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Does brand consistency trump efficient communication across cultures?

There was a recent discussion on the SIGIA mailing list about Google’s testing of a new homepage design for Taiwan and Hong Kong that features animated icons. Some folks in the list seemed surprised that Google would forego its traditionally minimalist UI — an important brand differentiator — in favor of what may seem like gratuitously animated widgets.

It’s important to note that the new design is for the iGoogle homepage — not the traditional Google homepage most visitors see. (iGoogle allows the user to customize their homepage by adding widgets that summarize news, email, etc.) Google’s traditional homepage for Taiwan and Hong Kong remains similar to the standard US version. Also, the animated widget being discussed is not exclusive to the Chinese sites; it is also available to users of the US version. (However, it is not installed by default like it seems to be in the Chinese sites.) So in many respects, this discussion is a case of “much ado about nothing”.

However, it raises an interesting question: does brand consistency trump efficient communication across cultures? In other words, if it happens that 1) Google’s minimalism is an essential part of its branding message, and 2) some cultures do not react as positively to minimalism as others, which should have the upper hand when Google enters a new market?

Let’s look at the second question first: is a preference for minimalistic UIs culturally conditioned (as opposed to universal)? Research suggests it is. Elizabeth Würtz has published an examination of website design across different cultures using the framework proposed by anthropologist Edward Hall. Würtz hypothesizes that designs produced by “High Context” (HC) cultures will tend to feature more imagery (including animations and other effects) — and less text — than those aimed at “Low Context” (LC) cultures. She also proposes that HC websites tend to have more diversity in their layout and color schemes, what users in LC cultures may perceive as “clutter”. Asia and North America happen to sit on opposite ends of that HC-LC axis; this may explain Google’s use of animations in their Hong Kong / Taiwan homepage. From this perspective, it seems that minimalistic UIs may not be the most effective everywhere. (I’ve written an article for Boxes and Arrows that looks into Hall’s framework and other implications it has for IA.)

Now onto the first question: is minimalism — as represented in Google’s UIs — an essential part of their branding message? In other words, does Google stop being Google if it foregoes minimalism? Google’s UIs seem designed to support their stated mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” The first part of that mission — organizing the world’s information — doesn’t seem to have immediate user-facing UI implications. The second part — making this information accessible and useful — implies that the Google UIs should strive to provide the shortest, easiest possible path to information. This seems to suggest that they need to be minimalistic.

However, if we consider the implications of Würtz’s paper, we can argue that this shortest path can be best achieved with a direct, minimal, no-fuss UI in cultures conditioned to LC communications. Because Google’s culture of origin is LC (the US), their original UI is minimal and sparse; it is designed to support their stated mission in their culture of origin. The flipside: we can hypothesize that if 1) some cultures communicate better with non-minimal UIs, and 2) Google’s UI strategy and branding should support their corporate mission (and not the other way around), then for “Google to be Google” it behooves them to explore less minimal UIs when entering markets with HC cultures.

It will be interesting to see what happens as the major brands of the western LC countries start to enter HC markets like Asia (and vice-versa). Dominance in one market does not guarantee dominance in all, especially when moving across wide cultural divides. I suspect that in order to communicate effectively, established brands like Google will need to explore UIs strategies that may seem jarring to the folks back home.

Posted on July 31, 2007
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