Cultural Differences in Human Computer Interaction: Results from Two Online Surveys

This paper describes a method to obtain quantitatively discriminating cultural interaction indicators and their values for cross-cultural Human Computer Interaction (HCI) design as preparatory work for cross-cultural adaptive navigation and multi-media systems. The method has been implemented in a tool for cross-cultural HCI analysis. Two online studies temporally displaced by one year using this tool, regarding cultural adaptability exemplified by use cases of navigation systems, revealed differences in interaction behaviour that depend on the cultural background of the users. The results will be presented and discussed to demonstrate the difficulties, but also the importance to get the cultural differences in HCI to clear the way for cultural adaptability. 1 Determining Cultural Differences in HCI as First Step to Cultural Adaptability To be able to adapt navigation systems manually (adaptation) or automatically (adaptability) to the cultural needs of the user, the first step is to investigate what must be adapted, i.e. to find out the differences in the cultural needs of the users and hence the cultural differences in HCI on all levels of HCI localization (surface, functionality, and interaction). This is still one of the largest explanation gaps in cross-cultural HCI design, which has to be bridged today. Here areas like presentation of information (e. g. colours, time and date format, icons, font size) and language (e. g. font, direction of writing, naming) or dialog design (e. g. menu strucPublished in: OSSWALD, Achim; STEMPFHUBER, Maximilian; WOLFF, Christian (eds.) (2007). Open Innovation. Proc. 10. International Symposium for Information Science. Constance: UVK, 145-157.