For many Danish companies, a dot-com web address (rather than the familiar dot-dk) is far more challenging that the companies might think.
Many Danish websites aimed at foreign (and English speaking) audiences struggle unnecessarily with the task of overcoming cultural barriers. One of the problems is that Danes feel that they have a strong command of English. That might even be true. But because they command the language, they often times are oblivious to the cultural differences of the audiences on a dot-com web address. This may be true for non-Danes as well…As is likely well-known to English natives, there are huge cultural differences between English-speaking audiences-- from Ireland to India and from Trinidad to Tasmania-- just to narrow the field to those with English as mother tongue.
But the web editors of a Danish company are often simply ill equipped to handle the complexity of communicating with a multicultural audience. We have found the same to be true in numerous international usability tests where users from Singapore, China, USA or European countries have used the Danish companies' foreign-language websites.
The problem is getting worse by the fact that many companies do not even realize that they have a problem. They think that they are doing well because they assume they’re using the language correctly and look at the usability only on a superficial level, or not at all.
Meanwhile, users wearing turbans, berets, fezzes, sombreros or Stetson hats are scratching their heads in confusion, contemplating other suppliers or websites who better understand their particular background and requirements.
Inadequate Theories
One reason for the misery is that usability theories have long been insufficient. Hopefully this is changing now.
In one example that comes to mind, the Copenhagen Business School (CBS) collaborated with an Indian and a Chinese university, along with a number of companies working with cross-cultural usability (Nokia, Honeywell and Snitker & Co.) to understand the implications of culture on usability in the 3-year project Cultural Usability.
This project and others have lead to an increase in cross-cultural usability studies – here is an example:
The Malaysian usability professor, Alvin Yeo, divides culture-specific usability problems in the overt or obvious (i.e. how date formats are different from Europe to the USA), and in the covert or hidden – those that require a thorough knowledge of one culture to discover.
Yeo has a curious example; the trash can icon used in the first Macintosh and in Windows user interfaces, is not recognized in cultures using wicker baskets for garbage, as they do in e.g. Thailand.
Other examples are signs and symbols:
In Denmark, the finger sign of circling the thumb and the index finger means OK (or "You're OK!") but in France it means a zero (like "You are a zero!").
An owl typically symbolizes wisdom, but not in America where it sometimes means sorcery and magic.
Another example is color: Nordic home pages favor bright colors and use of white space to create lightness and clarity (see the bank www.nordea.com or the shipping and oiling company www.maersk.com). But this lack of color is regarded with indifference or even disbelief in Chinese people who prefer busy and color-saturated pages (e.g. www.guoan.citic.com/iwcm/iguoan.jsp (an industry conglomerate) or an oil company www.cnpc.com.cn/cnpc/).
The Chinese require very different information and experiences on websites than Danes, Indians or Americans. But how can the Danish web editor learn more and overcome the cultural challenges?
A good place to start is Handbook of Global User Research. Featured on these pages – a book that aims specifically at the challenges mentioned in this blog post. Conferences like CHI (see www.chi.org) and UPA (see wwww.upassoc.org) are also likely to feature speakers on these topics.
Cross-cultural usability studies are promising to become more nuanced and more widely used, but this is still the beginning. Danish enterprises, who wish to address foreign audiences, must learn to understand the cultures at a more detailed level if they wish to excel. This may be true for companies from many other countries, too.
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