Virtual Environments as Spaces of Symbolic Construction and Cultural Identity. Latin-American Virtual Communities

The aim of this work is to understand the sociopsychological\ud and cultural realities of virtual communities as live spaces of meeting and high interaction framed within the Latin American context. The study will consist of a comparative ethnographic study of several Latin communities, using the tools of participant observation and focused interviews

Exploring sociotechnical gaps in an intercultural, multidisciplinary design project

This paper highlights the need for the creation of artefacts that make\ud visible the gap between social requirements and the technical affordances of\ud technology. Augmenting the visibility of this gap can lead to a better integration\ud of the process and product of interaction design in intercultural and\ud multidisciplinary projects. Sociotechnical matrices are presented as artefacts that\ud can help to explore this gap. This is illustrated with a case study of the design of\ud interactive systems for farmers in rural Kenya. We discuss experiences in the use\ud of these matrices and new challenges that have emerged in using them

Reflecting on the usability of research on culture in designing interaction

The concept of culture has been attractive to producers of interactive\ud systems who are willing to design useful and relevant solutions to users\ud increasingly located in culturally diverse contexts. Despite a substantial body of\ud research on culture and technology, interaction designers have not always been\ud able to apply these research outputs to effectively define requirements for\ud culturally diverse users. This paper frames this issue as one of understanding of\ud the different paradigms underpinning the cultural models being applied to\ud interface development and research. Drawing on different social science theories,\ud the authors discuss top-down and bottom-up perspectives in the study of users‟\ud cultural differences and discuss the extent to which each provides usable design\ud knowledge. The case is made for combining bottom-up and top-down perspectives\ud into a sociotechnical approach that can produce knowledge useful and usable by\ud interaction designers. This is illustrated with a case study about the design of\ud interactive systems for farmers in rural Kenya

Exploring Cultural Differences in HCI Education

The discipline of human-computer interaction has become a subject taught across universities around the world, outside of the cultures where it originated. However, the intercultural implication of its assimilation into the\ud syllabus of courses offered by universities around the world remains underresearched. The purpose of this ongoing research project is to provide insights for these implications in terms of the student and teacher experience of HCI. How this subject is socially represented across the different universities studied is a key question. In order to develop intercultural awareness of these questions\ud universities from UK, Namibia, Mexico and China are collaborating in a multiple case study involving students and lecturers engaged in evaluation and design tasks. Findings will then be used to propose an international HCI curriculum more supportive of local perspectives. This paper describes the initial steps of this study and some preliminary findings from Namibia, India and Mexico about cognitive styles and cultural attitudes

An approach to the evaluation of usefulness as a social construct using technological frames

This article describes an investigation of the way usefulness of an information system is shaped by sociocultural factors in a work context. It presents technological frames as a conceptual tool that helps to understand usefulness from this point of view. It suggests that developers and users shape their experience of the usefulness of a system through these technological frames. This is illustrated with a qualitative study, in which developers' expectations of the usefulness of an enterprise resource planning system differed from those of users, who experienced the usefulness of the same system in diverse ways. Technological frames are proposed as an analysis framework for assessing how context and local culture shape the utility and usability of systems in situ, that is, once they are deployed to their actual contexts of use