Usability in India (post on
Usability in India (post on CHI list). Aaron Marcus made a great point that I've been thinking about: we need cultural dimensions (in Geert Hofstede style) relevant to the web. Looking it his website by the way, Aaron seems a year or two, three ahead of the curve on a lot of the thinking relevant to IA and webdesign as it relates to cultures. He wrote a good introductory article, making the point that yes, Hofstede's dimensions *are* relevant for the web. Yet they need to be adjusted, and more research is needed.
One thing I'm gonna try to look at the following years is cultural diversity on intranets. I am going to work on a lot of large intranets, and have audiences all over the world, so that is a great opportunity to do that type of research. And try to develop intranets that are sensitive to cultural differences that may exist between countries but also between job roles. Trompenaars (in one of his books, forgot which one) did some work on how Hofstede's dimensions get reflected in job descriptions: how cultures of laywers are different than cultures of HR people for example.
On a related note, I had a chat with a niece of mine - she's an accountant - and was talking about how different managers came in with new methods and how they got received. Culture! I'm happy I took that ethnography course, it will be useful me thinks.