1. Research paper for HCDE 512 Topic: Different Culture Different Yahoo!
Different Culture Different Yahoo!:
How Cultural Factors Influence Web Design
Ru-Ping, Kuo
1 Introduction
According to Hofstede (1991, 2010), culture is "Every person carries within him or herself
patterns of thinking, feeling and potential acting which were learned throughout their lifetime".
His cultural model provides a great framework for adherents who have different disciplines to clear
their problem up. It certainly includes the field of HCI. Since earlier of 90’, many papers use
Hofstede’s cultural model to evaluate software systems and websites design. (Katharina Reinecke,
Abraham Bernstein, 2011; Reece George, Keith Nesbitt, Patricia Gillard, Michael Donovan , 2010)
Most of them confirm the theory, and some of them extend or modify Hofstede’s finding.
However, Hsieh et al., (2009) claim that there is no single model can support all cross-cultural
websites design in their paper. Therefore, in this exploratory study, I will start from a literature
review in order to find suitable evaluate frameworks. Then use them to compare Yahoo! and
Yahoo! China’s homepages, and see how these cultural factors affect Yahoo’s cross-cultural design
decision.
2 Literature Review
2.1 Hofstede’s cultural model
Through standard statistical analysis of large data, Hofstede was able to determine cultural
patterns of similarities and differences among many countries. (Aaron Marcus, EmilieWest Gould,
2000) His five dimensions of culture are introduced as follows:
Power Distance Index (PDI): The extent to which the less powerful people expect and accept that
power is distributed unequally.
Individualism Index (IDV): The extent to which people prefer to act as individuals or as members
of groups.
Masculinity Index (MAS): The extent to which people believe whether social gender roles are
clearly distinct.
Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI): The extent to which people feel threatened by uncertain or
unknown situations.
Long-Term Orientation Index (LTO): The extent to which people foster virtue oriented views
towards current or future rewards.
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2. Research paper for HCDE 512 Topic: Different Culture Different Yahoo!
2.2 Cultural factors in UI and Web design
Reinecke & Bernstein (2010, 2011) based on his researches, suggests that Hofstede’s theory
impact user interface designs, and can be used to explain layout differences between various
countries. And they compiled a list of adaptation rules which summarize from Literature review
(Appendix 1). Those rules are used to create their cultural adaptively framework as follows:
Adaptation Rules (Low value) Adaptation Rules (High value)
Non-linear navigation preferred. Users expect to get instructions, high level of support and
PDI High information density, most information at first sight. many navigation cues.
Less structured data Low information density.
Many options of functionalities. Strong hierarchy in the information presentation.
Reduce choice of functionalities.
Use traditional colors Color-code objects that belong to each other
IDV Multimodal interfaces possible High text to image ratio
Colorful interfaces preferred Use monotonous colors
Colors do not necessarily have to structure the interface Use contrasting colors to distinguish between different
interface areas
Non-linear navigation preferred Navigation oriented towards exploration and control
MAS Design for aesthetics Explanatory images
Less saturated and contrasting colors Complementary colors ( to structure the User interface)
Complex user interfaces Focus on simplicity
UAI Non-liner navigation. Leave room for exploration. Provide linear navigation paths
Maximal content and choices in functionality. Spatial organization of the screen can be complex, but has to
be clearly arranged
Low information density High information density, most information at first sight,
LTO Strong hierarchy in the information presentation menus should have only few levels
Less structured data
Singh & Matsuo (2004) reviewed many related research papers and suggests that studies by
Hall (1976), Hofstede (1980, 1991), and Trompennars (1994) provided evidence that cultural value
orientations differ significantly across cultures and countries. Thus, they developed the cultural
categories for Websites analysis (Appendix 2). Besides the result of this study provides evidence
that their proposed framework can serve as a guide for
developing culturally congruent Web sites. This framework was
used and verified by many following researchers.
And both Singh (2004) and Reinecke’s (2011) frameworks are
used for this study.
Yahoo! Homepage
3 Findings and discussions
Yahoo! China
Homepage
3.1. First glance of two Yahoo! homepages
These two screenshots were captured from Yahoo! and
Yahoo! China websites recently. The most obvious difference is
that the length of homepage. Many user studies showed that first
screen of web pages is received most attention from users,
therefore, designers always try to avoid long page design in many
famous western websites. However, most of China websites
Or check Appendix 4
for bigger screenshots
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3. Research paper for HCDE 512 Topic: Different Culture Different Yahoo!
have an extreme long homepage. Take Yahoo! China as an example, the length of Yahoo! China
homepage is nearly 3 times longer than Yahoo! homepage.
Both homepages follow the same page layout and color design guideline. Yahoo! China has
more advertising placements (both banner and text link) and images than Yahoo!. And Yahoo!
makes clear label for each advertising placement, on the contrary, Yahoo! China blurs them with
other content areas, for example, news areas.
Yahoo! and Yahoo! China provide many similar features or services, such as news, search, and
free email. On the other hand, they have a very different strategy of content arrangement. For
example, Yahoo! focuses on video content. And Yahoo! china provides plentiful links of various
categories of news. In addition, Yahoo! China shows more features than Yahoo, it also has more
news items and pictures than Yahoo!. And Yahoo! provides tools for users to customize the
homepage which Yahoo! China doesn’t. Below is the summary table of both homepages’ content
examination (A complete list is presented in Appendix 3.).
Contents Yahoo! Yahoo! China
List of Yahoo sites 20 items (with customize function) 52 items (some items are grouping, more EC &
community related)
Search bar Search options includes: web, images, video, Search options includes: web, news, EC1,2,3,
local, apps, and more Group purchase, music, images, maps, knowledge
(with more hidden items) With text advertising (looks like keywords)
News content Total items: 44, Total images:12 Total items: 441, Total images: 22
1 headline area, 9 news areas 1 headline area, 22 news areas
(with customize function)
Other content Total items: 26 , Total images:11 Total items:142, Total images:27
Weather, stock market, poll, market place, Yahoo 16 EC areas
original videos
Graphic advertising 3 banners 9 banners
3.2. Culture effect on two Yahoo! homepages
According to Hofstede’s studies, U.S. and China have
87
100 80 91 distinct difference in four cultural value dimensions:
66
61
30 46 Power distance, Individualism, Uncertainty avoidance, and
25 PDI
50 40 20 Long-term orientation. In sum, compare to U.S., China
IDV
0
China MAS has larger power distance, lower individualism score
US UAI LTO
IDV MAS UAI (China is a collectivist), slight lower score of uncertainty
PDI
LTO avoidance, and stronger long-term orientation. And
both China and U.S. have stronger tendency on
masculinity dimension. After carefully examination with
China and U.S.’ values of Hofsted’s 5 cultural dimensions
Reinecke and Singh’s appraised frameworks, my finding of
each culture dimension of two homepages is described as follows:
Power Distance (PDI)
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4. Research paper for HCDE 512 Topic: Different Culture Different Yahoo!
According to Reinecke & Bernstein’s (2011) study, high PDI countries’ websites are
low information density, high level of support and many navigation cues, and reduce
choice of functionalities. Yet, this study got an adverse discover. Yahoo! China’s
homepage provides 52 items in the list of “yahoo sites”; compare to Yahoo! only has 20
items in this list. Moreover, news is main content for both homepages; Yahoo! has 9
news placements with less than 50 links and Yahoo! China has 22 news placements with
more than 440 links. In other words, the homepage of Yahoo! China is high information
density, provides many options and try to put all information at first sight, which is the
characteristic of low PDI countries (Katharina Reinecke, Abraham Bernstein, 2011). And
U.S. Yahoo! uses “more” option to balance different users’ need, and many symbols or
clues are used to guide users’ navigation. Some of these attributes are more related to
high PDI countries.
Individualism vs. Collectivism (IDV)
Chinese consumers in general, frequently use Word-of-Mouth or referrals from
friends and relatives to gather information. (Martin Spethman, Maria Laura Rosas, Hui
Zhu, Nitish Singh, 2009) In other words, websites create by collective countries usually
highlight more features related to sociability, such as forums, newsletter, membership
and loyalty programs (Singh, 2004). And Most of these criteria are supported from this
study. For example, Yahoo! China provides many community services, such as forum,
knowledge sharing, newsletter subscribe, and group purchase services in their
homepages. For Reinecke & Bernstein’s framework, I observed that Yahoo! has smaller
and fewer images than Yahoo! China. And Yahoo! also uses background color or leave
purposely white spaces to distinguish different areas. However, Yahoo! China may have
higher image to text ration, it follows the same theme color principle like Yahoo! (In Feb.
2010, Yahoo! China released this new version of homepage. And the color theme has
changed from red (Chinese traditional color) to purple1.).
Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI)
In this dimension, both U.S. and China have a greater tolerance for uncertainty.
And China’s score even lower than U.S.. Reinecke & Bernstein’s (2011) study suggests
those low UAI countries’ websites have complex user interfaces, and maximal content
and choice. And most of them are low PDI countries’ design attributes, too. Therefore,
from prior description, we know that Yahoo! China meets these rules. However, Yahoo!
homepage provide lesser content and choices than Yahoo! China and seems try to focus
on simplicity (like provides “more” link instead of display all items directly). Therefore, it
doesn’t totally support Reinecke & Bernstein’s (2011) suggestion in this dimension, either.
In addition, Singh (2004) claims that guided navigation, customer service (FAQ, help,
1
Yahoo! China announced they have a new homepage. http://news.cn.yahoo.com/10-02-/1495/2jwvn.html
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5. Research paper for HCDE 512 Topic: Different Culture Different Yahoo!
contact us etc.), and free service are also important for high UAI countries. But both
Yahoo! and Yahoo! China’s homepage provides customer service and free service (email).
Long-term vs. Short-term Oriented (LTO)
For members of short-term oriented societies, it is important to seek immediate
results (Chang, 2011). In other words, those users are more willing to use a personal web
portal when they found it is easy to use. (Xin Li, Traci J. Hess, Anna L. McNab, & Yanjun,
Yu, 2009). In this assessment, I found that Yahoo! homepage highlight instant customize
function and it confirm Li’s study. Again, Reinecke & Bernstein (2011) suggested that
websites created by LTO country, for example, China, usually has high information
density and most of information shows at first sight. From this point of view, this study
confirmed their assumptions.
4 Conclusion
This exploratory study uses both Singh & Matsuo (2004) and Reinecke & Bernstein’s (2011)
frameworks examined Yahoo! and Yahoo! China’s homepages in order to find how their designs
reflect national culture value. And results show that two dimensions of Hofstede’s cultural model:
IDV and LTO are confirmed with both frameworks mostly. But for the Reinecke & Bernstein’
framework, they show the opposite outcome in PDI dimension. In addition, Yahoo! China also
confirms more rules in UAI dimension than Yahoo!. And for the dimension of MAS, I cannot form
any conclusion with two frameworks.
There are more reasons may influence website design. For example, some experts of
websites design suggest that Chinese webpage looks complicate is because of Chinese characters,
and the slow Internet connection speed make designers put plentiful links into a page. (Tan, 2011)
Therefore, Yahoo! China’s homepage provides plentiful links may effects by the assumption of slow
connection speed or the custom of Chinese long webpages design. And global companies usually
use design guidelines to maintain the consistence of their cross-culture websites. Therefore, it’s
reasonable to assume that Yahoo! China changed their theme color from red to purple is based on
this requirement.
In sum, through associated literatures review and carefully examined with cultural assessment
models, this study may successfully conclude that both Yahoo! and Yahoo! China homepages design
reflect some existent culture design patterns and values. But it will be too abrupt to claim that
these characteristics are only result from cultural factors. Meanwhile, for those finding that are
unsupported will need following studies to clarify the relationship between other influences.
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6. Research paper for HCDE 512 Topic: Different Culture Different Yahoo!
References:
Aaron Marcus, EmilieWest Gould. (2000). Crosscurrents: Cultural Dimensions and Global Web User-Interface
Design. interactions.
Chang Hui-Jung. (2011). Multinationals on theWeb: Cultural Similarities and Differences in English-Language
and Chinese-LanguageWebsite Designs. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and
Technology.
Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede, Michael Minkov. (2010). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the
Mind. McGraw Hill.
Hsiu Ching Hsieh, Ray Holland, and Mark Young. (2009). A Theoretical Model for Cross-Cultural Web Design.
HCD 09.
Katharina Reinecke, Abraham Bernstein. (2011). Improving Performance, Perceived Usability, and Aesthetics
with Culturally Adaptive User Interfaces. Computer-Human Interaction Vol. 18, No. 2.
Katharina Reinecke, Sonja Schenkel, Abraham Bernstein (2010). Modeling a User’s Culture.
BlanchardG.Emmanuel, & (eds.)AllardDanièle, The Handbook of Research in Culturally-Aware
Information Technology: Perspectives and Models.
Martin Spethman, Maria Laura Rosas, Hui Zhu, Nitish Singh. (2009). The Website Globalization and
E-Business China. access url: www.globalizationpartners.com.
Reece George, Keith Nesbitt, Patricia Gillard, Michael Donovan . (2010). Identifying Cultural Design
Requirements for an Australian Indigenous Website. 11th Australasian User Interface Conference
(AUIC2010).
Nitish Singh, Hisako Matsuo (2004). Measuring cultural adaptation on the Web: a content analytic study of
U.S. and Japanese Web sites. Journal of Business Research, 864– 872.
TanChuiChui. (2011). UPA 2011 - Chinese web design patterns: how and why they re different.
’
https://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/upa_conference/app/schedule/by_presenter/for:2011/#T
Xin Li, Traci J. Hess, Anna L. McNab, & Yanjun, Yu. (2009). Culture and Acceptance of Global Web Sites: A
Cross-Country Study of the Effects of National Cultural Values on Acceptance of a Personal Web
Portal. The Data Base for Advances in Information Systems.
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7. Research paper for HCDE 512 Topic: Different Culture Different Yahoo!
Appendix 1: studies on the effect of Hofstede’s dimensions on UI or web design
. (Katharina Reinecke, Abraham Bernstein, 2011)
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8. Research paper for HCDE 512 Topic: Different Culture Different Yahoo!
Appendix 2: Singh’s appraised framework
(Singh & Matsuo , 2004)
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9. Research paper for HCDE 512 Topic: Different Culture Different Yahoo!
Appendix 3: Content examination table of Yahoo! and Yahoo! China’s homepage.
Yahoo! Yahoo! China
List of Yahoo sites Total: 20 items (User could customize) Total: 52 items (some items are grouping
together)
Position : first column 8 items are different with Yahoo! China Provide more EC and Community
Attribute: Icon with label related items
Search Function Search options includes: web, images, Search options includes: web, news, EC,
video, local, apps, and more (with more Group purchase, music, images, maps,
options hidden) knowledge, EC2, and EC3
Position : top of the page
Content areas Headline area (text and video link): 1 Headline area (text link only): 1 main with
main with bigger image and 5 sub with bigger image and 4 sub with small image
small image (total 30) (total 8)
Position : second column News area 1: a list of news News area 1: a list of news with 4 tabs
Total 10 items with 6 sub categories link Total more than 100 items, each tab have
(Politics, Video, Photos, Local, Opinion, about 30 items
Trending Now)
News area 2: Entertainment
News area 2: Stock markets Total 28 items ( with one image)
News area 3: Entertainment Banner 1
Total 5 items
News area 3: Sports
News area 4: Local news and weather Total 28 items ( with one image)
Total 4 items
News area 4: life and health
New area 5: Technology Total 28 items ( with one image)
Total 4 items
New area 5: Finance
News area 6: Sports Total 28 items ( with one image)
Total 4 items
News area 6: Autos
Provide customize functions for users Total 28 items ( with one image)
Banner 2
News area 7:
Total 18 items ( with one image)
News area 8: Travel
Total 18 items ( with one image)
Banner 3
EC area 1:
Total 20 items ( with 3 image)
EC area 2:
Total 12 items ( with 3 image)
News area 9: welfare
Total 18 items ( with one image)
News area 10: Forum
Total 18 items ( with one image)
Content areas News area 7: Trending Now (top 10) Banner 4
Banner 1 News area 11: User opinion/discussion
Total 16 items
Position : Third column News area 8: Must see video (5 items)
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10. Research paper for HCDE 512 Topic: Different Culture Different Yahoo!
News area 12: overseas
Poll Total 18 items ( with one image)
News area 9 : Autos (2 images) EC area 3:
Total 6 items ( with 3 image)
Market place area (1 item)
News area 13 : Fashion
Total 18 items ( with one image)
News area 14 : Military
Total 18 items ( with one image)
EC area 4: Male clothes
Total 10 items ( with 1 image)
News area 15 : Stock market
Total 13 items ( with one image)
News area 16 : home
Total 17 items ( with one image)
Banner 5
News area 17: Technology, digital
Total 18 items ( with one image)
News area 18: Culture
Total 21 items ( with one image)
News area 19:Kids, health
Total 22 items ( with one image)
News area 20:Pets, knowledge
Total 18 items ( with one image)
News area 21:Education
Total16 items ( with one image)
News area 22:horoscope
Total 18 items ( with one image)
Bottom areas Yahoo original videos : 5 items (total 10) Banners
Global navigation: Global navigation (set yahoo as your
List of yahoo sites, follow yahoo(FB, homepage, about us, help, contact us,
Twitter), for business partner, about career, partner, advertising, list of
Yahoo (company info, career, developer services, notice of security, list of
network, Yahoo blog, help, feedback) company websites, policy agreements)
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11. Research paper for HCDE 512 Topic: Different Culture Different Yahoo!
Appendix 4: Yahoo! China and Yahoo!’s homepage
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