Cultural Issues in Handheld Usability: Are

Cultural Models Effective for Interpreting

Unique Use Patterns of Korean Mobile Phone
Users?
KIM, SUNGWOO; KIM, MI JEONG; CHOO, HEEJEONG; KIM, SANG-HWAN; KANG, HYUN JOO
Interaction Group, Software Center, Samsung Electronics
{caerang.kim, mjkim01, hjchoo, sh.d.kim, hyunjoo.kang}@samsung.com

ABSTRACT:
One must consider cultural factors when designing products for specific cultural regions. This paper
presents a case study that examines the unique use patterns of Korean mobile phone users and how
cultural models can be utilized to design culturally-relevant UIs. We describe insights and findings that we
learned in our research.

INTRODUCTION:
Samsung Electronics has become one of the biggest mobile phone manufacturers in the world. Besides
mobile phone, the company also exports a number of home appliances and digital products to many
countries in the world. The issue of cultural usability rose up as we expand our market around the world.
In fact, cultural usability has been hot issue in any business corporation that delivers products to different
cultural regions. While we have a few internal/external guidelines and checklists for cultural usability, we
noticed that many of them are results of observation that lack background explanation of “why such
cultural phenomena are observed.”
This led us to envision a cultural UI framework based on cultural models and international variables
providing fundamental understanding about target culture, and UI design grounded upon the framework
that covers wider range of known and/or unknown cultural issues that go beyond color preference and
language translation. This paper is a report of the case study we have conducted to test such idea. As an
initial step, we have focused on testing validity of using cultural models and international variables to
interpret unique use patterns in target cultural region in terms of culture. As for this study, we have
selected Korean mobile phone users as our target.

Cultural Models and International Variables: A Brief Introduction:

Studies on cross-cultural user interface design have been utilizing the outcomes of cultural models and
international variables research conducted mainly in cultural anthropology and sociology[1][2]. For our
studies, we have selected Geert Hofstede’s Five Cultural Dimensions [3] and Edward T. Hall’s theory on
‘context’ [4] as key international variables. These two models are generally accepted in cultural user
interface studies community.
Hoftstede introduced five cultural dimensions to identify the cultural difference among nations and
ranked over fifty countries on each dimension.

z Power distance: The distance between the power holder and the opposite. Typical example
would be the relationship between employer and employee. It can also be described as the level
of acceptance on the state of unequally distributed power in organization.
z Individualism versus collectivism: People in high individualism culture prefer to make decision by
themselves, think more of themselves than the group, and show strong “I” mentality. People in
high collectivism culture think more of the group than themselves, being more loyal to group, and
as a return they expect the group to be a guardian. Groups are usually closed to other groups or
outsiders. As a consequence, the society is less open to difference.
 Cultural Issues in Handheld Usability: Are Cultural Models Effective for Interpreting
Unique Use Patterns of Korean Mobile Phone Users?
z Uncertainty avoidance: the level of comfortability towards ambiguity. People in low uncertainty
avoidance culture are less worried about future. People in high uncertainty avoidance culture are
more anxious about unknown. Consequently they establish more formal rules and normative
device to reduce uncertainties.
z Femininity versus masculinity: Distinction in the role of each gender in a culture. In masculinity
culture roles of each gender are clearly divided and usually don’t get mixed. In femininity culture
the distinction of each gender’s roles is ambiguous and exchangeable.
z Confucian dynamism: A dimension to explain rapid economical development of some Asian
countries like Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea. It describes how Confucian teaching
directed these countries to achieve such rapid growth.

Edward T. Hall’s concept of HCC (High-Context Culture) and LCC (Low-Context Culture) refers to the
amount of information immanent in communicative context. In high context culture, more information is
implicitly “contained in” context rather than communication-medium, whereas in low context culture most
information is delivered in explicit style such as in documents. Typical cultural characteristics of HCC and
LCC are:

z In HCC, speaker’s background, norm, title and rank are all counted as context that contains
important information. Consequently, actual message – spoken or written – contains less content
and the receiver needs to fill it up with information from context.
z In LCC, an actual message usually contains all the necessary information. Accordingly the
message is clearer.
z In LCC, written contract, manual, and legal documents are more counted. On the contrary, in
HCC what’s spoken counts more than what’s written in the paper.
z When a responsibility issue is raised, in HCC the person in the highest rank usually takes the
responsibility whereas in LCC it goes far down to the person in the lowest rank.

Where does Korea lie then? Hofstede has ranked Korea as a country with high collectivism, high
uncertainty avoidance, and high Confucian dynamism. And according to Hall, Korea is a country of HCC.

Table 1: Five Cultural Dimensions for Korea[3]

Cultural Dimension
Power Distance
Individualism vs. Collectivism
Uncertainty Avoidance
Femininity vs. Masculinity
Confucian Dynamism
Ranking(total 53 countries)
27(1=highest)
43(1=highest in Individualism)
16(1=highest)
39(1=highest in Masculinity)
5(1=highest)

Interpreting Unique Use Patterns of Korean Mobile Phone Users:

Based on the cultural models presented above and their descriptions of Korean culture, we attempted to
analyze the correlation between international variables and the unique use patterns of Korean mobile
phone users to see if cultural models and international variables can provide cultural basis for such
patterns.
First we collected interesting behaviors of Korean mobile phone users through town watch observation,
surveys, and focused group interviews. Then we checked each item one-by-one with users from USA to
see if it is noticeably different from use patterns in USA. Users from USA, what we mean by, are Koreans
and Americans who lived in USA for at least 3 years and had mobile phones then, and are using mobile
phones now in Korea.
Two were selected as unique patterns. For each use pattern we attempted to assign international
variables that have relevance, and provide clues to explain why such use patterns are shown in Korean
users.

z High use of SMS: collectivism

z Low use of voice-mail: HCC

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 Cultural Issues in Handheld Usability: Are Cultural Models Effective for Interpreting
Unique Use Patterns of Korean Mobile Phone Users?

Koreans, particularly the younger generation, use SMS (Short Message Service) a great deal according
to our marketing data. There is even a rate plan providing over 1,000 free text messages a month. This
usage pattern is remarkably distinctive in Korea when Compared to USA.
Through our town watch observation we noticed that many people use SMS like Instant Messaging.
The participants in our FGI told us they use SMS to have small talk with their friends. It is impressive to
see how these users “chat” with friends via SMS for a couple of hours, keying-in all the messages that
can be delivered within 10 minutes if they simply call their friends and talk on the phone. During our FGI
session, however, participants insisted that the “nuance” between SMS and telephone conversation is
different, and that SMS gives more feeling of “connected and bound.” It is interesting that technically
speaking telephone conversation keeps them more connected and bound because they have to
concentrate on talking, but participants feel the opposite. This is due to the fact that even during the
intervals in-between exchanging messages they still feel they are connected. Send a message, wait for a
minute(the connected- interval,) get a response - a minute or two is easily covered. On the contrary, 10
seconds of silence on the phone would make both you and your party feel uneasy.
A few participants told us that some of their friends whom they actively exchange messages with, they
have not met them for a long time, sometimes more than a year. They believe that without SMS it would
be almost impossible to keep the relation with these friends. These “out of SMS, out of mind” believers
exchange their daily small-talk, questions they have, and any help they need to social circles they belong
to by distributing short messages. A function to distribute message to members of assigned groups is
provided by default in all mobile phones in Korea. In fact, Grouping is such a popular function in Korea
that people would purchase and assign digitized bell sounds and graphic icons or avatars for each of their
social circles so that they can tell what group the caller belongs to just by hearing the ringing sound or
glancing over the screen – another distinguishing character relevant to collectivism.
It was also interesting to find out that participants do not use SMS when they need to communicate with
outsiders who don’t belong to their circles. They prefer to have phone conversation with outsiders. It
seems that SMS is only for close ones. Based on these findings, we have concluded that Koreans
consider SMS as a handy communication tool to keep them connected and bound to their social circles,
and as a result they intensively make use of it.
Koreans rarely use voice mail, be it mobile phone or answering machine at home. Most of the
participants from FGI and survey answered that they avoid voice mail because (1) it is too explicit (2) it
feels awkward to “talk to” the machine and (3) it makes them feel not prepared to leave messages This
antipathy against voice mail among Koreans - regardless of age or gender - contrasts with users in USA,
who prefer voice mail than keying-in short messages.
In HCC, context contains information that plays a key role in conversation. Often essential information
that is necessary in interpreting the content of the conversation is hidden in the context. Consequently,
one would omit such information that he/she believes the context will deliver.
It seems that Koreans avoid using voice mail because it only delivers message but not context. In the
telephone environment, leaving the voice mail is similar to writing message. The three reasons mentioned
above indicates that Korean feel uneasy when they are thrown into the situation where they have to write
clear message to the machine that wouldn’t understand the context behind the message, and that’s why
they feel they are not prepared to leave a clear message; that is, they are not ready for such case where
the receiver(the machine) can’t fill up the gap in the message with extra information in the context. For
Koreans, talking on the phone via voice is context-rich communication, but leaving a voice mail is context-
poor communication.
The user interface of Korean mobile phone well reflects these unique use patterns. In a number of
mobile phones in USA, a hotkey is assigned to voice-mail function. In Korea, on the contrary, SMS
function is assigned with a hotkey(figure 1). In other words, a mobile phone without SMS hotkey in the
hardware UI will most likely fail in the market in Korea because it doesn’t comply with Korean mobile
phone user’s use pattern coming from its unique cultural background.

Conclusions and Discussions:

Cultural usability is just as important as any other usability issues. Outcomes of cultural studies can
provide basic principles and understandings to designing cultural usability. If so, can we create a cultural
framework from cultural models and international variables that enables us to do “predictable” cultural UI

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 Cultural Issues in Handheld Usability: Are Cultural Models Effective for Interpreting
Unique Use Patterns of Korean Mobile Phone Users?
design? With this question in mind we conducted a case study where we attempted to analyze unique
use patterns of Korean mobile phone users based on Hofstede’s Five Cultural Dimensions and Hall’s
LCC/HCC. The ultimate goal here would be to create a new cultural model and a set of international
variables specifically engineered for cultural usability.
A number of questions are raised during our study for further discussion:

z Are cultural models and international variables effective tools for interpreting unique use patterns
of specific cultural regions?
z What are possible drawbacks of this approach?
z Our study is based on two theories: Hofstede’s and Hall’s. Are there more international variables
that are usable for such purpose?
z How can we prove that designs influenced by cultural theories are more usable than designs that
are not based on cultural theories?

During our research we found that “Collectivism versus Individualism” and “High Context Culture”
distinguished themselves from other cultural variables. This led us to think that for a particular product,
some international variables are more influential. A remote control for television, for instance, might be
more associated with “Power Distance.” If this is true then designers can select international variables
that are more relevant to the product in hand, and particularly focus on those variables to build more
effective user interface in terms of cultural usability. Keep in mind, however, that this idea is still pure
hypothetic and it requires more research to be proved.

Hot-key comparison between mobile phones in Korea and USA

Figure 1. Both are Samsung Electronics made. The left one, a Sprint PCS phone, has voice-mail
label on the left button of the four-directional keys. The right one has SMS label on the same
button.

REFERENCES:

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 Cultural Issues in Handheld Usability: Are Cultural Models Effective for Interpreting
Unique Use Patterns of Korean Mobile Phone Users?
1. Nancy Hoft. (1996). Developing a Cultural Model, International User Interface, 41-73, New York,
Chichester, Brisbane, Toronto, Singapore, John Wiley & Sons.

2. Aaron Marcus. (2002), Cross-Cultural User-Interface Design for Work, Home and On the Way,
UPA2002 Tutorial.

3. Geert Hofstede. (1991). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind - Intercultural Cooperation
and its Importance for Survival, McGraw-Hill.

4. Edward T. Hall. (1976) Beyond Culture, DoubledayAnchor Books.