How can we design truly “user-centered” interfaces without first understanding culture?
Culture is the backbone of our character. Clyde Kluckhohn in Mirror for Man describes culture as “the total way of life of a people.” We all know culture is crucial to understanding people, but do we actively apply what we know about culture to designing better interfaces?
The globalization of technology is generating greater expectations for culturally-conscious user interfaces. To meet these expectations, we as designers must do better to understand culture and be mindful of cultural values.
Writing a Thesis
UC Berkeley has an amazing Interdisciplinary Studies program which lets students choose classes that revolve around a unique topic. Since the school doesn’t offer a design program, this was my academic outlet to studying what I truly loved.
As an undergraduate student in this program, I’m writing my senior thesis on cultural differences in mobile app interfaces. Specifically, I’ll be analyzing mobile apps in the United States and South Korea.
Cultural Dimensions
Since culture is not something that can easily be interpreted, I will be using cultural frameworks that are grounded in years of global survey data. These frameworks are broken down into cultural dimensions that act as approximate measurements of culture. Two prevalent frameworks I‘ll be referencing were developed by Geert Hofstede and Shalom Schwartz.
I chose to study the US and S. Korea because they’ve historically shown strong differences in cultural dimensions, particularly individualism v. collectivism (IDV) and long-term v. short-term orientation (LTO). This makes it easier to attribute differences in interface design to differences in cultural dimensions.
Countries who score high on IDV emphasize the self more, and those who score low emphasize the group more. Countries who score high on LTO are more future-oriented, and those who score low prefer immediate results. (Read more about cultural dimension definitions)
Prior Work
Cross-cultural design research is nothing new. There are plenty of publications about this very topic that also use Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Aaron Marcus published Crosscurrents: Cultural Dimensions and Global Web User-Interface Design back in 2000. Ewa Callahan published Interface Design and Culture in 2005.
However, not much has been written about mobile interfaces. The physical screen limitation on mobile devices forces designers to make trade-offs, which can reveal cultural influences during this decision-making process. I hope to contribute to this literature by concentrating on mobile.
My Research Plan
My two methods of data collection are:
- Pairwise mobile app analysis
- Interviews with interaction designers
Pairwise Mobile App Analysis
My analysis is divided into five main app categories: (1) messaging, (2) photography, (3) media/news, (4) search/information, and (5) reviews. I’ve identified two popular apps for each category, one from the US and one from S. Korea.
I’m in the process of laying out these pairs of apps side-by-side, and finding UI differences between the US and S. Korean counterparts. These differences will hopefully correlate to the disparity between cultural dimensions.
Interviews with Interaction Designers
I aim to interview at least one interaction designer of each mobile app. These interviews will help me grasp the design rationale behind each app and tie these justifications to cultural values. It may also reveal whether designers intentionally or unintentionally design with culture in mind.
If you or anyone you know does interaction design for one of these apps, I would love to have a conversation with you/them. Or if you consider yourself a “power user” of one of these apps, I’d like to talk to you as well!
What’s Next?
Over the next 3–4 months, I will continue analyzing these mobile apps, interviewing designers, and discovering more prior work. My goals for the rest of February are:
- Finish the pairwise mobile app analysis
- Conduct at least 2 interviews
In Part 2, I’ll be sharing some of my findings from my research. Stay tuned!
These Medium posts are primarily for me to keep track of my progress for the next 3–4 months (Feb-May 2017) while I write my thesis. However, you are welcome to follow along and share your thoughts about my project by commenting below!
