Cultural Bias

Anchoring Errors, Cognitive Blindness, Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Ethnographic & User Data, Mental Model Traps, Mirroring Errors, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

The Cultural Context for Product Design

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Nothing exists in isolation. Design divorced from the context in which the product is used is of little value to its audience. Cognitively, this makes sense—most designers agree that they have to consider the environment, culture, and situation as part of the process of developing a new product (or redesigning an old one). But practically, context and culture get little play in design meetings. This post is aimed at relieving some of designers’ mirroring errors—helping see alternate ways their products might be used in the real world. Enjoy! Cultural Difference in Car Use: livestock Cultural Difference in Car Use: large loads Cultural Difference in Bike Use: large loads Notice the little bike on the left… Cultural Difference: people movers

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Background Knowledge, Background Knowledge Errors, Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

Cultural and Subject Matter Knowledge

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What is that?! Is that what I think it is? These toys were part of a window display in a little store in the center of Rome. I don’t believe a lot of kids play with Nazi toy soldiers…in Italy, today. But if WWII turned out differently, these might have been the coveted toys, not just for a limited set of adult collectors, but for average, everyday kids…who happened to be living in an alternate reality. So this brings me to the main point of this post: products have to have cultural relevance, and this requires designers to have a good grasp on social background knowledge and on the subject matter within which they are working. Consider this little street sign in Rome as another example of cultural and subject matter relevancy: If you click on the image, you can get a larger version—yes, it is a crucifix with Jesus icon. Here in San Francisco, this sign wouldn’t work. But in Rome, it makes perfect sense. It’s culturally relevant and conveys information to the local population. Both of these examples show that it’s not just cultural knowledge that’s important. Without knowing the meaning of a crucifix or being able to…

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Background Knowledge, Background Knowledge Errors, Causal Net Problems, Cognitive Blindness, Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Ethnographic & User Data, Featured, Group Decision Errors, Mental Model Traps, Mirroring Errors, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

Community of Practice and Knowledge Propagation Circle

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This summer my family and I travelled to Rome. While the temperatures didn’t reach the usual astronomic heights, it was rather warm. But we, and other visitors, didn’t have to worry about thirst. Rome has the best network of public drinking fountains that I have ever seen. Every few blocks, there’s a beautifully-designed basin with a spigot of continuously running water (I know, being from California, the never-ending stream made us very uncomfortable, too). There are two bits of information that have to be passed on to the first-time visitors of Rome: the water is potable—safe to drink, and how to use the fountain—there’s a bit of a trick to them. Above is my son demonstrating a little secret interaction. There’s a small hole on the top of the pipe that can serve as drinking fountain if the main hole at the end is plugged up (with a finger). While we learned about the great drinking water in Rome from many traveling guides (books, online sites, etc.), we obviously didn’t know about the trick until we watched a pro do it. Knowledge Propagation Circle Information propagates through communities. When we first encounter a novel bit of data, it tends to…

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Background Knowledge, Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Ethnographic & User Data, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

Cultural Differences from the 4th Dimension: Time

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Some cultural differences are brought to you by geographic distances, but some derive their wonderful exotic qualities from temporal separation. The ads below are all American…just from a different America—America of yesteryore. Role of Women What wives are for? Make her happy this Christmas—make it a hoover! Blow smoke in her face, she’ll love it! Go ahead and cry for it… Housework makes wives cute! Housework makes wives healthy. Healthy Kids Beer for mommies and babies… Give that baby a cola! Give your children the benefit of TV. Healthy You! Give cocaine a chance… Doctors prefer Camels. For a slimmer, flatter, more sinuous you, go with tape worms!

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Anchoring Errors, Background Knowledge Errors, Cognitive Blindness, Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Errors, Ethnographic & User Data, Metaphor Mistakes, Mirroring Errors, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

Lost in Translation: Cultural Differences in Advertising

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“Lost in Translation” was a wonderful movie by Sofia Coppola, starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. It depicted the delicious confusion of Western tourists in total Japanese cultural emersion. In particular, the scenes where Bill Murray shoots a liquor commercial for the Japanese market are simply priceless. In retrospect, I see where Ms. Coppola got her ideas. Her cousin, Nicholas Cage, have been making wonderfully odd (to our sensibilities) commercials for years. He clearly had stories to share. Here are a few of his gems, courtesy the World Wide Web: and But it’s not only Japan that surprises our/my cultural biases. This morning, my husband and I went to a local grocery store in Rome, Italy. In the cheese section, there was a little paper bottle of parmesan cheese with a mouse of the package. The mouse didn’t work for me at all! So much for cultural differences. Here’s a small collection of ads for McDonalds from all over the world. Please compare it to the packaging and menus for this restaurant chain that I’ve posted here in the past: “Cultural World Domination”. Notice all of the anchoring errors, metaphor mistakes, cultural biases, mirroring errors, and general cognitive and cultural…

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Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Flow, Interaction Design, Interface Design, Language, Perception, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Scaffolding, Working Memory

The Haptic Feel of Books versus eBooks

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We’ve traveled to Rome for our family vacation this year, and aside from a few summer reading books that I couldn’t find in an eBook format, we relied on our two Kindles and 3 iPads for our family reading needs. This is the second summer we brought primarily electronic versions of books—”The Count of Monte Cristo” is much easier to read when it fits into your hand and doesn’t weigh a ton… In the days before the Kindle and iPad, we carried an extra suitcase just for books. But there are drawbacks to buying and reading eBooks. Below are some of my thoughts and experiences—the cogitations of a voracious reader. Time & Progress As I was reading my novels, I found myself repeatedly trying to figure out where in the book I was. How far along was I? When is the next natural break (chapter, section end)? How many pages are there to the end of the chapter, end of the section, end of the book? These were not idle curiosities about my reading accomplishments, although when you do finish reading the book version of “The Count of Monte Cristo”, you do have a sense of having read something. An…

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Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Ethnographic & User Data, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

Cultural World Domination

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When we first arrived in New York as Russian refugees many, many years ago, everything was so confusing. I remember lying on the bed in a hotel room somewhere in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, with my whole family (mother, father, sister, and me) and watching commercials on TV. There was a stick figure running around the screen screaming “Cherio-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-s.” We debated for hours trying figure out what it was about. And then there was a time when my parents let me buy a bag of Cheetos. I almost vomited when I tried one—in Russia, things that looked like that were sweet. The complete mismatch between my expectations and the actual taste made me gag. To this day, I hate the stuff! So when companies are on the path of world domination with their products, understanding cultural differences in background knowledge, perceptual expectations, preferred ways of doing things is a must. To see how some giants customize their products to make them more culturally sensitive, I took a look at McDonalds‘ menus from around the world. Check it out: Note: I went looking for the old Cheerios commercial, but could only find this one—it’s close, but the one we saw didn’t have…

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