Shan, Year 4, Arts & Social Sciences: NUS student, Activist, Orator, Singer") and student activities.
Uncertainty Avoidance
- Compare two fashion magazine webpages: Vivi from Japan, and Vogue from UK. The webpage from Japan, with one of the highest UA ratings (92), does not look too different from that from UK, rated at 35. With its aggressive colors and abundance of pictorial elements, the Vivi page can even be said to be more complex than that of Vogue.
These examples show that the examples raised by the author to support his hypothesis that cutural differences affect design decisions are far from exhaustive or representative. Even if the Hofstede ratings were accurate to begin with (it is after all a Western man's attempt to categorize the entire world), its correlation to computer interface design is flimsy at best.
Siddharth Shah - Apr 08, 2009 10:07:58 am
I thought this reading was pretty cool, honestly. The main takeaway point, obviously, is that different cultures have different values and customs, and these need to be taken into account when designing for multiple cultures. Also, this extends beyond the simple, "Oh, I'm writing a website for a Greek audience, maybe the text should all be in Greek." I think it's great that people are realizing that they need to respect and understand their audience's culture to really be able to connect with them.
I am, however, curious about how a company would cost-efficiently go about maintaining different versions of the same website. They would need somebody who is familiar with the other culture's language and customs, obviously, but even that person might not be able to really be able to tell you what EXACTLY is wrong with a design; it seems like it would be a much more subconscious sort of dislike for an offending design. And, of course, the programming aspect becomes incredibly more complex if you have to design multiple versions that somehow are all more or less in sync with each other, despite being in different languages and having different designs/features.
Also, I'd like to point out that while the idea of considering the audience's culture is definitely more applicable to website design, it is also important when designing desktop applications. Way back when I was taking the MCP exam for an RDBMS, we had to know how to design for different cultures. I scored a 100% on the User Interface section, so obvi I knew what I was doing :)
Shendy Kurnia - Apr 08, 2009 10:12:02 am
This reading is talking about influence of culture in user interface design. From previous readings and topics, it is not new that in designing an interface, we have to take a look who our audiences are. We even talked about a little bit of psychology too. Stereotypes and common knowledge are the things different from one culture to another. The author mentions that masculinity and femininity might not represented as the same from a country to another, for example. The reading also talks about uncertainty avoidance, which says that a culture with high uncertainty tends to be expressive and if we design a website whose users will be majorly from this kind of country, we want to have a more expressive design.
Bernardo de Seabra - Apr 08, 2009 10:28:54 am
In today's flat world, software is developed for the worldwide population that speak different languages and more importantly have lots of cultural differences. The authors of this article discuss the 5 different categories that pose a culture. Once these 5 different categories have been established the article discusses how these must impact the UI design and how UI designers are unaware of this necessary differences. More precisely, UI should be tailored to the different cultures based on, for example the Power Distance category where more control should be given to the user since control is a strong factor in their culture. At the same time, having interned at Yahoo! last summer and worked closely with the Yahoo! Frontpage team I'm aware of the long and painful cycle of modifying an interface, especially when many other factors need to be taken into consideration such as advertisement revenue, etc. So, based on what the authors are proposing it would be necessary to have quite a few parallel efforts to design different interfaces depending on the region of the globe the user was visiting from. This seems to be an overkill even for big companies, not to mention small startups.
Matthew Can - Apr 08, 2009 10:27:55 am
Marcus's reading did a nice job of explaining the influence of national cultures on user interfaces. I once saw an example of this in Wired magazine a long time ago. It was a Japanese website similar to YouTube, except that viewers can embed comments into the video so that the comments scroll across the screen as the video plays. My guess is that this is so popular in Japan because Japan has a collectivist culture (or at least relative to the US, as we perceive it). The Japanese viewers probably enjoy reading others' comments as much as watching the video, if not more so. Here in the US, I can imagine people saying, "What's with all this text? It's keeping me from enjoying the video." Our culture is too individualistic to place that much value on others' comments.
Denise Ngai - Apr 08, 2009 10:36:00 am
I found this article quite interesting. The article discusses Geert Hofstede's five dimensions:
• Power-distance • Collectivism vs. individualism • Femininity vs. masculinity • Uncertainty avoidance • Long- vs. short-term orientation
Websites were then evaluated in terms of these dimensions. I liked how the article compared and contrasted different websites (such as websites from different cultures, websites for different purposes, etc.) with regards to the rating they receive when analyzing them for the five dimensions.
Through this analysis and rating system, it is evident to see a difference in what people perceive is important, depending on their culture, purpose, etc.
Therefore, this is a useful tool to consider what is important and what should be featured when designing user interfaces. One must think of the audience and the message he/she is trying to convey to the audience; the aspects that he/she thinks are important for the audience to notice and realize, the feeling he/she wants the audience to experience while using the interface.
Aaron Hong - Apr 08, 2009 10:54:20 am
This is an interesting reading. Marcus talks about how user interface designs can change across cultures, and I agree there are cultural differences. It is interesting to note the 5 categories that he mentions: Power Distance, Individualism vs Collectivism, Masculinity vs Femininity, Uncertainty Avoidance, and finally Long vs Short-term Time orientation. These do sound like reasonable explanations of user interface designs for specific countries, and that international websites should follow these cultural cues. However, I'm interested in seeing how globalization works in all of this.
Anjana Dasu - Apr 08, 2009 11:09:48 am
I thought this article was very relevant for user interface design in industry. One main concern of large companies is internationalization. For example, last summer, when I interned at SAP, the company had recently acquired BusinessObjects and was trying to integrate BOBJ's applications into SAP's reporting and analytics framework. A major concern was the extent to which BOBJ's products supported foreign languages and scripts. In this same way, companies should also take into account the interface with which an international user interacts. The examples in this article all pertain to web design, and clearly illustrate how power distance, individualism/collectivism, femininity/masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term vs. short term orientation come into play when designing for various countries. Clearly, different effects are obtained-- a website becomes more or less formal, a layout may become asymmetrical or symmetrical, information may be immediately visible or revealed only upon specific access, etc. In an increasingly global interactive economy, I think taking into account various cultures in user interface design would be beneficial to many companies.
Andrew Chen - Apr 08, 2009 10:54:16 am
This article was quite interesting to me since I grew up knowing two cultures: Taiwanese and American. A trip to Taiwan would convince anyone that there really are cultural differences in design choices, such as in symmetry or color saturation. This raises an interesting question for me though: since good design depends in large part on the aesthetic sense of the designer, are designers able to create designs that are aesthetically pleasing both to himself and to the culture in question? Having lived in the U.S. for some years now, I have realized that my sense of aesthetics, or my sense of what looks the most normal, have been westernized. So my question is, if I design something that looks good to me, will it cause confusion, uncertainty, or discomfort to someone from another part of the globe? And can I design something that looks good to me while taking note of Hofstede's dimensions?
Carolchen - Apr 08, 2009 12:10:40 pm
I didn't know that we had reading for today, since I didn't see the reading on the website when I checked on Monday. But I've since read it and found it very interesting. I hadn't been aware that UIs could be designed for different cultures. A couple of thoughts:
I'm glad the reading addressed the risk of stereotyping when taking into consideration cultural differences. This would be my main concern, especially when venturing towards the question of whether sites should be directed at men and women separately. The very idea makes me uneasy, and I am insulted by the fact that the excite website for women is focused on cooking. I'm not even a feminist.
I was very surprised that the USA has a stronger masculine culture than Arab countries. I suppose this aspect of the culture is more hidden and subtle in the USA than in Arab countries where women face obvious limitations in what they can wear and do in public. I was also very interested, though not very surprised, but the fact that China and the USA are on such opposite extremes for LTO values. This explains why Chinese kids growing up in the USA with parents of traditional mindsets face such an internal battle in reconciling the differences (me included).
Finally, it was not immediately clear why cultures with high or low uncertainty avoidance came with certain characteristics such as high suicide rate (high UA) and high caffeine consumption (low UA). My theory is that the low tolerance of differences in high UA cultures makes life more unbearable for individualistic or highly creative people on the margins of society, leading to the aforementioned suicide rates. My theory about the high caffeine consumption was addressed in the reading, which is that these people need a way to cope with the added complexities and stresses of complicated interactions.
