The Global Interface
"It would be naive to suggest that you could design one standard experience for
every geography, It just won't happen." said Rory Read, IBM's vice president for enterprise
Web management in InternetWeek June 5, 2000. [1] He was responding to IBM's intent to redesign their site with multiple sets of icons and interfaces to properly address their audience across many countries.
Ideally any type of icon should be designed to be universal,
While a comprehensive global set of Web icons may be unattainable, a review of Japanese sites reveals a similarity in icon design and style. This can be attributed to either an adoption
of Western imagery or a validation of the idea that certain symbols and pictograms that make up Web icons are universal. The average English speaking Web visitor can at least take an educated guess at the menu above right.
there are many strategies available to attempt this, however it has been argued that icons can
never truly be universal. Misinterpretations occur because different meanings are attributed differently to symbols from one culture to another. The social organization of the visual experience; the idea
that people's experience of the seen world is culturally shaped and socially constituted and mediated, is the realm of ethnographic studies, specifically cognitive anthropology and ethnomethodology.
[2] Universal symbols are possibly the only unifying language of the future because they are a means to cross language barriers, besides Web-based translation technology such as Babel Fish .
Sources:
- Kemp, Ted. InternetWeek, IBM's Site Revamp Offers Some Tips, June 5, 2000, pg. 13
- Ball, Michael and Gregory Smith. Analyzing Visual Data, pg. 54-55
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