Culturally sensitive user interface design: a case study with German and Vietnamese users

Considering country-specific preferences in user interface (UI) design is a time-consuming task. We present a case study with German and Vietnamese users to explore how cultural theory can be applied in early design phases to support culturally sensitive design. We present an analysis of cultural dimensions and a comparison of German and Vietnamese question-and-answer (Q&A) websites. Based on the derived insights, we developed two UI concepts of a Q&A-website that differ in information architecture, navigation structure, and visual presentation. The prototypes were assessed with 14 German and 14 Vietnamese users in a think aloud setting. We were able to draw a conclusion about our initial analysis and the differing evaluation of the participants from the two countries due to their preferences regarding information retrieval, trust, and error handling. Our analysis provides first insights into the applicability of cultural theory in UI design but also opens up questions for further research.

[1]  Regan L. Mandryk,et al.  Identifying emotional states using keystroke dynamics , 2011, CHI.

[2]  Mark A. Williams,et al.  Cross-cultural differences in automotive HMI design: a comparative study between UK and Indian users' design preferences , 2016 .

[3]  C. Mora.  Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind Intercultural Cooperation and Its Importance for Survival , 2013 .

[4]  Xiaorui Hu,et al.  Cultural Adaptation on the Web: A Study of American Companies' Domestic and Chinese Websites , 2003, J. Glob. Inf. Manag..

[5]  R. Bhagat.  Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations , 2002 .

[6]  Andreas Butz,et al.  Quantified UX: Towards a Common Organizational Understanding of User Experience , 2016, NordiCHI.

[7]  Virpi Roto,et al.  Now let's do it in practice: user experience evaluation methods in product development , 2008, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[8]  Heli Väätäjä,et al.  Exploring motivational aspects and user experience of mobile mathematics learning service in south africa , 2016, MindTrek.

[9]  Rosalie L. Tung,et al.  Beyond Hofstede and GLOBE: Improving the quality of cross-cultural research , 2010 .

[10]  Nuno Jardim Nunes,et al.  The state of user experience evaluation practice , 2014, NordiCHI.

[11]  Paul Dourish,et al.  Postcolonial computing: a lens on design and development , 2010, CHI.

[12]  Nancy L. Hoft,et al.  International Technical Communication: How to Export Information about High Technology , 1995 .

[13]  Jeffrey Holbrook,et al.  Early engagement and new technologies: opening up the laboratory , 2014 .

[14]  E. Hall.  The dance of life : the other dimension of time , 1984 .

[15]  Rajiv Arjan,et al.  Harnessing the power of Digital Mobile Maps in Africa , 2016, AfriCHI.

[16]  Patricia Gillard,et al.  Identifying Cultural Design Requirements for an Australian Indigenous Website , 2010, AUIC.

[17]  Virpi Roto,et al.  User experience evaluation: do you know which method to use? , 2009, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[18]  Katharina Reinecke,et al.  The Use and Usefulness of Cultural Dimensions in Product Development , 2018, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[19]  Florian Fincke,et al.  UX Metrics: Deriving Country-Specific Usage Patterns of a Website Plug-In from Web Analytics , 2017, INTERACT.

[20]  Katharina Reinecke,et al.  Doodle around the world: online scheduling behavior reflects cultural differences in time perception and group decision-making , 2013, CSCW.

[21]  Reece George,et al.  Evaluating Indigenous Design Features Using Cultural Dimensions , 2012, AUIC.

[22]  P. Dourish,et al.  Postcolonial interculturality , 2009, IWIC '09.

[23]  Katharina Reinecke,et al.  Improving performance, perceived usability, and aesthetics with culturally adaptive user interfaces , 2011, TCHI.

[24]  Axel Hunger,et al.  Cultural influence on user preference on groupware application for intercultural collaboration , 2010, ICIC '10.

[25]  Christine L. Borgman.  The user's mental model of an information retrieval system: an experiment on a prototype online catalog , 1999, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[26]  Shafie Mehad,et al.  Muslim User Interface Evaluation Framework (Muslim-UI) for Islamic genre website: A quantitative approach , 2010, Proceeding of the 3rd International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for the Moslem World (ICT4M) 2010.

[27]  Helene Gelderblom,et al.  The effects of culture on performance achieved through the use of human computer interaction , 2003 .

[28]  Virpi Roto,et al.  User Experience Evaluation Methods in Product Development (UXEM'09) , 2009, INTERACT.

[29]  Virpi Roto,et al.  USER EXPERIENCE WHITE PAPER Bringing clarity to the concept of user experience , 2011 .

[30]  Lance Porter,et al.  One Size Does Not Fit All: Culture and Perceived Importance of Web Design Features , 2008 .

[31]  Steven J. Jackson,et al.  Logistics as Care and Control: An Investigation into the UNICEF Supply Division , 2016, CHI.

[32]  Sanna Malinen,et al.  The role of community in exercise: cross-cultural study of online exercise diary users , 2013, C&T '13.

[33]  Alan Borning,et al.  Value Sensitive Design and Information Systems , 2020, The Ethics of Information Technologies.

[34]  Jakob Nielsen,et al.  International users interface , 1996 .

[35]  Rod Walsh,et al.  Cultural differences in smartphone user experience evaluation , 2010, MUM.

[36]  Alfons Trompenaars,et al.  Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Diversity in Global Business , 1993 .

[37]  Paul van Schaik,et al.  Attitudes towards user experience (UX) measurement , 2014, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[38]  Tawanna Dillahunt,et al.  "If god gives me the chance i will design my own phone": exploring mobile phone repair and postcolonial approaches to design in rural Kenya , 2015, UbiComp.

[39]  Kim Halskov,et al.  UX Design Innovation: Challenges for Working with Machine Learning as a Design Material , 2017, CHI.

[40]  E. Hall,et al.  The Hidden Dimension , 1970 .

[41]  Jakob Nielsen,et al.  Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces , 1990, CHI '90.

[42]  Xiaorui Hu,et al.  Analyzing the cultural content of web sites , 2005 .

[43]  Klaus Krippendorff,et al.  Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology , 1980 .

[44]  Gorm Rye Olsen,et al.  In the Bermuda Triangle Africa between China, the European Union and the United States , 2010 .

[45]  Heike Winschiers,et al.  The Challenges of Participatory Design in a Intercultural Context: Designing for Usability in Namibia , 2006 .

[46]  Albert N. Badre,et al.  Culturability: the merging of culture and usability , 1998 .

[47]  Katharina Reinecke,et al.  Quantifying visual preferences around the world , 2014, CHI.

[48]  Ilpo Koskinen,et al.  Co-experience: user experience as interaction , 2005 .

[49]  S. Schwartz.  A Theory of Cultural Values and Some Implications for Work , 1999 .

[50]  Alvin W. Yeo,et al.  Global-software development lifecycle: an exploratory study , 2001, CHI.

[51]  S. Greenberg,et al.  The Psychology of Everyday Things , 2012 .

[52]  Kennon M. Sheldon,et al.  What is satisfying about satisfying events? Testing 10 candidate psychological needs. , 2001, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[53]  J. H. Gilmore,et al.  Welcome to the experience economy. , 1998, Harvard business review.

[54]  Tanja Walsh,et al.  Approaches to cross-cultural design: two case studies with UX web-surveys , 2012, OZCHI.

[55]  Gaye Karacay-Aydin,et al.  Cultural Variability in Web Content: A Comparative Analysis of American and Turkish Websites , 2009 .

[56]  Ilda Ladeira,et al.  Interactive personal storytelling: an ethnographic study and simulation of apartheid-era narratives , 2014, Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.

[57]  Alan Cooper,et al.  About Face 3: the essentials of interaction design , 1995 .

[58]  D. Victor.  International Business Communication , 1997 .

[59]  Aaron Marcus,et al.  The Impact of Culture on the Design of Arabic Websites , 2009, HCI.

[60]  Joyojeet Pal,et al.  Market Practices and the Bazaar: Technology Consumption in ICT Markets in the Global South , 2017, CHI.

[61]  Vanessa Evers,et al.  The Role of Culture in Interface Acceptance , 1997, INTERACT.

[62]  E. Hall,et al.  The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time , 1984 .

[63]  E. W. Gould,et al.  Crosscurrents: cultural dimensions and global Web user-interface design , 2000, INTR.

[64]  Alvin Yeo,et al.  Cultural user interfaces: a silver lining in cultural diversity , 1996, SGCH.

[65]  César A. Collazos,et al.  Methodological framework for design and evaluation of interactive systems from a multicultural and emotional perspective , 2013, ChileCHI '13.

[66]  Katharina Reinecke,et al.  Knowing What a User Likes: A Design Science Approach to Interfaces that Automatically Adapt to Culture , 2013, MIS Q..

[67]  Houda el Mimoni,et al.  Culture and information architecture: A study of American and Arab academic websites , 2015, ASIST.

[68]  Marco Pretorius,et al.  The User Experience Landscape of South Africa , 2015, SAICSIT '15.

[69]  Netta Iivari,et al.  UX Professionals' Definitions of Usability and UX - A Comparison Between Turkey, Finland, Denmark, France and Malaysia , 2017, INTERACT.

[70]  Paula Kotzé,et al.  Designing Usable Interfaces with Cultural Dimensions , 2005, INTERACT.

[71]  Kristina Höök,et al.  Steps to take before intelligent user interfaces become real , 2000, Interact. Comput..

[72]  Kasper Hornbæk,et al.  Old wine in new bottles or novel challenges: a critical analysis of empirical studies of user experience , 2011, CHI.

[73]  David Murray,et al.  Towards cultural translation of websites: a large-scale study of Australian, Chinese, and Saudi Arabian design preferences , 2017, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[74]  A. Calabrese,et al.  Cultural adaptation of web design services as critical success factor for business excellence : A cross-cultural study of Portuguese, Brazilian, Angolan and Macanese web sites , 2014 .

[75]  Andy Smith,et al.  Evaluation methods and cultural differences: studies across three continents , 2008, NordiCHI.

[76]  Norhayati Zakaria,et al.  Applying culture to website design: a comparison of Malaysian and US websites , 2000, SIGDOC.

[77]  Minna Isomursu,et al.  Design of mobile wellness applications: identifying cross-cultural factors , 2008, OZCHI.

[78]  P. Brewer,et al.  The Ecological Fallacy in National Culture Research , 2014 .

[79]  Marc Hassenzahl,et al.  User experience (UX): towards an experiential perspective on product quality , 2008, IHM '08.

[80]  Kentaro Toyama,et al.  Mobile-Banking Adoption and Usage by Low-Literate, Low-Income Users in the Developing World , 2009, HCI.

[81]  Mark D. Dunlop,et al.  Dynamic positioning systems: usability and interaction styles , 2008, NordiCHI.

[82]  Richard D. Lewis.  When cultures collide : managing successfully across cultures : a major new edition of the global guide , 2000 .

[83]  Andreas Butz,et al.  A Bermuda Triangle?: A Review of Method Application and Triangulation in User Experience Evaluation , 2018, CHI.

[84]  John Zimmerman,et al.  Mapping Machine Learning Advances from HCI Research to Reveal Starting Places for Design Innovation , 2018, CHI.

[85]  Ons Al-Shamaileh,et al.  Investigating a multi-faceted view of user experience , 2012, OZCHI.

[86]  Andrew Large,et al.  Measuring Cultural Markers in Arabic Government Websites Using Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions , 2011, HCI.

[87]  S. Elo,et al.  Qualitative Content Analysis , 2014 .

[88]  Marc Hassenzahl,et al.  User experience - a research agenda , 2006, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[89]  B. McSweeney.  Hofstede’s Model of National Cultural Differences and their Consequences: A Triumph of Faith - a Failure of Analysis , 2002 .

[90]  R. Murphy,et al.  Developing alternative frameworks for exploring intercultural learning: a critique of Hofstede's cultural difference model , 2009 .

[91]  Virpi Roto,et al.  User experience evaluation methods: current state and development needs , 2010, NordiCHI.

[92]  Katharina Reinecke,et al.  A Case for Design Localization: Diversity of Website Aesthetics in 44 Countries , 2018, CHI.

[93]  Katharina Reinecke,et al.  Participation Differences in Q&A Sites Across Countries: Opportunities for Cultural Adaptation , 2016, NordiCHI.

[94]  Keld Bødker,et al.  Workplace Cultures: Looking at Artifacts, Symbols and Practices , 1992 .

[95]  Rita Orji,et al.  The Topicality of Agent-Based Modeling/Multi Agent Systems in Human Computer Interaction Research: An African Perspective , 2016, AfriCHI.

[96]  Lori Sachau,et al.  Trends in culturally relevant interface design features for Latino Web site users , 2012 .