Characterizing HCI Research in China: Streams, Methodologies and Future Directions

This position paper takes the first step to attempt to present the initial characterization of HCI research in China. We discuss the current streams and methodologies of Chinese HCI research based on two well-known HCI theories: Micro/Marco-HCI and the Three Paradigms of HCI. We evaluate the discussion with a survey of Chinese publications at CHI 2019, which shows HCI research in China has less attention to Macro-HCI topics and the third paradigms of HCI (Phenomenologically situated Interaction). We then propose future HCI research directions such as paying more attention to Macro-HCI topics and third paradigm of HCI, combining research methodologies from multiple HCI paradigms, including emergent users who have less access to technology, and addressing the cultural dimensions in order to provide better technical solutions and support

Culture in the design of mHealth UI:An effort to increase acceptance among culturally specific groups

Purpose: Designers of mobile applications have long understood the importance of users’ preferences in making the user experience easier, convenient and therefore valuable. The cultural aspects of groups of users are among the key features of users’ design preferences, because each group’s preferences depend on various features that are culturally compatible. The process of integrating culture into the design of a system has always been an important ingredient for effective and interactive human computer interface. This study aims to investigate the design of a mobile health (mHealth) application user interface (UI) based on Arabic culture. It was argued that integrating certain cultural values of specific groups of users into the design of UI would increase their acceptance of the technology. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 135 users responded to an online survey about their acceptance of a culturally designed mHealth. Findings: The findings showed that culturally based language, colours, layout and images had a significant relationship with users’ behavioural intention to use the culturally based mHealth UI. Research limitations/implications: First, the sample and the data collected of this study were restricted to Arab users and Arab culture; therefore, the results cannot be generalized to other cultures and users. Second, the adapted unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model was used in this study instead of the new version, which may expose new perceptions. Third, the cultural aspects of UI design in this study were limited to the images, colours, language and layout. Practical implications: It encourages UI designers to implement the relevant cultural aspects while developing mobile applications. Originality/value: Embedding Arab cultural aspects in designing UI for mobile applications to satisfy Arab users and enhance their acceptance toward using mobile applications, which will reflect positively on their lives.</p

Second language user support

Computer users rarely experience entirely trouble-free interaction. The natural variety ofindividuals ensures that no software systems yield constantly fluent interaction for allusers. In consequence, software designers often strive to ameliorate this situation bybuilding 'user support' into their systems. User support can take different forms but,conventionally, each aims to assist the needy end-user by means of facilities directly supporting the performance of certain operations, or through supply of information thatadvises the user on available system functionality.The present paper briefly characterises a range of user support facilities before describingone requirement in greater detail. This aspect considers the needs of users whose mother-tongue is not English, but who are obliged to use English-based information systems. Inthis context, 'helping the user' must reasonably extend beyond mere advice on systemoperation to selective elucidation of information content. We regard this move as alogical extension of the user support concept, by seeking to address specific interactionneeds in a target user population. An example of this approach is described through aninformation system, in the domain of civil engineering, for native Chinese speakers ofEnglish

Second language user support

Computer users rarely experience entirely trouble-free interaction. The natural variety ofindividuals ensures that no software systems yield constantly fluent interaction for allusers. In consequence, software designers often strive to ameliorate this situation bybuilding 'user support' into their systems. User support can take different forms but,conventionally, each aims to assist the needy end-user by means of facilities directly supporting the performance of certain operations, or through supply of information thatadvises the user on available system functionality.The present paper briefly characterises a range of user support facilities before describingone requirement in greater detail. This aspect considers the needs of users whose mother-tongue is not English, but who are obliged to use English-based information systems. Inthis context, 'helping the user' must reasonably extend beyond mere advice on systemoperation to selective elucidation of information content. We regard this move as alogical extension of the user support concept, by seeking to address specific interactionneeds in a target user population. An example of this approach is described through aninformation system, in the domain of civil engineering, for native Chinese speakers ofEnglish

Culture and E-Learning: Automatic Detection of a Users’ Culture from Survey Data

Knowledge about the culture of a user is especially important for the design of e-learning applications. In the experiment reported here, questionnaire data was used to build machine learning models to automatically predict the culture of a user. This work can be applied to automatic culture detection and subsequently to the adaptation of user interfaces in e-learning

Human computer interaction for international development: past present and future

Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in research into the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the context of developing regions, particularly into how such ICTs might be appropriately designed to meet the unique user and infrastructural requirements that we encounter in these cross-cultural environments. This emerging field, known to some as HCI4D, is the product of a diverse set of origins. As such, it can often be difficult to navigate prior work, and/or to piece together a broad picture of what the field looks like as a whole. In this paper, we aim to contextualize HCI4D—to give it some historical background, to review its existing literature spanning a number of research traditions, to discuss some of its key issues arising from the work done so far, and to suggest some major research objectives for the future

Testing of a novel web browser interface for the Chinese market

This paper compares the perspicacity, appropriateness and preference of web browser icons from leading software providers with those of a culture-specific design. This online study was conducted in Taiwan and involved 103 participants, who were given three sets of web browser icons to review, namely Microsoft Internet Explorer, Macintosh Safari, and culturally specific icons created using the Culture-Centred Design methodology. The findings of the study show that all three sets have generally high recognition rates, but that some icon functions (e.g. Go/Visit and Favourite) in all three sets have poor recognition rates and are considered inappropriate

Chinese users’ preference for web browser icons

This paper compares the perspicacity, appropriateness and preference of web browser icons from leading software providers with those of a culture-specific design. The history and future direction of web browsers is outlined, together with the implications for the future growth of Chinese internet users. China, with its rapidly expanding young netizens has now overtaken the USA in terms of the number of internet users (253 million) and we predict it will reach saturation (?70% internet penetration rate) by 2012. If correct, this will have a dramatic effect on the use of English as the ‘Lingua Franca’ of the Internet. This online study was conducted in Taiwan and involved 103 participants (mean age 21 years), who were given three sets of web browser icons to review, namely Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0, Macintosh Safari 3.0, and culturally specific icons created using the Culture-Centred Design methodology. The findings of the study show that all three sets have generally high recognition rates, but that some icon functions (e.g. Go/Visit and Favourite) in all three sets have poor recognition rates and are considered inappropriate. Furthermore, some significant differences were found when we analysed the level of user experience amongst several icon

Sketching-out virtual humans: From 2d storyboarding to immediate 3d character animation

Virtual beings are playing a remarkable role in today’s public entertainment, while ordinary users are still treated as audiences due to the lack of appropriate expertise, equipment, and computer skills. In this paper, we present a fast and intuitive storyboarding interface, which enables users to sketch-out 3D virtual humans, 2D/3D animations, and character intercommunication. We devised an intuitive “stick figurefleshing-outskin mapping” graphical animation pipeline, which realises the whole process of key framing, 3D pose reconstruction, virtual human modelling, motion path/timing control, and the final animation synthesis by almost pure 2D sketching. A “creative model-based method” is developed, which emulates a human perception process, to generate the 3D human bodies of variational sizes, shapes, and fat distributions. Meanwhile, our current system also supports the sketch-based crowd animation and the storyboarding of the 3D multiple character intercommunication. This system has been formally tested by various users on Tablet PC. After minimal training, even a beginner can create vivid virtual humans and animate them within minutes