The sun rises in the east

p eo p le When I first visited China and Japan in 1975, I was there to lecture about the coming age of computer graphics to designers in Hong Kong and Tokyo. I gazed at China from a guarded border lookout at the northern edge of Hong Kong, which then still belonged to the British Empire, when the Japanese yen exchange was more than 300 per US dollar, almost three times the present number. But since then, much water has flowed under Asia’s traditional curved bridges—the world has changed greatly. I recently spent a week in Tokyo and a week in Beijing. The teenagers in Tokyo’s Shibuya area may still dress crazy, and the pollution seems worse than ever in Beijing, but I return convinced of a sea change around the Pacific Basin regarding HCI. Throughout the past two decades of CHI and during the present history of <interactions>, Asian developments took a third seat to those in the U.S. and Europe. Based on my experiences visiting Asia for the past 32 years, I think CHI needs to recognize that major technology innovations are not only happening in Silicon Valley and other American centers, but also in Asia. In Tokyo, the Human-Centered Design Network is now several years old. The organization has the backing of many Japanese corporations; its focus is on universal access and universal design of computer-based systems. Dr. Masaaki Kurosu, formerly one of the key people at the Hitachi Design Center and more recently a leader of the National Institute of Multimedia Education, has been prominent in founding and promoting the organization. The group has sponsored many conferences, lectures, get-togethers, and exchanges of communication in Japan, the U.S., and China, among other locations. Japan produces many studies and information resources that may not be well-known to those not fluent in Japanese, which would include me. In my case, I use “informants” in my own firm from Japan, Taiwan, and Korea to find relevant literature discussing examples of new products, services, and technology developments. Yes, this is available on the Web through searches, if one knows the respective languages. Even though I have some knowledge of technology developments, it was an eye-opener to actually observe the high quality of a Fujitsu mobile phone receiving superior-quality broadcast television on a wide-screen handheld display, or a Sony television in the kitchen of a colleague receiving super-high-quality images of a baseball game. Some of the previously untranslatable information is making its way into English for others in the West to discover. For example, Fujitsu’s guidelines for Web design and color-selection tools that are oriented to universal design can be accessed online. Some companies and organizations have only recently developed user-centered software practices including user experience design, so literature is often not as extensive as Western resources. However, professional development in this area is expanding rapidly, and the level and quality are constantly and quickly rising. I attended the 12th conference of HumanComputer Interaction International (HCII) held this past July in Beijing. This conference series is notable for eclectic programs, being less selective than CHI’s conferences, and for being much more international in nature. In fact, HCII was a kind of shouk, or bazaar, of a broad spectrum of technology, products, and services. I was exposed to a wealth of new talent, insights, and developments. Absorbing all that is going on in China from more well-known centers of development in Beijing, Dalian, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and elsewhere is almost overwhelming. One notable theme was the awareness of culture differences between Western and Asian approaches, and even those within Asian cultures. At HCII 2007, of the three dozen sessions, approximately two dozen included cultural and universal access themes. There were even sessions focused specifically on user-interface design issues in Latin American countries and customizing the user experience for the Chinese market. I was impressed by the awakening of awareness and the public discussion of philosophies, principles, and techniques. To cite one example: Professor Kun-Pyo Lee, head of the Industrial Design Department at the respected Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and his colleagues reported on the results of comparing the way Korean and French users looked at websites. Their results show that Koreans move around the screen in a somewhat circular fashion, checking many relations among parts of the screen. The French viewers focused quickly on specific markers/monuments and then picked their goals. The differences seem to conform to the predictions of Nisbett as defined in his book, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Europeans Think Differently... And Why. One other example of the differences between the East and West is the user-interface attributes of Taobao, a Chinese auction website that is viewed more favorably than its competitor in China, eBay/China. Professor Zhengie Liu, director of the Sino-European Usability Center (SEUC) at Dalian Maritime University