A patent attempt at cultural sensitivity

You may soon get an email with a colour that suits your culture and nerves, now that IBM, the over $100 billion IT giant, which has a current active portfolio of about 26,000 patents in the US and over 40,000 patents worldwide, has applied for a patent to cover a method for customising colour in an email message, based on the cultural perspective of each recipient.

IBM reasons thus. Colour is often used in email messages for emphasis, highlighting effects in text, designs, drawings and images and thus impart a meaning to the message.

However, colours impart different meanings, argues IBM in its patent filed with the US patent office (NO. 7,529,804 filed this May).

For instance, if a Chinese receives an email in red, s/he may consider it good luck, since the colour red symbolises so. However, for Americans, the colour red is used as a warning and to signal danger or an emergency.

A Korean, on the other hand, would find text written in red derogatory since, traditionally, red is used to convey an insulting message in Korea. Moreover, names written in red symbolise death.

Emergency exits are marked with green signs in many Asian countries, as in Asian cultures the colour symbolises life. Whereas in the US, an emergency exit is marked with signs having the colour red to indicate an emergency situation. In Western cultures, the colour white is associated with purity and wedding ceremonies, whereas in the East (i.e. in many Asian societies), the color white is used and associated with death and funeral/burial ceremonies.

With the internet, email is often exchanged between individuals in different countries and regions throughout the world. However, it does not provide the elements of a face-to-face communication, and thus there is a greater chance for misunderstandings — especially between people of diverse cultures.

Even if one was adept and knowledgeable as to all the acceptable and appropriate colours to be used in email communication based on customs and perspectives in other cultures, it is inconvenient to manually adjust every email message sent to every recipient so as to avoid sending emails that might cause any misunderstandings based on inappropriate color use.

So how does IBM propose to go about the task? It will determine at least one existing color used in an email message, and analyse a domain name and/or information for each recipient of the email message to determine a region corresponding to each recipient.

It will then search a colour-mapping database to correlate any existing colour in the email to at least one approved colour corresponding to each region.

The existing colour used in the email message will be compared with at least one approved colour for each recipient. If the existing colour does not match any of the approved colours for each recipient, a sender-selected approved colour is determined and the existing colour in the email is converted to at least one of the selected approved colours for each recipient of the email message.

Incidentally, just a couple of months earlier IBM had also applied for a patent (No. 20090083107 this March) spelling out the procedure to weigh various constraints, such as lack of a skilled workforce against incentives such as tax breaks. Called a “Method and system for strategic global resource sourcing”, the patent — if granted — may help the Big Blue devise a method to counter US President Obama’s proposal which, if passed by the Senate, will require US firms to pay tax on money earned in foreign countries including India.