An Initial Cross-Cultural Survey of User Perception on Web Icon Design for Travel Websites

The increasing technological sophistication in many countries and the resulting broader world communication through the World Wide Web (WWW) imply greater attention to the international aspects of user interfaces. Consequently presenting appropriate and understandable World Wide Web interfaces is a challenge due to a broadly different beliefs, attitudes, and values. No mater how sophisticated every visual representation is, the language and cultural differences will still remain in the user perception. As result, one cannot trust the original usability work on the user interface to be necessarily and equally usable around the world. Based upon this notion, the universal capabilities of interface design for the World Wide Web is questionable. This initial research attempted to identify whether or not perceptual differences occurred when subjects from two culturally different populations viewed similar web interfaces, in which web icon on web-based travel sites was chosen as stimuli. Study was taken at two different locations, the Design Department at Institute of Technology – Bandung Indonesia and the School of Design at Arizona State University – USA. Given the web icon designs and their referential function, subjects were asked to order, for each referent, a set of web icons in descending order of merit to the appropriateness of their referent. The rationale for this research was based on Edward T Hall’s theory of culture as applied for computer-mediated-communication. As for analysis, the perceptual score was determined by totaling the scores of the most meaningful icon for each referent that were chosen by users. Thirty college students participated in the survey. The subjects were grouped according to genders, age groups, university-standings, and computer-literacy level. Result showed that the perception of Indonesian users and American users was significantly different. The differences between populations occurred in three factors of icon design: message type or information, message speed, and object presentation. The study also indicated that these differences were mostly influenced by gender differences in the American population samples. Other measured variables, such as age groups, university-standings, and computer-literacy levels did not have significant effects on the perceptual differences between populations. As an initial study, this research aimed to address cultural issues in interface design research yet providing guide points for further study on cross-cultural visual communication.