Inspirational Cross Cultural Webdesign - Volume #1: Asia

Working international as a webworker means being flexibel in design habits. All of us have their own personal style when designing websites, but cultural habits get more and more important as well. For example Coke had once brought up an ad with women in bikinis and tried to sell the ad globally. You may can imagine that this was not be as successfull in the arabien countries as it was in western countries. So we have to take care of cultural habits and to localize design components. Lets take a look at some asian webdesign in this issue. We plan to cover some more countries during the next weeks to point out differences to be aware off.

Culture impact issues in general

In the first run we have to look at the culture issues that have an impact on cross cultural Webdesign.

Metaphors: Fundamental concepts communicated via words, images, sounds, and tactile experiences. Conceptsof pages, shopping carts, chatrooms, and blogs (Weblogs) are examples. The pace of metaphor invention and neologism will increase because of rapid development, deployment, and distribution through the Web.
Navigation: Movement through content and tools. Examples include dialogue techniques such as menus, dialogue boxes, control panels, icons, tool palettes, and windows.
Interaction: Input/output techniques, including feedback. Examples include the choices of keyboards, mice, pens, or microphones for input and the use of drag-and-drop selection/action sequences.
Appearance: Visual, auditory, and tactile characteristics. Examples include choices of colors, fonts, verbal style (e.g., verbose/lterse or informal/formal), sound cues, and vibration modes.

Example 1 - Colors

Bruce Arnold explains if you are aiming at global audiences it is worth remembering that colours have significant associations. White in many asian cultures is associated with death, in contrast to the black in many European cultures. Red means happiness in China, anger/danger in Japan and fife/creativity in India. Green and saffron yellow have particular associations in Islam and among Buddhist demographics. When you are in doubt which colorstyle to use, go for “CUTE” style rather than “cool” (and don’t be afraid of cuty characters either).

Traditional Design in smoth colors

Red and dark colors

Example 2 - Navigation

Design principles regarding website navigation (eg. assisting users to readily identify where they are, where they have been and where they might go) have a cross-cultural application. There are also differences in how people from different cultures read a page. Many read from left to right, top to bottom. Some read from right to left. Some read from bottom to top. In modern times, it has become increasingly common for these languages to be written horizontally, from left to right, with successive rows going from top to bottom, under the influence of European languages such as English.

Googles uniqe design differs in asian countries

Very playful and flashy

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Inspirational Cross Cultural Webdesign - Volume #1: Asia

Culture impact issues in general

Example 1 - Colors