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Understand cultural differences by focusing on common elements

It’s difficult to understand other cultures objectively with your own standing in the way; we are surrounded by our culture, and its biases creep into our understanding in subtle ways. This is one of the challenges that makes cross-cultural design difficult.

One method I’m exploring for studying other cultures more objectively is to focus on a single “alien” element that the other cultures (and my own) share in common, and then try to understand the ways in which they engage with this element. I call this alien element a “bogie”: it could be an icon, a tune, a concept, or any other cultural artifact that isn’t common in either culture, or an element that has been inherited from a third culture, but that must be localized to both. (I see this often when designing for Latin American audiences; many common elements of the web vocabulary — the “Home” link, for example — seem rooted in American culture, but are expected of most websites.)

This principle is beautifully illustrated in a blog post that has been circulating in the past week that features the Super Mario Bros. theme played in a variety of different musical instruments. Because these performers are all playing the same tune, and because this tune is recognizable yet also quite alien to their traditional repertories, hearing it performed wiith different instruments gives us a better understanding of the instruments, their performers’ styles, and the tune itself.

The Mario theme is a perfect cross-cultural bogie because videogame culture is primarily non-verbal and therefore travels more easily across cultural boundaries. It is also very recognizable and fun, at least to people of a certain age. (Actually, this music is more localized to an age group than to a culture.) However, the key to the viral nature of the Mario theme meme is the whimsical and slightly irreverent idea of playing videogame music with a traditional instrument. (Check out the kid with the balalaika.)

How can we apply this principle to cross-cultural design? The web doesn’t (yet) have many sacred cows to make hamburgers from, so finding our own bogies may be more difficult. We can look for a common element that is alien (yet central) to all the locales being served, and we can key our design approach to cultural responses to that one element. (For example, the “Home” page link mentioned above.) Or we could set up a design excercise with the different parties involved to introduce such an element into the design process, if only to break the ice and provide some initial understanding. The idea is to have some common element that allows the differences between the locales to surface.

Posted on February 13, 2007
Filed Under Culture, Design, Strategies |

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