Feature: The Impact of Culture on Development of User Interfaces for South Africa

In May 2005, people from different sectors in IT in South Africa came together for two days to talk about developing usable technology in Southern Africa, at the 4th Southern African Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. There were usability practitioners, academics, researchers, technologists and social scientists. Papers ranged from the localisation of interfaces - with reference to people of traditional African origin – to a study to determine the effect of culture on the usability of word processors. Questions ranged from: 'What is defined as culture?' to 'How will culture have an impact on the design of user interfaces for South Africa?' to 'Do people prefer localised interfaces?' Aaron Marcus was in the audience and not only challenged but also cautioned about some of the statements which were made. One of the main issues which he questioned was how a person should go about catering for eleven or more cultures within one specific country. Below are some issues which I identified from the conference.

The South African population varies greatly in terms of its cultural background, which creates a challenge for software developers and designers. For some time now, South Africans have been asking the question whether we should be developing unique interfaces for our users. Surely the goal of design is to develop products that assist the user in achieving their goals? Designers of user interfaces, should therefore carefully consider the cultural background of the user, as culture influences our thinking processes, what we do, our perception of things and the way in which we learn as well as the way in which we communicate.

This is by no means an easy task, as cultures can vary even within a specific country. South Africa is a typical example of two worlds in one. On the one hand we have a first-world environment with millions of wealthy and highly educated people with mostly a Western or Oriental culture. On the other hand we have a typical third-world environment with millions of inhabitants who live on the bread line and have limited educational background and technological experience with mostly an African culture. The diversity of South Africa's population is, therefore, three-fold: in terms of culture, literacy, and wealth.

In an attempt to recognise the diversity of culture and to avoid upsetting anyone, South Africa has adopted 11 official languages. Nine of these languages belong to the Bantu language family, a family that consists of more than 400 languages that are spoken on the southern half of the African continent. English serves as the non-official lingua franca of intercultural communication, despite the fact that English ranks only fifth as a mother tongue.

Some are of the opinion, however, that customising language alone will not suffice in making technology intuitive to all South African cultural groups. 'Deeper and more complex cultural differences, such as how people collect and structure information, carry far more importance and should command more attention.' [Diane Norton, April 2003].

The literacy divide is another major issue in many information system settings. In 2000, UNESCO estimated that more than half of young and adult populations in many developing countries are illiterate. When people are confronted with a computer system that expects them to read (mostly in a second or third language) to obtain information, one can expect that the comprehension will be limited.

Although literacy and wealth go hand in hand - with poor people mostly having lower levels of general literacy and vice versa - they are two separate entities. Most South African citizens have most probably limited access to technology such as television sets, microwave ovens, and video cassette recorders, not to mention computer access.

It’s not been a critical problem because frankly, a lot of the products that I work with don’t even work for people with post-graduate degrees, let alone people from varying cultural backgrounds.

Recently I came across some locally developed interfaces with a specific emphasis on the varying cultural backgrounds of the intended users. One such interface is a multi-lingual information kiosk for bus and train commuters. This sparked off a renewed interest in the impact of culture on the design of user interfaces for South Africa.

Local researchers have, thus far, come across the following considerations when designing for South African users:
• The user’s exposure to other technology as well as exposure to computers.
• Level of education of the intended users.
• Home language and language of communication.
• The different interpretations of colour in the different cultures.
• The use of pictures, symbols and icons and how these relate to the different cultural groups.
• The fact whether the different cultural groups would prefer to have customized interfaces.

Given the vast diversity of human knowledge and cultural frameworks, our most significant finding suggests that the promise of 'internationalisation' or real cross-cultural design could be a fantasy only. This recognition adds to the importance of investigating the most appropriate and effective ways of designing for specific audiences.


Darelle van Greunen
Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa (www.nmmu.ac.za).

Darelle is also the Chairperson of CHI-SA, the local ACM SIG for Human Computer Interaction (www.chi-sa.org.za).

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