In the early 70s, Prof Geert Hofstede ran surveys with IBM employees worldwide and produced a set of four cultural dimensions which he used to categorise countries in terms of national tendencies. His four dimensions were:

• The Power Distance Index, which looks at how much people accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.
• Individualism, which considers how far people operate as part of extended loyal groups and families.
• Masculinity, which considers how far men's values are from women's in a society.
• The Uncertainty Avoidance Index, which measures a society's tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity and diversity of approach.

It doesn't take long to notice that Hofstede's ideas have little to do with interaction design as such. They are focussed on management and communications and offer analysis at the level of general tendencies; they are not about use. But Prof Hofstede's name has become synonymous with cultural research in interaction design. He is quoted extensively. He is held up as evidence that tidy answers exist somewhere to untidy problems.

Interaction designers do need guidance on how to handle cultural diversity when designing technology with international reach. But that guidance may not be best in the form of metrics and measures. The OzCHI 2008 conference on Designing for Habitat and Habitus explored cultural aspects of designing. And every single experienced researcher came back to the same point: The best way for designers to understand the cultures they are designing for is to go get first hand experience.

Good listening

The OzChi2008 conference began with a workshop on 'Inclusivity, Interaction Design and Culture' . Participants discussed flexible and fine-grained ways of understanding difference in interests, values and use of technology. This understanding, it was agreed, did not come from metrics focussed on national characteristics.

So what did these researchers advocate instead?
The only common method in use was listening. The main goal of each researcher was to get to a condition of trust and respect where 'good listening' could go on. This might involve some understanding of suitable cultural gestures to adopt or avoid, like avoiding the 'thumbs up' gesture, which is rude in Iran or understanding that a head wiggle means 'yes' India. But it had more to do with interest in learning from others and a desire to get insight into other people's needs, behaviours and motivations.

Lesson 1: Embrace uncertainty. Look for the surprising contrasts. Welcome the destabilisation of an unfamiliar situation as a chance to learn about your own assumptions and cultural standpoints as well as others'. Get out there and challenge what you've read about a place or people.

Different cultures expect different behaviours

Lesson 2: Adapt your approach on the fly. Don't worry too much about method. Wherever you begin, it is likely only to be a starting point with plenty of adaptation to follow. So pick something that makes you happy but don't get too committed to any particular process.

Lesson 3: Listen well. Not only is it the best way to collect data, it also shows respect and builds trust. Check back often to see whether what you are hearing is really what the person you're talking to is trying to say.

Many cultures at once

The keynotes at the conference both had something to add to this. The next critique of Hofstede's legacy came from Paul Dourish, Professor of Informatics at University of California, Irvine. Paul's opening keynote stressed that people are too complex to assign to a single form of classification. Any system that has neat boundaries is also going to be inadequate because cultures do not start and end abruptly. He gave examples of the way that emigration had spread out certain groups, like the well-documented diaspora of the Trinidadian Trinis and the way that they have integrated media into their lives so that they can keep in touch across distances. Instead of seeking to understand 'culture' at large, he advocated taking a view of people as sitting at the intersection of many different cultures, able to draw on those that suit the moment and behaving differently depending on the context in which they find themselves. These different ways of seeing could be regarded as looking through multiple lenses, each giving a unique perspective.

Lesson 4: Recognise the multiple perspectives at work. Explore the lenses that make up the richness of people's experience and give maximum flexibility to designs so that they fit into the many worlds that are relevant to and desired by potential users.

Human access points

Gary Marsden from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, offered an empirical take on designing. He has many years experience working in sub-Saharan Africa on digital technologies for use by remote communities. After years of trial and error he favours adopting robust, agile prototyping techniques to work with people who cannot imagine a product from drawings of an interface. He also advocates using 'Human Access Points' – people who can mediate between the designer and some of the target users.

Lesson 5: Get your assumptions out of the way. Let local conditions set the agenda for how something gets designed and built. (This may involve formally considering cultural differences, but it may be where the listening comes in...)

Lesson 6: Create a usable and robust prototype. This 'technology probe' will teach whether and how an idea can work. Other simpler forms of prototype may teach more about how your target group thinks about prototypes than about your research question.

Lesson 7: Use local talent to help interpret what you are seeing and hearing. Find someone with a foot in both camps to take on the job of mediation. Encourage them to do the design research. Design something that they can use as a step in designing for the wider community. Spend as much time with them as you can. (Gary called these people 'Human Access Points'. In other work I've done, the team called them 'cultural guides'.)

Designing for somewhere else

So if you're designing for a culture you're not familiar with, here's the best advice: read Hofstede's work and put it back on the shelf with everyone else's. Then engage in 'good listening' with the people you're designing for. Use cultural guides and technical probes to help bridge the communications gap. And keep your attitude and methodology flexible – the unexpected is where the most important ideas await. Talk to others who do this work and are interested in cultural perspectives. And, if in doubt, quote us all.

Ann Light was a co-organiser of the Inclusivity, Interaction Design and Culture workshop at OzCHI 2008. When she gets a moment, she consults to Flow on innovative approaches in user experience design.