[Sigia-l] Internationalization/Globalization/Localization help needed

[Peter Van Dijck]

> These "culturally-linked attributes" are the tricky part and where I 
> disagree with the Aaron Marcus report.
> 
> The article talks about Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions and attempts to 
> apply that to the design of web interfaces focusing on multi-cultural 
> audiences. However, I feel it fails to address the issue of how to 
> accommodate the differences that set different groups apart. It is a 
> great article if you're not familiar with Hofstede's work, but the 
> concept of design approach under a segmented locale modeled after 
> Cultural Dimensions doesn't sit with me well.

Me neither. Hofstede's dimensions haven't been applied in a very useful 
way to webdesign yet, I think, and I'm not sure they ever will. The 
research I have read (don't have the references here, but I remember 2 
papers) found that either the dimensions have no influence on IT use (I 
remember a quote calling IT "the great cultural equalizer", not sure if 
I totally agree with that), or the researchers couldn't find a good 
research method to determine influence.

Peter