Design for cultural and linguistic diversity

Pre-2004 scholarship on culture and digital technologies focussed on inclusive, culturally appropriate design and on the communicative limits of digital media. Technology was framed not only as a product but as part of a cultural process of encoding/decoding. Debates centred on localization and the incorporation of cultural values in interfaces (the adaptation of designs as they travel is treated in part iii. below). Some prescient authors warned about “invisible” technologies: interfaces that minimize cognitive effort may also suppress the development of adaptive skills for evolving environments—concerns that resonate today in the era of generative AI (Yan et al., 2024). Our 2004 review mapped competing models and gaps, calling for stronger theories of culture to illuminate how culture and computer-mediated communication interact and to guide interface and system design. It also underscored the need to understand cultural differences in attitudes toward technology and use, to address linguistic diversity, and to mitigate the communicative constraints of digital media in intercultural exchange.

Current work continues to foreground the interplay of design, culture, and communication across digital and educational technologies (see for example Hoye & Kaiser, 2007; Srinivasan, 2013). Ethical and pluralist frameworks have gained prominence in design and diffusion–illustrated by the Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication (CATaC) community and related initiatives (Ess, 2020). In internationalized digital learning, culture is treated as a process model linking artefacts, behaviours, and values, offering designers explicit points of intervention (Young & Asino, 2020). Community technology design is also shown to be shaped by dominant discourses in development, HCI, design, and cultural theory; approaches to cultural engagement are deliberate choices, not incidental practices, and they structure both collaboration and outcomes (Winschiers-Theophilus et al., 2019). Within educational technology, scholars argue for integrating cultural considerations within the design workflow–clarifying how designers, educators, and innovators conceptualize culture; operationalizing that understanding in specifications; and testing for cultural disconnects that often arise because technologies are Western-based and English-reliant (Young & Asino, 2020).