Metaphors can be used to help structure a web site, and add a unique and interesting way of thinking about a site and the products or services that it might offer.

Proctor and Gamble used an interesting metaphor on their site for laundry detergent Tide, based upon the structure of a typical American home, and the types of stains that might be found in different rooms of that home. It seemed like a good idea.

Proctor and Gamble is an international company, and one of the markets that they are involved in is India. What happens when you take a set of pages like the Tide site, based upon an American household, and try to adapt it for use in another country with another culture.

Confusion?

Quite possibly. A study by the people at the Software Usability Research Laboratory of Wichita State University took a closer look, and tried to understand why a design like this one might fail to be understood by users in India - Metaphors and Website Design: A Cross-Cultural Case Study of the Tide.com Stain Detective.

Now it’s probably obvious on its face that differences in culture would mean that Indian homes are structured differently than American homes, and rooms are likely associated with different uses between the two cultures. But, if the structure of the site were altered to account for those cultural differences, would the metaphor still work?

The study used a card sorting exercise to see if the same type of associations where made in India and the US based upon a relationhip between a certain room and a typical stain that would be found in that room. Would cultural differences extend beyond architecture and room functionality? The results of the card sorting seemed to indicate that they would, and that the metaphor wouldn’t be one that would successfully translate over to the different culture.

I’ve added a post about this article to a long running thread in the Usability forum of Cre8asite Forums titled Your Suggestions for Better Worldwide Usability. If you have any other suggestions about usability as it relates to different cultures, stop on by and share your thoughts.

Another article recently pointed to in that thread is this one: Cultural Dimensions and Global Web User-Interface Design: What? So What? Now What? It looks at a large number of other cultural differences. I can’t help but consider, after reading it, that it truly is important to understand the differences in culture when considering migrating any site from one country to another, even ones that don’t rely so much on a metaphor like the Tide example above.