Column: UX Across Cultures

In recent years, social ecommerce has rapidly emerged across the world by leveraging social interactions to drive online sales. Examples include influencer-driven shopping on Instagram in the US, Line Shopping’s chat-based social ecommerce in Japan and Thailand, and Pinduoduo’s group-buying model in China.

What I’ve found most interesting is the group-buying model in ecommerce, which originated in the West, but has become extremely successful in the East, especially with platforms such as Pinduoduo. I’ve explored how cultural factors influence this space and why they result in such different outcomes in the ecommerce industry. In this column, I’ll examine how Pinduoduo leverages social elements to design user experiences that influence consumers’ decision-making. Read More

Artificial intelligence (AI) has penetrated nearly every aspect of our digital lives, from personalized recommendations on ecommerce platforms to complex systems for healthcare and finance. While AI might seem universal, cultural perspectives have great influence on its adoption. Western cultures often regard AI as a tool to enhance productivity, despite accompanying fears of job replacements and ethical concerns. In contrast, many Eastern cultures view AI as an extension of human collaboration rather than competition. These cultural perceptions shape not only how people integrate AI into their daily lives and how much they trust AI, but also how humans design AI.

This column explores how different cultures perceive AI, its limitations in understanding cultural nuances, and how design can enable AI to better reflect this diversity. Read More

Digital products connect people across cultures, making the world so globalized that distances become smaller and relationships closer. However, many of the key platforms that we all use have a West-centric mindset. Thus, interacting with these user interfaces can present challenges to people who belong to cultures that diverge from Western norms. While many global software products strive to address this gap by providing localized versions, as a non-native English speaker who frequently interacts with Western English user interfaces, I have observed that some product teams still overlook the needs of broader audiences from diverse cultural backgrounds.

One outstanding example of a company’s initially failing to meet the needs of a broad audience is the Facebook real-name policy controversy of 2014, which required users to use their legal name on the platform, as shown in Figure 1. This policy clashed with the cultural norms of some indigenous communities, in which people’s names might not match legal documentation. As a result, Facebook suspended some accounts for non-compliance. Members of the public criticized Facebook for being culturally insensitive and ignoring cultural identities. Only after significant pushback did Facebook revisit the policy and let people use the names by which their communities most commonly knew them. This controversy highlighted the importance of recognizing and respecting cultural diversity in identity and naming conventions. Read More