At the moment I am in Singapore conducting cross-cultural research on visualization, and -beside experimenting – I’ve also been hunting for differences in the use of visualization around the city.
Despite Singapore is quite western, and English is the major language, I noticed a consistent use of visualization on packaging instructions and posters explaining rules of behaviors. This might be due to the fact that there are 4 national languages, and not everybody understand English (new immigrants or older folks), so vignettes are an effective way to communicate across language differences.
Here’s a picture I took in Chinatown, the toilet sign! 😉
Sabrina Bresciani, Ph.D. 