Book Reflection 3

The book I choose this semester is cross-cultural design written by Senongo Akpem. This book is one of a book part collection, compassionate design series is related to design. The whole book is divided into six chapters, each chapter has its own theme around cross-culture design. Therefore, after reading each chapter, you will have your own insights on cross-culture design based on his theme to trigger in-depth thinking. The reason why I choose this book is effectively designing for a multicultural audience is a topic worth exploring and researching. With the development of globalization, more and more people pay attention to cross-cultural topics. To give a simple example, more and more companies or employers value candidates for an important skill is cross-cultural skills. Employers hope that employees can understand the cultural habits and values of customers and respect these differences when facing customers with different cultural backgrounds, and at the same time have an open mind. This enables employees to better integrate into the working environment composed of different cultures in the future work and form a more efficient work team.

The book mentions one of the most widely used frameworks for measuring cross-cultural values-the cultural dimension of Hofstede. The six dimensions are 1. Power distance index (PDI) it refers to the degree of acceptance of authority or privilege by people in the culture. Obviously, China is a country with a high-power index. On the contrary, the United States is a country with a low-power index. An example of application in design is the membership mechanism in product design. Such as Netflix in the United States and iQIYI in China. iQIYI uses black and gold on the member interface to highlight the distinguished status of members and has an exclusive profile picture frame. Netflix is a simple interface, more emphasis on advertising, clearer picture quality and other services. 2. Individualism vs Collection (IDV) it means the society as a whole care more about “individual” or “collective”. The position of a society in this dimension is mainly reflected in whether people’s self-image is defined as “I” or “we”. In terms of product design, the homepage of a video platform for countries with an individualistic cultural background can be personalized according to customer preferences, and for countries with a collectivist cultural background, users can be pushed according to the mainstream or “ranking list” concept. 3. Masculinity vs Femininity (MAS) Refers to whether men or women are more dominant in the culture. For masculinity, competition in the whole society is more intense. But for femininity, the whole society pays more attention to consensus. 4. Uncertainty avoidance index (UAI) it is the extent to which people in society can tolerate uncertainty. For example, on the Loading icon, for weather add a progress bar. It may be okay to face Low UAI without it. But for users in High UAI countries, it is recommended to add a progress bar or percentage. 5. Long-term orientation vs Short-term orientation which mainly focus on the trade-off between long-term and short-term interests in a culture under the cultural background, the users feel more important on future or the present. Just like the example given in the first part is the membership fee of the video platform. For long-term oriented countries, the platform adopts an annual fee discount system to attract users to recharge the annual fee, but for short-term oriented countries, the platform adopts a monthly payment system that can be cancelled at any time. 6. Indulgence vs Restraint (IVR) It is the willingness of members in different cultures to control their own desires. I think these six dimensions are very helpful for cross-cultural product design, avoiding cultural cognitive differences and conflicts, and allowing people to use research to understand the culture and preferences of the target group before designing.

Another point in the book is to learn to question your assumptions. I think this is very important. Author introduce three methods to state and do this. 1. Record your assumptions. 2. Share your assumptions. 3. Create a list of questions. We also try to avoid the appearance of bias when testing in class, such as avoid to interviewing friends or family. Face up to the questioned point of view will better optimize the product and better meet customer needs. Self-inspection and improvement are an indispensable step in product design.