Designing Usable Interfaces with Cultural Dimensions

There are as many arguments against as supporting the accommodation of culture into user interface design. One argument suggests that it is necessary to match the subjective cultural profile of the interface to the cultural profile of the users in order to enhance usability and performance. In contrast, we argue that the interface design characteristics required to design interfaces to accommodate one side of four of the five cultural dimensions proposed by Hofstede will result in an increase in usability for all users, irrespective of the users’ cultural profile. Secondary data analysis of a prior experiment somewhat supported our argument, but we conclude that further research into the effects of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions is required before our hypotheses can be accepted.

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