Cultural diversity in user interface design: are intuitions enough?

In a Communications of the ACM article of April 1993 ("Human Communications Issues in Advanced UIs," pp. 101--109), Aaron Marcus makes a number of compelling points about the design of interactive computer systems for demographically-diverse user populations. In particular, he advocates interfaces that support users by providing an "appealing perceptual experience" both in their appearance ("look") and behavior ("feel"). He contends that the path to such appealing interfaces involves developing and evaluating candidate scenarious through "either professional intuition or focus groups, [developing] prototypes quickly, [evaluating] their utility carefully through testing, and [implementing] a practical version."