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In my last post, we looked at the importance of culturability, “the relationship between culture and usability in WWW design” [1], and specifically, short- vs long-term orientation [2], when designing websites.
Professor Geert Hofstede spent over 40 years researching cultural dimensions, and this week we'll look at the sixth and final of these: Indulgence vs Restraint.
What are Indulgent / Restrained cultures?
Whether a country is more Indulgent or Restrained, can be determined by the degree to which you are free to have fun and enjoy life through gratifying your natural drives (like food, sex, dancing...) [2].
Indulgent cultures (such as Mexico and the USA) tend to be happier, more optimistic and extrovert. They place a high value on friendship, leisure time and health, and believe that it's important to have control over your own life.
Restrained cultures, on the other hand (such as Egypt) tend to take a more frugal and cynical outlook, favouring moral discipline and believing that gratification should be repressed. These are often very religious cultures, formed of tightly-knit communities.
So, how does Indulgence/Restraint express itself online? And how can you use this to your advantage?
5 web design tips for Indulgent cultures:
- Make interactions fun
- Give away entertaining freebies
- Use and encourage user generated content
- Provide honest discussion
- Reflect loose gender roles by using a range of models
A great example of these principles in action is Carling's iPint app, and the Mexican website neobux:
5 web design tips for Restrained cultures:
- Emphasise how you serve the community
- Frugal, show how they can save money
- Strict, cultured gender roles
- Website should be structured, predictable
- Use formal communication
A great example of these principles in action is the Egyptian offers website, Offerna:
Want to find out more?
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[1] W. Barber and A. Badre (1998). Culturability: The merging of culture and usability. In Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Human Factors and the Web.
[2] G. Hofstede (2010). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the mind. Maidenhead: McGraw Hill.
