Cultural-based Interface Design

Abstract

With expanding the internet all around the world, the importance of considering different users with different cultural backgrounds getting more vital. It is not anymore possible to design a user interface without considering this wide range of users. Instead, more studies about users and target group of any digital product are needed. Studied showed that considering cultural differences in the design process is improving the usability of the system and as a result, it will increase system acceptance by the users. Although it is anticipated that cultural differences are important for improving usability of interfaces and systems, there is apparently still reluctance among designers to achieve a framework for cultural friendly user interfaces. Besides analyzing the literature, the author has conducted two explorative studies to develop a comprehensive framework that covers the key factors which could affect users’ satisfaction to use interfaces. This paper aims to summarize and discuss different studies, showing how they have developed gradually, aiming to reach a satisfactory level of user experience and finally shed light on interesting results. In this thesis, this challenge was framed with three main research questions. The first question was about the best practices of interface design. This question was answered by reviewing different design principles and practices in the literature review. The second question was about different cultural dimensions and their effects on interface design. First, different cultural models were reviewed, followed by possible effects of these models on interfaces. The main challenge was answering the last question, what is the relationship between cultural dimensions and usability problems in user interface design? To answer this question, one user test and an unstructured interview with four users were hold. For this reason, www.infofinland.fi was chosen. Results confirmed that there is a direct relationship between the cultural dimension model and user satisfaction and usability of the website. Results showed that the main cultural influence that has a strong effect on the usability of the website was power distance. This means that design aspects related to power distance in interface design like navigation and data structure. As s research outcome, the results showed that designing a navigation system and data structure based on the target group culture can significantly improve the usability of the websites and systems. On the other hand, graphical and visual elements like colors and layout do not have a strong effect on the usability of a system.