Crosscurrents: cultural dimensions and global Web user-interface design

This paper introduces dimensions of culture, as analyzed by Geert Hofstede in his classic study of cultures in organizations, and considers how they might affect userinterface designs. Examples from the Web illustrate the cultural dimensions.mation first or read about the organization and assess its credibility?Different cultures look for different data to make decisions. A New Issue for User-Interface DesignersIn most projects, the complex interplay of user, business, marketing, and engineering requirements needs to be resolved by Web user-interface and information visualization designers.Their development process includes iterative steps of planning, research, analysis, design, evaluation, documentation, and training.As they carry out all of these tasks, however, they would do well to consider their own cultural orientation and to understand the preferred structures and processes of other cultures.This attention would help them to achieve more desirable global solutions or to determine to what extent localized, customized designs might be better than international or universal ones.Cultures, even within some countries, are very different.Sacred colors in the Judeo-Christian West (e.g., red, blue, white, gold) are different from Buddhist saffron yellow or Islamic green.Subdued Finnish designs for background screen patterns (see Figure 1) might not be equally suitable in Mediterranean climates, in Hollywood, USA, or Bollywood, India.These differences go deeper than mere appearance; they reflect strong cultural values.How might these cultural differences be understood without falling into the trap of stereotyping other cultures?Many analysts in organizational communication have studied cultures thoroughly and published classic theories; other authors have applied these theories to analyze the impact of culture on business relations and commerce (see Bibliography).Few of these works are well known to the user-interface design community.This paper introduces the well-respected work of one theorist, Geert Hofstede, and applies some of his cultural dimensions to Web user interfaces.Edward T. Hall, David Victor, and Fons Trompenaars would have been equally valuable in illuminating the problems of cross-cultural communication on the Web, but our application of Hofstede will demonstrate the value of this body of research for our field.