Cultural Marker Identification for Web Application Design Targeted for Malaysian Multicultural Users

The rapid growth of technology result in two contradictory phenomenon, the global world becomes smaller while the internet users increase drastically. This diversity of users becomes the main attention toward the study of human computer interaction due to the influential of users’ background toward the usability of web application whereby combination of color strongly determine user’s preference and engagement level.  Hence, determination of color based cultural marker is crucial to the interface design process in order to fulfill the need of diverse users. Most of the empirical study so far has been carried in western contextual. As a result, suggested marker are not applicable in eastern perspective, particularly Malaysia which consist of multicultural society. This article provides content analysis of the website application targeted to multicultural audience to determine the prominent color based cultural markers. More importantly, identifications of the markers could assist the interface designers towards creating web based application that reflected the multicultural audience preferences

Usability Perceptions of Culturally Adapted Web Pages

The internationalization of websites should lead to highly usable web pages with excellent user experience. As a result, the understanding and implementation of users’ preferences for functionality, look, feel and aesthetics in website design has become a fundamental issue that needs to be adequately addressed. This research empirically demonstrates the interaction of user culture with user perceptions of perceived navigability, perceived aesthetics, and satisfaction, using a set of translated Australian and Chinese websites. The results show that by implementing culturally specific design elements it is possible to have a positive influence on these perceptions, but the relationships are more complex than originally hypothesized. This work highlights the importance of accommodating the different information presentation and interaction styles of culturally diverse users to improve their user experience when using websites

USEFul : a framework to mainstream web site usability through automated evaluation

A paradox has been observed whereby web site usability is proven to be an essential element in a web site, yet at the same time there exist an abundance of web pages with poor usability. This discrepancy is the result of limitations that are currently preventing web developers in the commercial sector from producing usable web sites. In this paper we propose a framework whose objective is to alleviate this problem by automating certain aspects of the usability evaluation process. Mainstreaming comes as a result of automation, therefore enabling a non-expert in the field of usability to conduct the evaluation. This results in reducing the costs associated with such evaluation. Additionally, the framework allows the flexibility of adding, modifying or deleting guidelines without altering the code that references them since the guidelines and the code are two separate components. A comparison of the evaluation results carried out using the framework against published evaluations of web sites carried out by web site usability professionals reveals that the framework is able to automatically identify the majority of usability violations. Due to the consistency with which it evaluates, it identified additional guideline-related violations that were not identified by the human evaluators.peer-reviewe

Identifying Cultural Markers for Web Application Design Targeted to a Multi-cultural Audience

This paper addresses the problem of defining a Web de-sign process suitable for the multi-cultural audience of a Web application in the globalization era. Traditional us-ability guidelines implicitly depend on the background of the audience, and may overlook specific preferences dic-tated by the cultural context. To overcome this limit, the no-tion of culturability has been proposed, which extends tradi-tional usability to take into account usage preferences stem-ming from multiple cultural conventions. The paper builds upon a case study (the comparison of Chinese and Western e-commerce Web sites) and proposes a working definition of culturability, based on cultural markers; moreover, an effec-tive methodology for identifying cultural markers and turn-ing them into design guidelines is established and validated by letting groups of users with different cultures evaluate ex-emplary Web applications incorporating different versions of the candidate cultural markers.

Identifying Cultural Markers for Web Application Design Targeted to a Multi-cultural Audience

none2Piero Fraternali; Massimo TisiFraternali, Piero; Tisi, Massim

Design e processamento cognitivo de informação online : um estudo de Eye Tracking

Tese de mestrado. Multimédia. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

The Shapes of Cultures: A Case Study of Social Network Sites/Services Design in the U.S. and China

With growing popularity of the use of social network sites/services (SNSs) throughout the world, the global dominance of SNSs designed in the western industrialized countries, especially in the United Sates, seems to have become an inevitable trend. As internationalization has become a common practice in designing SNSs in the United States, is localization still a viable practice? Does culture still matter in designing SNSs? This dissertation aims to answer these questions by comparing the user interface (UI) designs of a U.S.-based SNS, Twitter, and a China-based SNS, Sina Weibo, both of which have assumed an identity of a “microblogging” service, a sub category of SNSs. This study employs the theoretical lens of the theory of technical identity, user-centered website cultural usability studies, and communication and media studies. By comparing the UI designs, or the “form,” of the two microblogging sites/services, I illustrate how the social functions of a technological object as embedded and expressed in the interface designs are preserved or changed as the technological object that has developed a relatively stable identity (as a microblogging site/service) in one culture is transferred between the “home” culture and another. The analysis in this study focuses on design elements relevant to users as members of networks, members of audience, and publishers/broadcasters. The results suggest that the designs carry disparate biases towards modes of communication and social affordances, which indicate a shift of the identity of microblogging service/site across cultures

Lineamientos de diseño con enfoque cultural adaptados al entorno peruano: Un caso de estudio en una entidad gubernamental

El presente proyecto de fin de carrera tiene como objetivo elaborar lineamientos de diseño para sitios web gubernamentales enfocado en el entorno cultural peruano para incrementar la usabilidad y el nivel de satisfacción de los usuarios gracias al análisis de modelos culturales y la validación de lineamientos de diseño obtenidos mediante evaluación de usabilidad con usuarios. Hoy en día, considerar aspectos de usabilidad en productos de software es de suma importancia para lograr atraer y retener usuarios. Si bien la importancia de la usabilidad ha ido en aumento y es considerada clave, la inclusión de aspectos culturales en el diseño y evaluación de sitios web aún no es ampliamente difundida. Según la revisión de literatura, existen estudios que relacionan la usabilidad con temas culturales en páginas web. Sin embargo, pocos estudios incluyen a Perú dentro de su análisis, así como también son mayormente aplicados en sitios de comercio electrónico por su exposición a usuarios de diferentes culturas. Este proyecto es consistente con los componentes que definen a la usabilidad y realiza un análisis comparativo de elementos de diseño presentes en sitios web y su relación con las características culturales asociadas a un modelo cultural, el cual se selecciona en base a un análisis de modelos culturales presentes en la literatura. Finalmente, el presente estudio obtiene un listado de lineamientos de diseño que incluyen características culturales peruanas, los cuales al ser aplicados pueden demostrar una mejora en el nivel de satisfacción de los usuarios peruanos

Group level influence on blog's design behaviour

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The purpose of this research is twofold. Firstly, this research aims to investigate whether the design preferences of bloggers in selected countries from different cultural backgrounds are influenced by national culture traits. The investigation involves two categories of blogs selected within a country where the bloggers share similar attributes such as language or geographical location. Secondly, simultaneously, this research intends to discover the possibility of the impact of group level influence on design preferences of bloggers who are linked together in a network through bloggers’ linkage or blogrolls. To achieve the said purposes, observations on both the global and local blogs of six selected countries are conducted using the content analysis method. This method allows this research to observe web pages and rate design preferences of bloggers via a coding system, similar to the method used to analyse documents or manuscripts to find common themes or keywords. A total of 612 blogs (306 global and 306 local) are observed for a period of nine months to identify cultural traits on design behaviour based on national culture indicators chosen from prominent literatures. To prevent a systematic error, an independent second observer was appointed and the results obtained are compared using a statistical methodology. In addition, translators were also engaged to verify that the translations are of a correct meaning and comprehension since blogs use various national languages on their web pages. The data were statistically tested using SPSS engaging in statistical analysis of frequency table, Cross-Tabulation and cluster analyses and MANOVA. Results shown that design preferences between both the global and local blogs in each country, has significant differences in most of the design indicators chosen. The findings indicate that the national culture influence on design preferences in linked networks of blogs is weakening indicating another type of influence might be in existence. The results also provide evidence that blogs in linked networks are statistically significant as a cluster or a group by themselves and are independent from one cluster to another. The research, however, studies only six countries from six different cultural dimensions. The inclusion of other countries, similar to or different from the countries under investigation, would be an added advantage. Furthermore, the use of only a single type of global blog provider (blogspot.com) in this research could be extended to other global blog providers such as wordpress.com to give fairer coverage of major and popular global blogs as well as providing a wider generalisation effect of the research findings

A Usability Inspection Method for Model-driven Web Development Processes

Las aplicaciones Web son consideradas actualmente un elemento esencial e indispensable en toda actividad empresarial, intercambio de información y motor de redes sociales. La usabilidad, en este tipo de aplicaciones, es reconocida como uno de los factores clave más importantes, puesto que la facilidad o dificultad que los usuarios experimentan con estas aplicaciones determinan en gran medida su éxito o fracaso. Sin embargo, existen varias limitaciones en las propuestas actuales de evaluación de usabilidad Web, tales como: el concepto de usabilidad sólo se soporta parcialmente, las evaluaciones de usabilidad se realizan principalmente cuando la aplicación Web se ha desarrollado, hay una carencia de guías sobre cómo integrar adecuadamente la usabilidad en el desarrollo Web, y también existe una carencia de métodos de evaluación de la usabilidad Web que hayan sido validados empíricamente. Además, la mayoría de los procesos de desarrollo Web no aprovechan los artefactos producidos en las fases de diseño. Estos artefactos software intermedios se utilizan principalmente para guiar a los desarrolladores y para documentar la aplicación Web, pero no para realizar evaluaciones de usabilidad. Dado que la trazabilidad entre estos artefactos y la aplicación Web final no está bien definida, la realización de evaluaciones de usabilidad de estos artefactos resulta difícil. Este problema se mitiga en el desarrollo Web dirigido por modelos (DWDM), donde los artefactos intermedios (modelos) que representan diferentes perspectivas de una aplicación Web, se utilizan en todas las etapas del proceso de desarrollo, y el código fuente final se genera automáticamente a partir estos modelos. Al tener en cuenta la trazabilidad entre estos modelos, la evaluación de estos modelos permite detectar problemas de usabilidad que experimentaran los usuarios finales de la aplicación Web final, y proveer recomendaciones para corregir estos problemas de usabilidad durante fases tempranas del proceso de desarrollo Web. Esta tesis tiene como objetivo, tratando las anteriores limitaciones detectadas, el proponer un método de inspección de usabilidad que se puede integrar en diferentes procesos de desarrollo Web dirigido por modelos. El método se compone de un modelo de usabilidad Web que descompone el concepto de usabilidad en sub-características, atributos y métricas genéricas, y un proceso de evaluación de usabilidad Web (WUEP), que proporciona directrices sobre cómo el modelo de usabilidad se puede utilizar para llevar a cabo evaluaciones específicas. Las métricas genéricas del modelo de usabilidad deben operacionalizarse con el fin de ser aplicables a los artefactos software de diferentes métodos de desarrollo Web y en diferentes niveles de abstracción, lo que permite evaluar la usabilidad en varias etapas del proceso de desarrollo Web, especialmente en las etapas tempranas. Tanto el modelo de usabilidad como el proceso de evaluación están alineados con la última norma ISO/IEC 25000 estándar para la evaluación de la calidad de productos de software (SQuaRE). El método de inspección de usabilidad propuesto (WUEP) se ha instanciado en dos procesos de desarrollo Web dirigido por modelos diferentes (OO-H y WebML) a fin de demostrar la factibilidad de nuestra propuesta. Además, WUEP fue validado empíricamente mediante la realización de una familia de experimentos en OO-H y un experimento controlado en WebML. El objetivo de nuestros estudios empíricos fue evaluar la efectividad, la eficiencia, facilidad de uso percibida y la satisfacción percibida de los participantes; cuando utilizaron WUEP en comparación con un método de inspección industrial ampliamente utilizado: La Evaluación Heurística (HE). El análisis estadístico y meta-análisis de los datos obtenidos por separado de cada experimento indicaron que WUEP es más eficaz y eficiente que HE en la detección de problemas de usabilidad. Los evaluadores también percibieron más satisfacción cuando se aplicaron WUEP, y lesFernández Martínez, A. (2012). A Usability Inspection Method for Model-driven Web Development Processes [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/17845Palanci