HCI practice in Malaysia : a reflection of ICT professionals' perspective

Although Human Computer Interaction (HCI) has been practiced by Western countries over the last 40 years, very little is known about how HCI is being incorporated in Malaysian practices. We undertook a 12-week ethnographical study aimed at revealing HCI perceptions at different managerial levels in Information and Communication Technology (ICT)departments and agencies in Malaysia. We describe and discuss the factor that either drive or impede technology managers towards HCI awareness, based on the nature of ICT-related/ software development in Malaysia. The result of the study indicates that the developers and corporations' overall perception of HCI is influenced by their national and organizational culture. The lack of emphasis on usable interface design and scarce information regarding user studies and evaluation are major concerns.Within this context of developing countries, the difficulty of creating HCI awareness and adopting usability may be due to the complexity of the government's bureaucracy system. We suggest that stakeholders and policy markers such as the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC)and the Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU)are more relevant in influencing and/ or reinforcing the incorporation of JCI in the workplace and enhancing the usability of the products and software created in the organization at the managerial level

A prelimenary study : Malaysian women in human-computer interaction practices.

This paper reports the involvement of ivomen in the Information Comnlunication Technology (ICT) specifically in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) practices in Malaysia. The study aims to identify the ivomen in job proficiency, experience and as decision-maker in the ICT industry. The results indicate that women in ICT have a low avareness of the importance of HCI knoivledge in use and related job offered, therefore their contribution to the industry may be limited due to lack of understanding of some domain of knowledg

Netnography approach for UX research

This paper discusses on how netnography can be applied to gain an understanding on sensitive research topic in a high power distance culture. The study investigated the frustrations among practitioners in incorporating the User Experience Design (UXD) in software development process. Netnography has been applied to uncover the unspoken behaviors of stakeholders and attitudes of clients who disrespect designers that reflects the UX practitioners frustration on the stakeholiders‘ politics. This findings will be useful in seeking a solution to improve the UXD process. From this work it can be concluded that netnography can be a suitable approach to gain deeper insights into understanding practitioner’s frustrations in UX research study

User experience on educational websites’ search engine.

This paper reports a user experience study on using search engine. Which was conducted on selected universities' websites. The study aims to evaluate the user experience of the search engine. Results indicate that many educational uebsites in Malaysia may require better search engine for improving the user experience kvhen searching for information. The adverse rating is due to scarch engine poor usability. Ne\-ertheless. users continued browsing and navigating the websites to complete the task at hand - to search for related courses on Human Computer interaction with related keylvords. Regardless the low engagement lec.el. users rating on overall usability on websites is still high due to satisfying experience with other parts of the website

Understanding the characteristics of UX Malaysia UXD community of practice (COP): a participants‟ observation

This study reports on the research involving the use of a participant observation approach to understand the characteristics of UX Malaysia, a community of practice for user experience design (UXD). This qualitative approach provides insight into the behaviour, characteristics and attitude of the members of the community of practice which they may not express when other research approaches are used. The results reveal deep insight about the characteristics of the observed community of practice

Human-Computer interaction within the Malaysian university curriculum.

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is considered by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) one of the fourteen fundamental areas that represents the body of knowledge of computer science (Calderon, 2009). Due to its multi-disciplinary nature. educators must continue to keep the subject de\-ant to industry and prepare themsel\-es with sufficient principles and methods from each of these contributing disciplines in HCI. This paper describes the status of HCI course. u.hich has been offered in the Malaysian public and pri~tateu niversities. A survey on Malaysian universities' websites was conducted to find out the status of HCI and related course offered by the universities. The finding reveals that HCI courses were offered at different level and faculty \vitIi disparate name at different universities. The subject is offered particularly in computer science; however. there exists other faculty offering HCI to provide foundation wherc relevan

A UX community of practice: design goals, practice motivations and values

This research report provides an intuitive insight into the design goals, practice values and the motivations why practitioners involved in a community of practice are motivated to practice user experience design in industry. A survey approach with instrument having closed ended questions was utilized. The results indicated that the practitioners’ design goals followed a hierarchy, in the order: usability, functionality, security, pleasure and customizability. The strongest motivation driving respondents who attended the user experience (UX) gathering was performance oriented, hingedon classic competitiveness. In addition, the highest values among the respondents (UX designers) were to make users happy, followed by a focus on clients’happines

Does User-Centred Design (UCD) matter? perspective of Malaysian IT organizations

In the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), user needs are recognized to be the most crucial component in designing towards usability, hence user experience (UX). This paper explores the most valued component at the earliest phases of design and appreciation of end users among information technology (IT) personnel with different roles at organisations in Malaysia. The organisations are divided into three (3) categories; government agencies, government-link company (GLC), private company. Eighty four (84) personnel are surveyed using a semi-structured questionnaire. The study investigates the gap of awareness in User-Centered Design (UCD) and most important values during IT development process in the organisations. The result points that little evidence is available on the level of user involvement during the design process even thou many respondents believe that user should be the centre of the design process. There is a gap in the International usability standards currently embedded at the national and organisational level at all organisations

UI sketching reskill for UX researchers

In this paper, we highlighted the importance of User Experience (UX) sketching as one of the skillsets required for UX researchers in project development especially in low participatory design awareness countries like Malaysia. This is due to the results from UX research activities that are not perceived to be impactful by developers, designers and other stakeholders in digital transformation projects especially by the government that has been suffering from vendor-centric Request for Proposal (RFP) tender for the past 60 years. In consequences, time taken by developers to code from requirements captured by business analysts is longer than visual representation produced by UX or UI designers, which shortens the requirement gathering process. In conclusion, we found that UX sketching that produces visual representation of user needs to be effective especially in participatory design approach and to reduce user frustrations