Social Media Design Requirements for the Collectivist International Students

Abstract

Major social networking sites (SNSs) are developed in the United States, the country with the highest individualism score. Individualist cultural values are therefore likely to be embedded in social media design. This study aims to understand the consequence of collectivist cultural values on design requirements for social media tools. The study used a co-design activity with the value sensitive action-reflection model. Participants were international students from collectivistic cultures who were enrolled at a large state university in the United States. Inductive thematic analysis was applied to analyze themes from design results. Four main themes emerged: media, cost, user-system interaction, and interpersonal interaction. Then, design requirements informed by collectivist cultural values were derived from the themes using theoretical thematic analysis. Three main design requirements emerged: the need to support strong relationship within group, the need to support narrow relationships, and the need for continuous relationship maintenance.