I read an article the other day that discussed the possibility of universal usability. However, usability is not universal, especially when it comes to web design. Cultural factors play a huge part in how people read and--more importantly--understand information. These cultural factors lay at the very foundation of how we judge the world and make decisions.

Research--by New Mexico State University's Barry Thatcher among others--suggests that the way information is structured and delivered is culturally based. In other words, the way we write is drawn from what our culture has taught us. According to this research we should be able to identify the culture from which a writer comes from after reading what that person has written.

Extending on this is the complimentary suggestion that people also read and understand information according to those same cultural factors. As an example look at instruction-writing.

According to Thatcher's findings, people from within an oral culture draw on their cultural background when understanding the directions for a process. In his study, Thatcher noted that participants from a mostly oral culture preferred to have instructions explained to them orally. Further, these same people relied on numerous examples which put the directions into a sort of context: a phenomenon called grounding.

The implication then, is that a set of instructions following every rule to create "good" instructions according to a Western audience will fail when read by someone from the same oral culture that Thatcher studied. Instead of a sequential, task-oriented, or process-driven process, which is demanded by a U.S audience, a set of instructions created for Thatcher's study participants would be entirely different. They would contain more examples that put the same step or sequence of steps into different scenarios. They would resemble a narrative structure rather than a logical, sequential format. And they would fail when read by a U.S. audience.

Translation alone does not create a usable set of instructions that can be transferred to another culture. Instead, documentation must be truly localized to fit the culture they are being transferred to. Then, they should be tested for usability within that culture.

Web design follows the same principles. What works for users of a website in the United States won't necessarily work for users of websites in China. Not only are the languages different, but the culture itself is so different that many things just wouldn't make sense. From the colors used to the types of images associated with concepts and traditions, each website should be as vastly different as possible.

If you are designing a site that will be read by people from other cultures, do as much research as possible by looking at websites created within those cultures. Then use, what you see as indicators of how to make your site more usable for those people.