Information architecture: Low-context practice in a high-context culture
by petermeYesterday, at the 7th Society and Information Technologies Encounter taking place in Santiago, Chile, Jorge Arango gave a talk called “Deep Context,” where he addressed what I found to be a fascinating challenge in practicing information architecture in Panama (where he lives).
He cited Beyond Culture, a book where Edward T. Hall puts forward the distinction between low-context cultures, where cultural beliefs and practices are made explicit in laws, rules, etc.; and high-context cultures, which rely on people having close connections over a long period of time, and context is not made explicit. (I’m not satisfied with discussions of this I’m seeing online, but to get a fuller sense, try High Context vs Low Context and Communicating Across Cultures: High and Low Context.)
Jorge’s point is that information architecture is very much a “low-context” practice — highly rationalized, very Western European — and he’s had challenges engaging with this practice in the more typically “high-context” societies in which he’s worked. He recognizes there’s a bit of an oversimplification here, but I think this is a trenchant point.
Information architects, and, frankly, pretty much all user experience designers, use tools, approaches, and methods that attempt to rationalize the situations we observe in order to design systems that fit those contexts. But these rationalized approaches may poorly integrate into high-context cultures.
I don’t know exactly what to make of this, except for learning of this kind of cultural difference that has a direct impact on the work I do, particularly as the nature of experience strategy and design becomes more global. Thank you, Jorge, for opening my eyes!
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