Ethnicity is then being used as a proxy for culture, even though it's a bad one, because it's a visible one.
It's basically starting from the premise that cultural diversity is valuable and then applying Goodhart's Law to the thing most easily measured. Whereas traditional racism is more like starting from the premise that cultural homogeneity is valuable and then applying Goodhart's Law to the thing most easily measured. It's applying the same fallacy to the opposite premise, which is an error regardless of which premise is correct.
UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures.
Suppose you don't care anything for all of this political noise and you just want to make money. Do you want to use the same colors on your website in the countries where red implies danger as the ones where red implies prosperity and vitality? If it will be the same for everyone, might knowing how some large subset of the viewers will interpret it change what you choose?
> UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures.
Really? Can you provide actual examples?
JFYI, I speak Russian, Ukrainian, German, and Mandarin Chinese. I've used native-written apps in all these languages, and I have not seen any significant variations in the UI color selections.
I guess Mandarin Chinese is probably the best example because the red color is seen as more "festive", so it's more common in various app icons.
No it isn't. They said UIs are different in different cultures because "red implies prosperity and vitality" so prove it.
Show me some examples and evidence. Anyone can make claims based off of cliches, but when it comes time to back it up with real world examples everyone either goes silent or gets upset and makes the same claim more aggressively.
Chinese historical art has a use of red due to cinnabar being believed to be healthy and that persists in a few areas like red envelopes, but 'red means prosperity in some cultures' doesn't mean their computer interfaces are different. Their stop lights are the same too.
The actual claim was "UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures."
I don't know about that prosperity thing, but I can give you an example that happens a lot. Some groups use red to mean stopped and green to mean moving, while others use red to mean danger and moving, and green to mean safe and stopped. This isn't directly country-related but I believe there's significant variation based on location.
Oh, wait, while searching to double check that I found an example of exactly what you asked for. CJK stock market displays tend to use red for increases, while the West uses red for decreases.
I searched and I didn't see any examples of that. Oh, wait, I searched again and all I saw was the opposite. Oh, wait, I searched again and still found typical displays.
The post I replied to talked about websites and they didn't say different colors were used in some circumstances, they literally mean different things.
Why does everyone have the same colors in traffic lights (except for japan's blue lights which comes from language, not cultural significance)
> The post I replied to talked about websites and they didn't say different colors were used in some circumstances, they literally mean different things.
I'll quote it again.
"UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures."
And all the examples I gave have red meaning opposite things in user interfaces based on cultural assumptions.
Off/danger. Number up/number down. Occupied/available.
Websites were just one example of UI.
> It's funny that this person speaks multiple languages and actually used different apps but was downvoted anyway.
They said they haven't seen any. That doesn't override actual examples!
> arbitrary choices made a long time ago that became standards
That sounds like a description of culture.
> If it was cultural then newer designs like computer interfaces would be affected.
Does the big TV run by a computer not count as an interface?
Okay, do you have some pictures of chinese stock websites?
> Also you ignored traffic lights.
What about them? Yes Japan uses the same color scheme as the US for traffic lights. Because the idea spread that way. I don't see how that's relevant to either of my examples that talked about Japan?
...you're not suggesting that one situation where colors match invalidates situations where colors are different, right?
Older choices affect newer choices, and consistent choices become culture.
Once upon a time, stock chart makers made an arbitrary choice influenced by older choices that had become culture. Those older choices being a general association with fortune, and a specific association with loss of money. (With intermediate steps, I think, but I'm being brief.) And those associations were different for different groups. Now the chart colors are part of culture too.
A choice being arbitrary doesn't mean it was random. You can trace the influence here.
But even if it had been random, it's culture now. Money in red has implications, and the implications vary.
So now ui choices in different countries is because of deep cultural meaning, but they could be arbitrary, but that doesn't mean it's random and now the arbitrary choice is now the culture? Seems like circular logic to rationalize arbitrary choices made anonymously.
You have to analyze it on a case by case basis. It only sounds silly if you try to generalize everything into a single rule.
Different choices have different levels of cultural depth. Often the depth is zero. But it varies.
And culture is created by arbitrary decisions coalescing into guidelines. If it's not coalescing, then it's not culture. You have to look at the big picture to tell if something is culture or not.
If it's all chosen because colors are deeply cultural then they would be the same. If important stuff is all different and arbitrary then it's not cultural.
https://blog.grio.com/2020/06/uxui-design-across-cultures-us...
Ethnicity is then being used as a proxy for culture, even though it's a bad one, because it's a visible one.
It's basically starting from the premise that cultural diversity is valuable and then applying Goodhart's Law to the thing most easily measured. Whereas traditional racism is more like starting from the premise that cultural homogeneity is valuable and then applying Goodhart's Law to the thing most easily measured. It's applying the same fallacy to the opposite premise, which is an error regardless of which premise is correct.