4. Anxiety Attack
Uncertainty makes many people anxious. Cultures vary in their avoidance of uncertainty, creating different rituals and values regarding formality, punctuality, legal and religious requirements, and tolerance of ambiguity. When designing for high uncertainty- avoidance cultures, emphasize the following:
- Simplicity: Limit choices and amounts of data.
- Results: Let users know the implications of their actions before they do anything.
- Comfort: Mental models should focus on reducing user error.
- Clarity: Design characteristics (color, typography, sound, and so on) support navigation and reduce ambiguity.
Figure 2 [click for larger image] The Sabena Airlines Web site from Belgium is simple and clear; compatible with a high uncertainty avoidance culture. |
 [click for larger image] British Airways Web site from the United Kingdom has much more complex content and allows users more choices. |
Low uncertainty-avoidance cultures would emphasize the reverse:
- Depth: Allow for wandering and risk-taking, and avoid over-protecting users.
- Choice: Maximize options and content.
- Surprises: Less control of navigation, with links opening new windows and leading away from the original location.
- Help system: Focus on a content index as opposed to task-oriented procedures.
- Variety: Coding of color, typography, and sound would focus on maximizing information (avoid redundant coding).
The Sabena Airlines Web site (www.sabena.com), based in Belgium, and the British Airways Web site (www.britishairways.com), based in the United Kingdom, illustrate the results of uncertainty avoidance differences (Figure 2). Both sites have a primary travel booking area with approximately the same number of selectable items (nineteen versus sixteen). However, Belgium has an uncertainty avoidance rating of 94, the highest of the cultures studied. You'll note that the Sabena Airlines site has a home page with very simple, clear layout and limited choices outside of the booking area. The United Kingdom has a rating of 35, and the British Airways site has much more complex content and more than twice the choices. What's more, user options are located in multiple groupings with a variety of input and appearance characteristics.
5. A Little Patience
Hofstede's fifth dimension, long-term time orientation, plays an important role in many Asian countries because of their reliance on Confucian philosophy over many thousands of years. This philosophy states that a stable society requires unequal relations, and that the family is the prototype of all social organizations. Virtuous behavior to others means treating them as you would like to be treated, and virtuous behavior at work means trying to acquire skills and education, working hard, persevering, being frugal, and patient.
Hofstede compared only twenty-three countries for this time-orientation dimension.
According to Hofstede and other analysts, Eastern countries seem more oriented toward the practice of and the desire for virtuous behavior, while Western countries seem more oriented toward belief and the search for truth.
Based on this definition, countries favoring long-term time orientation would emphasize the following:
- Value: Content focused on practice and practical value.
- Credibility: Personal relationships as a source of information.
- Investment: Patience in achieving results and goals.
| Time-Orientation
Values Among the twenty-three countries studied, the following show the most extreme time-orientation values. |
||
| Country | Time-Orientation Value | |
|---|---|---|
| China | (rank 1) | 118 |
| Japan | (rank 4) | 80 |
| USA | (rank 17) | 29 |
| Pakistan | (rank 23) | 0 |
Countries favoring short-term time orientation would emphasize the contrary:
- Certainty: Content focused on truth and close-held beliefs.
- Structure: Rules as a source of information and credibility.
- Urgency: Desire for immediate results and achievement of goals.
Examine two versions of corporate Web sites developed for countries with different long-term time orientation values. Pakistan has a rating of zero, and the Siemens Web site (www.siemens.com.pk), shows a typical Western corporate layout—influenced by Siemens's German corporate headquarters—that emphasizes crisp, clean, functional design and text aimed at achieving goals quickly. The version for China (www.siemens.com.cn), which has a value of 118, typically uses more pictures of people, emphasizing personal relationships.
What's More
This review of cultural dimensions raises some critical questions about how to best globalize a site:
- Should online teachers and trainers act as a friend or guru?
- What motivations should you offer: money, fame, honor, or achievement?
- What role exists for personal versus group opinions?
- What role should community values play in individualist versus collectivist cultures?
- How does the objective of distance learning change in individualist versus collectivist cultures?
- Should Web sites focus on tradition, skills, expertise, or earning power?
- How would job sites differ in individualist versus collectivist cultures?
- Should you develop different sites for men and women?
- How well is advertising hyperbole tolerated?
- How is ambiguity received?
- What differences might permeate Western versus Eastern Web sites in regard to truth versus virtuous practice?
The Numbers
English speaking countries constitute 8 percent of the world's population, but by 2005, approximately 75 percent of Internet users will be non-English speaking. Already, 80 percent of corporate Web sites in Europe offer more languages than English even though launching multi-language site portals with a dozen or more European languages is a significant burden to operations. Of course, culture is more than language.
Consider cross-cultural issues earlier in your planning stages. Provide developers with checklists, guidelines, and other tools to assist them in their phases of analysis, design, and evaluation.
Understanding culture dimensions and how they relate to user-interface design components, as well as to other dimensions such as trust or intelligence, may help designers make better decisions about usability, aesthetics, and emotional experience.
Thinking about how culture affects Web design, from the developer's and the viewer's perspective is just the beginning. A new universe of possibilities, challenges, and achievements awaits.
Aaron Marcus is President of Aaron Marcus and Associates, a Web user-interface design, usability analysis, and consulting firm. He would like to acknowledge the assistance of co-author Professor Emilie Gould for her assistance in contributing to and editing earlier versions of this article.
