Comments on How to Architect Sites Across Cultures Without Losing Your Mind

shinya — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:50 GMT

I think Will raised a very interesting point. In my view, the appreciation North Americans have with “ease to use” translates to the appreciation for the creator’s ability to present complexity, as a perspective. Most North Americans understand and appreciates the dynamic nature of relationships between information. On the other hand, the Japanese believe that any complexity can be understood and mapped if a consensus can be reached. In other words, generally, I think the Japanese prefer using pattern recognition over simple heuristics when it comes to information search. I think this difference comes from the differences in the two education systems, but that’s another story… This difference should be taken into account when Information Architects design a usable web space, no?

Terry Burcham — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:50 GMT

Impressive article. And I agree with your response to “Ben” about vocabulary. I am never offended when someone uses what some might consider “big words”. There’s a beauty to our language and vocabulary that we should all embrace and feel compelled to learn. If I run across a word I don’t know the meaning of, I look it up. Simple as that. How could you not want to learn new vocabulary?

In terms of the article itself – while I haven’t had the opportunity to work on a cross-cultural site, I am working on a site which has a unique user base. I am currently constructing the IA for a site which assists users with disabilities (blind/low-vision, deaf/hard of hearing, cognitive disabilities, dexterity disabilities). The single biggest lesson I learned from your article is to go out and test the actual audience rather than hypothesize about what sorts of nomenclature or navigation schema I think they would want to use. It’s a great challenge.

Adam Greenfield — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:50 GMT

No need to apologize, Will. Nor do you miss the point of the sommelier anecdote: instead of insisting on what I think is correct, or going head-to-head with an equally stubborn client, far better to solicit the opinions of actual users.

While I personally feel comfortable with audience samples substantially > 1, you did just what I should have done, which is to get out of the way and ask someone who resembles the intended audience far more than I do.

Lesson learned.

Will Leshner — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:50 GMT

Sorry for posting twice, but I think there is a really interesting cultural difference between Japan and the US that I’m just not quite able to capture. It has to do with food and excellence. Japan is a country obsessed with excellence. I’m sure you will all jump all over me for this one, but I think the US is obsessed with “ease”. Everything has to be “easy to use”, “easy to setup”, “no fuss”, “no bother”. In Japan, the more difficult something is the more people are impressed with it. People who are good at something frequently go far beyond what is needed to impress. That isn’t to say that, in the end, the Japanese are any better at anything than someone in the US. I don’t believe that. I’m merely talking about what impresses people. In the US it’s how easy something is. In Japan, it’s how difficult something is. Japan is also obsessed with food. And here’s where I’m going to get flamed a second time: in my opinion, the US has no interest in food. There are people in the US who like good food. But in Japan it’s everyone everwhere. And so you put the two together and you get a country that is obsessed with excellent food and the people who prepare it (think Ryouri no Tetsujin). Thus, the fact that a word like sommelier is a common word that everyone knows is not surprising at all.

Will Leshner — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:50 GMT

Your article is very interesting. Unfortunately, and I may be missing the point entirely by saying this, your client was exactly right. In Japan, the word “sommelier” is very common and I’m sure that most any Japanese person visiting the site would know right away what was intended. As a test I asked my Japanese wife what she thought a “book sommelier” would be on a site about books and she guessed it immediately. Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t have stuck to your guns. You probably did the right thing.

Andy D — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:50 GMT

i’ve been fighting with these same issues on my most recent project, a web-app for lawyers. while there are no international cultural boundaries I’m crossing, the legalese of contracts and the persona of a lawyer has been quite a task for me to grasp. it all just seems so overly complicated.

one issue your article addresses is our attraction to High-Modernist values. i too, apperently like amny information architects on the web today, am often drawn to values of simplicity and clarity. myself being a more of a post-modernist -maybe more of an expirmentalist/conceptualist/pragmatist- i justify this as a personal preference. A preference that I am not tied to, but just happen to be leaning on for the moment while i am still learning how people react to this new medium.

anyhow, i find the tie between high-modernist values and information architecture to be an interesting one. i’d be curious to hear more about your feelings on that.

thanks for the good article.

PeterVD — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:50 GMT

Great article, thanks! I always enjoy practical war stories from the cultural frontiers!

David Gammel — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:50 GMT

The core problem in this article, disagreement over which label to use and the dynamics around how that disagreement were resolved, is correctly identified as an issue of cultural differences.

"As it turns out, there is a grain of truth 
in the idea that every audience is different 
and that this difference demands a variant
construction of usability."

This idea is more than a grain: it is an entire container ship full of truth grain, riding low in the Pacific.

Communication across and between cultures causes conflict, misunderstanding and other problems largely due to unrecognized differences of opinion over how to interpret symbols, labels and relationships. How can usability not be profoundly influenced by the culture of the person viewing a web site?

Differences over prefered ways to conduct business were also a cultural factor in this situation. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel on how to successfully operate within Japan: there is a huge amount of literature available about American companies operating and partnering in Japan.

Learn from those who have gone before, and take advantage of some cross-cultural training if you haven’t already.

Stephen — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:49 GMT

Where do I start—“pick your battles”, “Web design circa 1996”, or what another commentor alluded to: “Kyaku sama wa kami sama desu” (the customer is god)? Wherever you start unravelling the thread of—is it really Consulting that we’re doing in Japan?—what I’ve experienced of client interaction here in Tokyo becomes exactly the kind of selfless, sometimes seemingly mindless, Zen of latter-day retainership that I can only imagine lead samurai to beat their heads against walls even as recently as 140 years ago. Japan still is a feudal country, and as much as I used to think that as Westerners we existed on a separate plane from the Japanese, now, after my first REAL client meeting last Friday, I’m feeling like I’m just a different kind of vassal-underling. A friend by chance emailed me your article Saturday, Adam, not knowing that a month of my IA and my team’s business and design work just got hit by a freight train of previously unexpressed client disagreement with our recommendations. Now we’re in serious revision mode in the midst of a schedule that doesn’t really allow for revisions. In other words, this feels like a variation on your story—in which for good or ill we don’t lose the client (end not yet known).

Kira — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:49 GMT

When I read your article I felt relief when I found out that finally one person touched the matter of cross-cultural problems developing projects for the web.
I work as a consultant in design, content development and IA for a multicultural company in Uganda, Africa and I am from Venezuela. My direct bosses are in Denmark, but the team is lead and conformed by Ugandans with another consultant from Denmark. People of 3 different continents working together in the same kind of industry is a situation very hard to overcome because the understanding of the industry is also very different. My approach is more American since my formation as a journalist in my country is under American influence and the experience and knowledge of the web in my case has being more influenced by the American gurus. The Danish experience is centred in Denmark. I can’t even say that is Europe but Denmark and is mainly technical without giving any importance at all to user centred interface design, IA or content development. Something that strikes me since Jakob Nielsen is originally Danish and Denmark is one of the countries that have given a lot to the development of design in the world. In Uganda, and I can make it extensible to the whole sub-Saharan Africa, the aesthetic is important and it’s African, meaning colourful, baroque, terror vacui kind of way. But the clients are open to all kind of propositions in terms of content and there is a big desire to equalize in standards in terms of design and content delivery with the rest of the world without loosing identity. This 3 scenarios placed together had given me a lot of learning about listening, patience and let the things flow at their own pace when the junction gets congested. Not only working with clients but at the office can be very tricky: timing for instance, a Danish can get really upset if a meeting is held 5 minutes late, in Uganda usually happens in the best scenario half an hour late… Protocol is other issue, Danish straightforwardness it doesn’t work, in Uganda always a speech, an introduction and a “diplomatic” way of saying things to the client with politeness up-front even saying the most harsh things…This is getting too long for just to say that cross cultural issues should be taken in consideration not only for IA on a web development enterprises but also when it comes to project management and teams that work online from different parts of the world or together at the same spot but from different backgrounds and cultures. I am sure you can tell a lot about that too.

Victor — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:49 GMT

“Cross-cultural” only tells half the story here. I think this idea is a gem:

“In the end, I believe nobody won. By inflexibly holding the line on “best practices” regarding a label, and a few other similar disagreements, I contributed to a situation in which a site was built that shafts the hapless user far more thoroughly than any we might have created.”

Our hyperfocus on design issues can sometimes cloud the bigger issue of design in the context of people and society. If we can sometimes look at the flaws and ‘let it go’ we could retain the human relationship and possibly influence greater change in the long term. Also see http://www.IAwiki.net/EthicsForIAs

Adam, thanks for the honest take on this.

Adam Greenfield — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:49 GMT

Well, Ben, I’m sorry I couldn’t meet your expectations.

With regard to vocabulary: generally speaking, in my experience information architects are erudite and verbal, highly educated, and possessed of the wherewithal to use a dictionary if all else fails. So I think I have a pretty good fit of content to audience; you may simply be an edge case.

I’d also take your POV a leetle more seriously, had you had the guts to sign your comments with a valid email address or URL. Otherwise, well, it’s just sniping from the peanut gallery, and we all know that it’s easier to crit something than it is to build.

Everyone else: thanks for your insights. Andrew, it *is* incredible, isn’t it? The gulf between what we think of as normative and what others hold to be so never fails to amaze/amuse me.

Have a better one,
Adam

shinya — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:49 GMT

Your article reminded me of my days in Tokyo, working as a web developer. A colleague of mine once told me to remember that the customer is like “god”. Yes, the customer may not be your end user but in this hierarchy of customer relationships, ultimately, the user will be the “god” of all “gods”. Putting my trust in this cultural framework really helped me understand how the Japanese collaborate.

ben — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:49 GMT

such a long article for such a small message? also, use words your audience will understand- i thought you would think of YOUR users’ usability first before writing an article about it. infact, i like the posting to this article more than the article itself.

Andrew — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:49 GMT

It’s amazing what kinds of surprises you get when dealing with cross-cultural preferences. My friend’s wife is Singaporean, and grew up in a house lit almost entirely with flourescent tube lights. The houses of everyone she knew were also lit this way.

Put her in a warmly and indirectly lit room, or in candlelight, and she’s beside herself with discomfort; it’s the same feeling I get when I sit under flourescent tube lights in an office or convenience store.

My brain literally cannot parse this preference of hers, since my own preferences for “better” lighting are so strong.

She also prefers websites with lots of animated characters and exclamation points!!! It’s like turning on the flourescent lights for her when she sees those things on a page: they are comfortingly familiar.