Bachelor's Thesis

My Bachelor thesis has the title The Visualization of the Evolution of Cultural Models. I implemented a page that allows for a visual exploration of the data provided by the Hofstede model.  

Abstract

Culture is a fascinating phenomenon influencing various aspects of our lives. Cultural models seek to describe the complex structure of ethical and societal values. Two main cultural models have been defined so far: the Hofstede model and the GLOBE project. Both models define similar attributes to describe characteristics of a society, summarized in so-called cultural dimensions.

To better understand the complexity of cultural models and the information given there are tools that visualize the complex data provided. Current tools for the visualization of cultural models make use of barcharts, boxplots and scatterplots, while only covering a small part of the data and information given. The existing tools do not cover the information completely and miss vital aspects. We want to fill these gaps and seek to find a way to easily compare selected data with each other. Moreover, we want to design a visualization that can identify cultures and cultural regions.

We try to create a tool to visualize cultural models. The tool displays the given data in an easy way, by using new approaches and improving existing ones. First, we analyze the data given, to crystallize the core information and main feature of our visualization. Next, the goal is to define the advantages and disadvantages of the current and latest visualization approaches. By combining the strengths and improving the weaknesses of these existing tools we try to specify the difficulties and goals we want to achieve with the new approach. Lastly, we look at ongoing cultural applications by using the developed visualization tool and look for similarities where we do not expect them.