Dialogical system design across cultural boundaries
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Date
2001
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Abstract
Information Technology Transfer (ITT) does not fulfil the expectations of developed and developing countries. The failure of numerous development undertakings, including software development projects, has resulted in much speculation on the reasons and triggered research aimed at diagnosing and improving the situation. This research thoroughly identifies - on a practical as well as theoretical level - the dynamic interdependence of culture and IT-related activities like IT-transfer, the teaching of computer science and system design
Lecturing experiences in Namibia, a southern African country, revealed that teaching of computer science involves more than the mere presentation of value-free facts. A number of culture specific difficulties that Namibian students had in assimilating computer science concepts became apparent. In the attempt of a technical solution to the students' problem in acquiring knowledge, a prototype was developed and evaluated for two successive years within an actual teaching context in the Department of Computing at the University of Namibia. After being confronted with an unexpectedly poor and unrealistic outcome of the evaluation, the cultural validity and completeness of common system design methodologies in different cultural settings was questioned
At present, system design methodologies do not sufficiently account for cross-cultural processes; this thesis therefore attempts to deliver a unique contribution to the cultural validity of participatory system design. In participatory design, the "real problem" as well as the system requirements are best determined through merging the different viewpoints of the stakeholders involved. However, in a multicultural system design setting, the forming and interpretation of viewpoints, as a cross-cultural judgement, is problematic in that it depends on the stakeholders' perception of the environment. Yet the perception of reality and the structuring and processing of experience depends on our habits that are shaped by our culture. A foreign computer expert understands and models the environment as he perceives it through his personal culture-bound perspective which rarely coincides with the view of the local users. This obviously has a major impact on system design which in this case is based on a misconception of the initial situation, thus leading to the implementation of an undesirable system. Diverse disciplines advocate a dialogical approach to resolve or minimise those misperceptions within co-operative tasks. Yet cross-cultural dialogue is predetermined for misunderstandings due to distinct cultural determinants. Differences in the organisation of discourses and expressions of intention have to be considered in the selection of means of communication. Although the importance of communication in system design has generally been recognised and multiple methods have been put forth to facilitate communication between user and system engineer, their validity has not been studied in a multicultural context as yet. It is thus up to the system engineer to determine the stakeholders' intention and communication competency and to accordingly develop and apply culturally valid communication techniques to conduct a successful dialogue. In light of this, relevant training programs and methods from the social sciences were investigated and merged into a culture-driven framework for dialogical system design
Description
Includes bibliographical references
Full text thesis has been downloaded from the Internet site of the University of Hamburg at http://www. sub. uni-hamburg. de/opus/frontdoor. php?source_opus=482
Full text thesis has been downloaded from the Internet site of the University of Hamburg at http://www. sub. uni-hamburg. de/opus/frontdoor. php?source_opus=482
Keywords
Computer applications, Information science, Culture, Computer science, Computer technology, Informatics