Exploring Cultural Differences in HCI Education

The discipline of human-computer interaction has become a subject taught across universities around the world, outside of the cultures where it originated. However, the intercultural implication of its assimilation into the\ud syllabus of courses offered by universities around the world remains underresearched. The purpose of this ongoing research project is to provide insights for these implications in terms of the student and teacher experience of HCI. How this subject is socially represented across the different universities studied is a key question. In order to develop intercultural awareness of these questions\ud universities from UK, Namibia, Mexico and China are collaborating in a multiple case study involving students and lecturers engaged in evaluation and design tasks. Findings will then be used to propose an international HCI curriculum more supportive of local perspectives. This paper describes the initial steps of this study and some preliminary findings from Namibia, India and Mexico about cognitive styles and cultural attitudes

Bridging Cultural Differences

[Excerpt] How you say it can matter as much as what you say

Cultural differences in applying Kansei Engineering to services

It is imperative for companies to provide competitive products and services at a competitive price. Products and services need to offer features and properties which can makethem distinguishable and attractive to customers. Emotions and feelings are prominent during product interaction and service encounter. Kansei Engineering (KE) enables interpretation and translation of customer emotions into design parameters. The application of KE covers both products and services design. Besides dealing with attractive exterior appearances, KE has an ability to optimize properties that are not directly detectable or visible, such as the comfort of hospital and concert hall. There are few empirical studies. Kansei management should recognize cultural differences in Kansei. However, for analysis of cultural values we need to understand the different needs of different customers. A study of luxury hotel services for Indonesian, Japanese and Singaporean tourists, was conducted using interviews and a tri-lingual face-to-face questionnaire. 425 responses were collected. Japanese tourists were found to be the most Kansei-oriented. They tended to value luxury hotels as “clean” and “quiet” places to stay. Indonesian and Singaporean tourists shared a common response to the Kansei word “elegant” which correlates with their common cultural dimension of “power distance”. Incorporation of cultural issues into Kansei studies can provide marketing strategies for customers of different cultural backgrounds

Significant differences in cross cultural negotiations

This paper analyses the importance of different factors that influences cross cultural negotiations. Learning about the components of a cross cultural negotiation process to increase negotiators’ success in avoiding barriers and failures in the international business arena is one of the most challenging achievements of the negotiators in the global environment. In the second part, the paper focuses on the one of the most important componenet of cross cultural business negotiations: differences in the use of non-verbal cues and body language of the parties involved with different cultural background. Undersstanding and recognising these differences is the first step to avoid costly misinterpretation during business negotiation.cross cultural negotiation, negotiation success, cultural differences, inter-cultural communication, body language

Cultural and Individual Differences in Comprehension of Sports Metaphors

This paper attempts to find out the effect of controlled input and rate of retention of sports metaphors by Bengali speakers of English over a period of 4 weeks. Metaphors are non-literal expressions that contain culture-specific information that does not correspond with what they state (Cooper, 1998). It has been a constant site of struggle for L2 speakers of English to understand metaphors that readily mean something for a native speaker of English. A metaphor brings up an image in the native speaker\u27s mind but even an imagable idiom some time fails to conjure up images in the L2 speaker\u27s mind. (Boers and Deemecheleer, 2001). To address this question, a four-week long research is conducted in order to find out the acquisition and retention of 10 sports metaphors from the specific domains of Baseball and American Football. To conduct the study, The Boers (2004) model have been followed. That is: i) by making the figurative language literal ii) by employing learners\u27 problem-solving skills for retention of the metaphors, and iii) grouping idioms under a broad metaphoric theme for clearer understanding. The results show that controlled and repeated input along with factors like motivation and frequency have instigated into acquisition and retention of the sports metaphors by the participants.  It also shows that metaphor acquisition is a socio-cognitive process where a learner learns in the context by analyzing contextual clues and by exchanging between several mental domains.&nbsp

Discovering cultural differences (and similarities) in facial expressions of emotion

Understanding the cultural commonalities and specificities of facial expressions of emotion remains a central goal of Psychology. However, recent progress has been stayed by dichotomous debates (e.g., nature versus nurture) that have created silos of empirical and theoretical knowledge. Now, an emerging interdisciplinary scientific culture is broadening the focus of research to provide a more unified and refined account of facial expressions within and across cultures. Specifically, data-driven approaches allow a wider, more objective exploration of face movement patterns that provide detailed information ontologies of their cultural commonalities and specificities. Similarly, a wider exploration of the social messages perceived from face movements diversifies knowledge of their functional roles (e.g., the ‘fear’ face used as a threat display). Together, these new approaches promise to diversify, deepen, and refine knowledge of facial expressions, and deliver the next major milestones for a functional theory of human social communication that is transferable to social robotics

Cultural differences in perceiving sounds generated by others: self matters

Sensory consequences resulting from own movements receive different neural processing compared to externally generated sensory consequences (e.g., by a computer), leading to sensory attenuation, i.e., a reduction in perceived loudness or brain evoked responses. However, discrepant findings exist from different cultural regions about whether sensory attenuation is also present for sensory consequences generated by others. In this study, we performed a cross culture (between Chinese and British) comparison on the processing of sensory consequences (perceived loudness) from self and others compared to an external source in the auditory domain. We found a cultural difference in processing sensory consequences generated by others, with only Chinese and not British showing the sensory attenuation effect. Sensory attenuation in this case was correlated with independent self-construal scores. The sensory attenuation effect for self-generated sensory consequences was not replicated. However, a correlation with delusional ideation was observed for British. These findings are discussed with respects to mechanisms of sensory attenuation

The Cultural Differences and Intercultural Adaptation on Partnership Relation of Core-Plasma Plantation in Tea Estate of Indonesia

This research was a qualitative research aiming at understanding the cultural differences and intercultural adaptation on partnership relation of core-plasma plantation in Tea Estate of Pagilaran Ltd Co, Indonesia. Collecting data were done by depth interviewing the worker's core plantation and the plasma farmer concerning problems faced by both relationship. The results showed that culture of core plantation community tended to orientate to economical aspect with commercial basis, meanwhile culture of the farmers tended to orientate to group's interest and to keep on their relationship among them with traditional habit and ecological sound. In relation to adaptation process, the two communities seemed to develop similar culture with capital interest. In this regards the similar cultures can be seen in two sides: from the side of core plantation, people working in the core plantation are come from similar culture with the indigenous farmers and the factory is also located in the farmer's area. Meanwhile from the point of view of farmers, the similar culture as the result of cultural adaptation. Furthermore, the cultural differences shown by the core plantation and plasma farmer communities were due to the normative rules maintained by the company and also due to the different educational level and knowledge of both. To that respect, in core plantation community, the culture orientated to capital achievement implies the communication attitude on the business interest, where as the communication attitude of farmer community is more orientated to local interest using informal and interpersonal channel. Finally the communication differences in the two communities impede the process of organizational objective. And the communication attitude of the core plantation community is changed and unified with the communication attitude of plasma farmer