Research paper titled ‘Evaluating Interface of website for east and west’ in Indo-Danish Research Symposium, May 2006.
Aim: To understand the cross cultural issues in GUI.
Author(s): Bokdia, Divye; Kishore, Ramachandra; Reddy, Vamshi
Processes Used: Literature Survey, Persona Creation, Scenario Analysis, Heuristic Evaluation, Eye Movement Analysis, Usability Metrics, Repertory Grid Test, System Analysis.
Brief: East and West have their different cultures and so are their needs. We intend to find the factors, variation of which will result in interfaces that can be adequate or inadequate to any culture. Our study is converged to the Indian and western culture only, as western culture has got great impact on the Indian culture. Interface made for the websites in one corner of the world are being used by users all over the world. But these are not able to cater to the needs of users to its full extent, as users of different regions have different expectations, as each person has his own visual appetite and taste.
Conclusion: Our study aims to point out the factors which are present in website and at the same time vacillate for different cultures.
Those factors could be summed up as colors including the background color and text color, icons & symbols, menus either drop down or the sliding, images including the background and the images for validation of text and sounds which we use for button clicks or the background music, cursors, metaphors, attention gained through poetry, visual aesthetics, and appeals.
These factors could form a strong basis to answer the questions by Aaron Marcus [1], which are
- In crafting Websites and Web applications how well are ambiguity and uncertainty avoidance received?
- How much conflict can people tolerate in content or style of argumentation?
- How much advertising hyperbole could be tolerated in a collective culture focused on modesty?
