The Influence of Culture in Contact Tracing App Design: A Comparative Analysis of Canada’s COVID Alert vs. India’s Aarogya Setu

Abstract

The 2020 pandemic culminated in the roll-out of contacting tracing apps in many countries to curb the spread of COVID-19. In this paper, we investigated how culture might have influenced the design of these apps by comparing two national apps (COVID Alert and Aarogya Setu) from two different types of culture: individualist (Canada) and collectivist (India), respectively. We found that there was a cultural effect on the design of both apps, starting from their naming. While the Canada’s app was explicitly named “COVID Alert," the Indian app was implicitly named “Aarogya Setu" (meaning "the bridge to health"). Other key attributes on which both apps differ include number of services, information density, privacy design, use of color, use of metaphors, and multimodality. We discuss these differences and the possible rationale behind each app’s design choices using four key cultural dimensions from Hofstede’s and Hall’s cultural frameworks as analytical lenses. The main contribution of the paper is that it is the first to demonstrate the manifestation of national cultures in the interface and functional design of contact tracing apps by focusing on a Western country and an Asian country.