Although communications designers know that context matters in the design of communications artifacts, they may not be cognizant that national culture, economics, and politics are contextual factors that are salient in the design of communications artifacts for global audiences. This paper is an overview of a special issue on cultural considerations for communication design whose objective is to serve as an introduction to ideas, approaches, and resources of how culture, communication, and context can be integrated in user experience design.

Specifically, the first paper in this issue examines the design and use of WeChat, a social media technology developed in the People’s Republic of China. The second paper explores the factors in the design of interfaces for sharing information with indigenous populations in rural India. The third paper investigates the cross-cultural dynamics among members of a Sino-American film competition team comprised of individuals from the US and the People’s Republic of China. The fourth and final paper in the special issue sifts through the United Nations’ Human Development Report to bring out the political, economic, and national factors that could affect communications and design practices in different nations.

The main thesis of this introduction is that these four diverse papers in this special issue provide important insights in terms of techniques, ideas, and resources that can be built upon to steer the development of communication artifacts for global audiences by cross-cultural teams. As an introduction to a special issue, it is missing a few important items that readers expect; for example, it fails to clearly explain (1) the aim or need for this special issue, (2) the number of papers it received, (3) the range of topics explored in the papers submitted for this special issue, and (4) why these papers were selected.