Skip to main content
Log in

Cultural variations in virtual spaces design

  • Original Article
  • Published:
AI & SOCIETY Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper reports two studies investigating the role of culture on the design and personalisation of virtual spaces. The first study was a systematic analysis of 60 MSN virtual spaces belonging to British and Chinese students. The analysis concentrated on design patterns and communication style. The second study was an on-line survey designed to compare the relative importance of cultural values and personality traits on self-reported behaviour with, and preferences for, virtual space design. Results highlighted the importance of culture on design and communication in virtual spaces. Implications for interaction design are discussed.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Deception cannot be excluded but it is believed to be a phenomenon of marginal relevance in social networks, especially when they have real-life connections or are restricted by invitation (Lampe et al. 2007).

  2. In August 2006 MSN Spaces were substituted by Windows Live Spaces.

References

  • Banaji M (1994) The self in social contexts. Annu Rev Psychol 45(1):297–332

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barber W, Badre A (1998) Culturability: the merging of culture and usability. In: 4th Conference on human factors and the web. Basking Ridge, New Jersy, 5 June 1998

  • Blom J, Monk AF (2003) Theory of personalization of appearance: why users personalize their pcs and mobile phones. Hum Comput Interact 18(3):193–228

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Angeli A, Kyriakoullis L (2006) Globalisation vs. localisation in e-commerce: cultural-aware interaction design, 23–26 May; Venice. ACM, NY, USA, pp 250–253

  • De Angeli A, Athavankar U, Joshi A et al (2004) Introducing ATMs in India: a contextual inquiry. Interact Comput 16(1):29–44

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dearden AM, Dunckley L, Best, M et al (2007) Socially responsible design in the context of international development. INTERACT (2):694–695

  • Dong J, Salvendy G (1999) Designing menus for the Chinese population: horizontal or vertical? Behaviour Inf Technol 18(6):467–471

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Efendioglu AM, Yip VF (2004) Chinese culture and e-commerce: an exploratory study. Interact Comput 16(1):45–62

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goffman E (1959) The presentation of self in everyday life. Doubleday/Anchor books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Gutchess AH, Welsh RC, Boduroğlu A (2006) Cultural differences in neural function associated with object processing. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 6(2):102–109

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall ET (1976) Beyond culture. Doubleday, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Herring S, Scheidt L, Bonus S et al (2004) Bridging the gap: a genre analysis of weblogs. In: Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii international conference on system science, HICC’04. IEEE press, Big Island, Hawaii

  • Hofstede G (2001) Culture’s consequences. Sage, Thousand Oaks, California

    Google Scholar 

  • John OP, Srivastava S (1999) The Big-Five Trait taxonomy: history, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In: Pervin L, John OP (eds) Handbook of personality: theory and research, 2nd edn edn. Guilford, New York, pp 102–138

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson JA (1981) The “Self-Disclosure” and “Self-Presentation” views of item response dynamics and personality scale validity. J Pers Soc Psychol 40(4):761–769

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lampe C, Ellison N, Steinfield C (2007) A familiar Face(book): profile elements as signals in an on-line network. ACM, San Jose, CA, USA, pp 435–444

    Google Scholar 

  • Lea M (1991) Computer-mediated communication, de-individuation and group decision-making. Int J Man Mach Stud 34(2):283

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leary MR (1996) Self-presentation: impression management and interpersonal behavior. Westview Press, Boulder, CO

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee B-K, Hong J-Y, Lee W-N (2004) How attitude toward the web site influences consumer brand choice and confidence while shopping online. J Comput Mediat Commun 9(2)

  • Marcus A (2002) User-interface design, culture and the future. In: De Marsico M, Levialdi S, E. Panizzi (eds) Proceedings of the working conference on advanced visual interfaces (Trento, Italy). ACM, New York, p 15-27

  • Marcus B, Franz M, Schütz A (2006) Personality in cyberspace: personal Web sites as media for personality expressions and impressions. J Pers Soc Psychol 90(6):1014–1031

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Markus HR, Kitayama S (1991) Culture and the self: implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychol Rev 98(2):224–253

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nisbett RE (2003) The geography of thought: how Asians and westerners think differently… and why. Free Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Postmes T, Spears R, Lea M (1998) Breaching or building social boundaries? SIDE-effects of computer-mediated communication. Commun Res 26(6):689–715

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith A, Yetim F (2004) Global human-computer systems: cultural determinants of usability. Interact Comput 16(1):1–5

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sproull L, Kiesler S (1992) Connections: new ways of working in the networked organization. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Tajfel H, Turner JC (1986) The social identity theory of inter-group behavior. In: Worchel S, Austin LW (eds) Psychology of intergroup relations. Nelson-Hal, Chigago, pp 7–24

    Google Scholar 

  • Takaki R (2001) Towards a reformation of Chinese ideographs. Forma 16:289–305

    Google Scholar 

  • Triandis H (1989) The self and social behavior in differing cultural contexts. Psychol Rev 96(3):506

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Turner JC (1987) Rediscovering the social group: a self-categorization theory. Basil Blackwell, Oxford UK

    Google Scholar 

  • Valdez P, Mehrabian A (1994) Effects of color on emotions. J Exp Psychol Gen 123(4):394–409

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wood AF, Smith MJ (2005) On-line communication, 2nd Edition edn. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Di Hong for her help with data collection. My gratitude also goes to Liping Zhao and Sri Kurniawan who have been instrumental in helping me making sense of the data reported in this paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Antonella De Angeli.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

De Angeli, A. Cultural variations in virtual spaces design. AI & Soc 24, 213–223 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-009-0212-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-009-0212-7

Keywords

Navigation