The Edge of Culture
Editor's Note: Matt is our new columnist on international communication. His column will appear every other month.
Into the Unknown
by Matthew McCool
Uncertainty avoidance is the desire to avoid indefinite or unknown situations, and it can have a significant impact on how people interact with science and technology.
All of us have to deal with uncertainty. The status of friends, family, health, employment, and safety all speak to a universal need to limit the unknown. Countries and cultures that experience high levels of uncertainty usually have some combination of economic instability, low employment, unreliable health infrastructure, political reorganization, or war. All of these problems elevate the degree of uncertainty that people feel, and it can take years or even decades to be free from these constraints. It should not be surprising, then, to learn that the unknown can have a powerful impact on many aspects of our lives.
Background
Uncertainty avoidance was first studied by the American sociologist James March who discovered its importance within an organizational context. March applied basic principles from social psychology to organizational communication. By analyzing the functional roles of employees within an organizational context, March was able to determine that select employees and companies appeared more uncertain than others. The Irish psychologist Richard Lynn found a similar correlation in reference to anxiety, an analogous emotional state. Lynn discovered, perhaps paradoxically, that low anxiety cultures had higher rates of caffeine and caloric consumption, coronary heart disease, and psychosis, the same kind of concerns associated with uncertainty avoidance.
Societies have developed three general approaches for dealing with uncertainty, including a strong legal system, science or technology, and religion. A strong legal system provides security by making sure people are protected by an authoritative system higher than the individual. One does need not be especially concerned about the moral character of other people when the legal consequences are swift, fair, and precise.
Science and technology provides analytical tools for controlling the environment and curing disease. And, religion works by appealing to a higher metaphysical authority, presumably when law and science cannot. Before we look at a specific example of uncertainty as it relates to a simple online factor, it’s worth noting additional differences between high and low uncertainty cultures.
High vs Low Uncertainty Avoidance Cultures
Uncertainty avoidance is also related to food, water, money, and pursuits of knowledge. High uncertainty avoidance cultures are more likely to consume fresh fruits and vegetables, drink mineral water, prefer natural sugar, invest in real estate and precious gems, and accept medical advice from doctors rather than nurses. Low uncertainty avoidance cultures, on the other hand, often demonstrate a rather different perspective. Instead, low uncertainty avoidance cultures are more likely to consume processed foods, drink tap water, consume artificial sweeteners, invest in an unpredictable stock market, and accept medical advice from the nurse next door.
High uncertainty avoidance cultures are also more likely to spend time working on big ideas rather than on practical applications. This has been explained by the principle of verification, which asserts that any particular claim may be rendered true only when supported by multiple, externally valid, and replicated research. Verification is often impossible when working with grand concepts, or is often proven or disproved long after the theorist has finished her work. It should be no surprise, then, that high uncertainty avoidance cultures are also slow to adopt, experiment with, and take on new technologies.
Uncertainty Avoidance and Technology
An interesting aspect of uncertainty and technology is found in preferences for online navigation. Much of the existing literature on information architecture, organizational strategies, and navigation emphasizes a single concept—deliver a guided but flexible user experience. This doesn’t mean a designer should provide a random and unstructured online environment, but it’s close. But the problem with this nonlinearity is that it’s often inappropriate for users from high uncertainty environments.
Online structure or information architecture is roughly divided into three types—linear, hierarchy, and hub and spoke. A linear structure is the kind of pattern users often expect in online learning environments. The goal with linear structures is to guide the user through a sequence of steps toward some goal, usually an exam. Hierarchies are the most common type of structure because it provides flexibility and growth for the site. Hub and spoke architectures are effective because options branch off a single node. Although hierarchies are the most common type of online architecture, they’re not always the best solution for high uncertainty users.
It turns out the reason for this is rather simple. Users from high uncertainty cultures have less confidence in how things work, which readily translates to online navigation. A rich network of options is often a sign of anxiety and concern for the uncertain user, which conflicts with prevailing ideas about how best to structure online information. Instead, high uncertainty users prefer more constraints in their user experience since it reduces potential confusion.
One of the most popular uses of hub-and-spoke architecture is found in a similar online user experience—portable computing. Many cell phones, for instance, use hub-and-spoke structures for their menu options, usually with the goal of constraining navigation. Cell phones are used by people from every corner of the globe, which opens the door for a number of usability problems. But what many cell phone designers have figured out is that, thanks to a fairly small set of menu options, the navigational structure of cell phones is easily confined to the hub-and-spoke method. And hub-and-spoke structures just happen to be a fairly good approach for high uncertainty users in traditional online environments.
A number of well-known websites have experimented with hub-and-spoke structures, including the New York Times and National Geographic. But the best known and most extensive use of the hub-and-spoke architecture was used by the International Herald Tribune (IHT). The target user for IHT is truly international, and that means designing for a variety of cultural and technical factors. IHT successfully used the hub-and-spoke structure for a number of years. But for unknown reasons, IHT has since discontinued this model, opting instead for the traditional hierarchy. This change may be partly explained by IHTs expansion and growing foothold in the market, which often results in delivering a more complex set of services and information.
Conclusion
Uncertainty is a strange and enigmatic feature of daily life. We may like to think that its effects are minimal, or at least confined to the most basic elements of human survival. But, there is new and surprising evidence that uncertainty has larger ramifications, regularly bleeding into science and technology. The power of the unknown is often extraordinary, and may even influence a simple online factor such as navigation.
****************
Matthew McCool began his career doing research in neuroscience but left when he realized no one was able to explain how the mind worked. Since then, Matthew has been a programmer, technical writer, and online developer for a variety of IT firms. Some of this work was internationalized for customers in Europe and Asia. Matthew is a staff writer for the O’Reilly Network and teaches at Southern Polytechnic SU in Atlanta, GA.