Users from Other Cultures than the
U.S.
Eiman M. Elnahrawy
Department of Computer Science
University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
April 2001
Abstract
This paper introduces general recommendations and guidelines for website developers about accommodating diverse users, in particular users from other cultures than the US. The paper shows how cultural differences might affect the usability of the websites. It also provides sample for good websites and some useful links for practitioners on how to create universally usable websites.
Introduction
Culture can be defined as the behavior and standard beliefs that distinguish the members of one human group from another [4]. Culture does not determine the behavior of individuals but it points to probable modes of perception, thought, and action [6]. Extensive researches have been conducted to identify patterns of similarities and differences among different cultures. An interesting research is the one conducted for IBM by the theorist Geert Hofstede [9]. He identified five dimensions of cultures that might influence the user interface and web design. These dimensions are, the power-distance, collectivism versus individualism, femininity versus masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long versus short-term orientation. The detailed description of these dimensions is beyond the scope of this paper and the interested reader may refer to [9].
Many web usability problems may arise due to the variations between cultures. Such variations may be found in color, graphics, phrases, icons, character sets, pictures, symbols, date and time format, etc. [4]. Users from different cultures may understand the same websites in totally different ways. Some metaphors, navigation, interaction, or appearance might be misunderstood and might confuse, or even offend those users [9,10]
It is not only the functionality of the website that is important. The usability of the site is becoming more and more important. This is not only to satisfy users, but if it is not carried out, they may simply use other competing websites that have the similar functionality. Efforts are being made to enhance the design of user interface and to improve web usability. It is clear that designing websites that accommodate users from different cultures is a necessity and not an option.
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General Recommendations
The usability of websites is a
major factor upon which users choose among alternatives. While no website can
be suitable for all users from all over the world, we still need more efforts
at making the websites universally usable. Websites developers should remember
that the number of websites that have similar functionality is increasing
rapidly, and users might prefer one site to another because of its usability.
They need to globalize their sites and their user-interfaces in order to
improve the website usability. They should consider their own culture
orientation and also should understand the preferred structures and interfaces
for other cultures. This attention will help them to achieve more desirable
global solutions, and to design websites that are usable by users from other
cultures. [4,6,9]
The World Wide Web enables global distribution of products and services. There is more to "going global" than having a multilingual website. This is totally different from designing global software. With software, the problem is much easier, the menus, the buttons, the manual, are all in English that can be translated into the local languages of the countries at which we need to sell the software. We can have distributors at those countries to handle the local market as well. But although the Web content is also largely in English, the Web itself is global, and designing for users from all over the world is not an easy problem. Web developers who want their websites to be usable by users all over the world should consider the impact of culture on the understanding and use of their sites. They should analyze the needs, wants, preferences, and expectations of users from different cultures through references to cross-cultural theories [9]. Some factors, such as date, calendars, weekends, time, telephone numbers, address formats, character sets, units of measurements and currency are well-defined and can be easily analyzed by the website developer. Other factors, such as mental processing and perception, graphics, colors, sound, metaphors and mental models are harder to analyze and to take care of, and require special consideration because they are usually hidden or vague [11].
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Guidelines
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Think Internationally
Decide whether you want international users to visit your U.S. site or a local site.
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Work in an intercultural team to develop your
website
This is the most cost effective and produces the highest quality. Intercultural team reduce the need to contact local usability experts each time you need to add some modifications.
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Know your users
Know your users, their cultures, their objectives, their characteristics, their environment, the level of education of typical users …etc. Once you are familiar with who your users are and what their culture is like, you are ready to begin designing. You might ask yourself some questions like: What objectives do users hope to achieve with my site? How do these factors affect the way in which these objectives are achieved? How do they interact? What effect does this have on the way in which my site is used? What are the site features that can be defined according to that? The only way to find answers to these questions is by empirical studies. Do not forget to keep detailed documentation of these requirements. This is important to ensure that the design decisions are clearly explained and can be checked at any time in the future in case you need to add some extensions to your site.
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Minimize the use of images
You can always draw users’ attention to particular sections on the web page by using tables, attractive icons, etc. These simple alternatives are more suitable for every culture. Besides, users are usually more interested in the site content and functionality.
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Observe cultural conventions
Minimizing the use of symbols on your website and rely on clear words instead. Be careful when you decide about colors, graphics, and phrases. Stick with culturally neutral language. Observe that many colors, graphics, symbols, and words that are suitable for the western culture may have different meanings and may even confuse users from other cultures. For example, the red color indicates stop in the US but it might not be the case for other cultures. An envelope graphic may replace the mailbox graphic that is used as indication for "email". The envelope is easier to recognize for users from other cultures than the mailbox.
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Keep your website simple and clear
Know the goals of your site and then keep it simple and focused. Remember that clearly written introductory and explanatory pages and clearly designed navigational tools can greatly improve the usability of your site. Use clear simple language as English may be a second (or third or even fourth) language for many users of your website.
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Consider the different format for entering data in
other countries of other cultures
Remember that your site users could be accessed from any where around the world. Date, time, units of measurements, places, and contact information are critical pieces of information in today's world.
1- Use unambiguous dates on your website
The US convention of using month-day-year is not a universal convention, as day-month-year is used in many other countries around the world. For example, to an American, "5/11/2000" reads as "May 11, 2000" but users in most other countries would read this abbreviated date as "November 5, 2000". Don't abbreviate dates on your Web pages. Always use words (abbreviated if necessary) for the months. Posting December 8, 1999 or Dec. 8, 1999 is more universally informative than 12/8/99. Always use a four-digit number for the year. For forms, you might use structured dates and popup menus.
2- Use unambiguous time format on your website
Similarly, time is typically referenced by the 24-hour time system internationally, so that 8:52 p.m. becomes a standardized 20:52. Time references, such as the hours of office operations, should be accompanied by the appropriate time zone or reference to Greenwich Mean Time. For example, the typical 9 - 5 schedule in the Eastern Time zone would becomes 9 - 17 EST (GMT -5).
3- Use unambiguous units of measurement on your website
Be sure that all the units are clearly provided, and use the International System of Units (SI), as it is the accepted standard around the world. For example, if your website offers any products or services for purchase, provide the currency and numbers. Use the standard abbreviations for currencies, e.g. USD for U.S. Dollar. Furthermore, you might give an estimate of the price in other currencies as well if you know the countries of your users. There are several and easy to use currency converters that are available on-line (e.g., Universal Currency Converter).
4- Use flexible formats for places on your website
Any website forms should be able to accommodate longer and various formats for international names, addresses, phone and fax numbers. Also, flexibility is often required for data validity checks. A common mistake would be to make the "State" field mandatory on a form. Do not assume a specific length for zip or postal codes. The number of digits of a phone number varies around the world.
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Make the functionality of your website as clear as
you can
You might find that users from other cultures misunderstand the functions that are supported by your site. Also they may use only a limited subset of those supported functions. This is due to the cultural differences and that your site might not adapted to accommodate those users. The goal is always a website that can be used “effectively” to meet users needs.
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Make your site easy to learn
Design your site so that people especially from other cultures can use it easily. Users from other cultures might not be familiar with the user interface you are using, so make it simple and easy to learn as you can. Remember that a good site should be like good software, you shouldn't need a manual to learn how to use it.
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Make your site easy to use
Navigational tools and guides are more important for users from other cultures who visit your website. Clear and intuitive site organization is the key to usable sites. A lack of navigational support makes it more difficult for those users to find the information they are looking for.
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Consider the order in which users from other
cultures use to find information
Different cultures look for different data to make decisions. For example, when you are planning a vacation, the order that you use to find information that helps you to make decisions might be completely different from the order in which Japanese users may use.
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Consider the position at which you put important
information
Positioning important information in the center of the page or the upper left might be suitable for western cultures users since these are the emphasis points for them. This might not be the case fro users from other cultures than the US. If you are designing for cultures that do not read top to bottom, left to right, adjust the information on your website accordingly.
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Don’t directly translate from one language to
another
Tip: Differences in constructs can be identified and minimized by translating into the language of the target culture, translating this back into the source language, and then comparing the two [5].
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Perform international usability testing and expert
reviews
A relatively cost effective way to get some idea about your website's international usability and friendliness is to have professionals in other countries evaluate your site. Also perform a cultural sensitivity analysis by people in your target countries to make sure that the graphics and colors are appropriate and not confusing.
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Conduct interviews to evaluate the usability of your
website
Test your website using users from other cultures that have been using it for an appropriate period of investigation. Ask these users for their comments and suggestions to improve the current website.
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Indicate your Contact Information
Put your name, and your contact information on the website, and invite the users to send you their comments. This feedback information will be very useful for you. Users from other cultures can reveal problems that they face which you did not take into your account during the design. While no website can satisfy all the needs for all users, these efforts for improving the site organization and clarity improve the overall website effectiveness and make it universally usable. Also users can contact you if they need any additional information. Notice that toll free numbers that begins with 800 is not free outside the US, so clearly state that on the website whenever you provide any toll free numbers.
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Sample
websites
This section introduces sample websites and analyzes their approaches for accommodating users from different cultures.
http://www.amazon.com (Accessed on May 3, 2001)
The amazon.com website attempts to solve the problem of accommodating users from other cultures by providing local websites in different counties. It has international sites in the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and France besides its site in the United States (Figures 1(a), 1(b)). This is not the best solution as it is not feasible to provide a local site for each country. They attempt to take care of the cultural conventions in each local site like the colors, icons, etc. They also take care of the different formats for entering data and displaying the prices in the local currencies of these countries. The site is simple. The functionality is clear. They provide good help. More efforts still need to be done.
Figure 1(a) The amazon international website in the United Kingdom
Figure 1(b) The amazon international website in France
The BBC online homepage http://www.bbc.co.uk/ (Accessed on May 3, 2001)
The BBC website also solved the problem by providing local websites (Figure 2(a)). They can adapt the displayed news and the language according to users choices (Figure 2(b)). They take care of the images, phrases, colors, etc according to the selected region of the world. They take care of the format for the date and time as mentioned in the guidelines before. They provide good help. The site is simple, clear and attractive for users from different cultures. They ask the users for their feedback about the displayed news and ask them for any problems and suggestions that might improve the site. The site needs more efforts on improving the layout of the displayed news and the categories of news preferred by each culture, for example the forecast news in the Arabic website appears in English with formatting and icons not familiar to Arab users (Figure 2(c)).
Figure 2(a) The BBC online website with links to several local websites
Figure 2(b) The Arabic BBC online website
Figure 2(c) The Forecast web page for the Arabic BBC online website
The Blue Mountain website http://www.bluemountain.com/ (Accessed on May 3, 2001)
Users from all over the world can send electronic cards in many occasion by using the Blue Mountain website (Figure 3(a)). The website takes care of cultural conventions which appears in its vast collection of electronic cards suitable for every culture (Figure 3(b)). For example the site appropriately choose the colors, images, and icons in its web pages for religious Holidays (Figures 3(c), 3(d), 3(e), 3(f)). The site is simple and easy to use by users from different cultures.
Figure 3(a) The Blue Mountain website
Figure 3(b) The International web page for the Blue Mountain website
Figure 3(c) The Blue Mountain website for the Hindu Holidays
Figure 3(d) The Blue Mountain website for the Islamic Holidays
Figure 3(e) The Blue Mountain website for the Jewish Holidays
Figure 3(f) The Blue Mountain website for the Orthodox Christian Holidays
http://www.expedia.com (Accessed on May 3, 2001)
The Microsoft msn website http://www.msn.com (Accessed on May 3, 2001)
Two nice attempts, they also provide local sites to accommodate users from different countries. Both sites take care of the currency format, the available information, and the advertisements according to the country of their users.
It is clear that the current applied solution to the problem of accommodating users from other cultures is to provide local websites for each culture. This is not a feasible solution as the web is continuously growing. Also, these local sites need some modifications to be adapted to the users. It is not possible to provide a local site for each country, so web developers should try to adapt their original site to accommodate users from other cultures. Many websites does not have any supports to those users. Clearly, these websites need to be modified to be universally usable.
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Conclusion
This paper showed the importance of developing universally usable websites. Differences between cultures affect the understanding and the usability of the websites. It introduced general recommendations and specific guidelines for websites developers about accommodating users from other cultures. Some factors, such as date, time, address format, telephone numbers, units of measurements and currency are well defined so they can be easily analyzed and considered in the design. Other factors such as graphics, colors, metaphors, the order for finding information by the users, etc., are harder to analyze. The guidelines encourage consideration of factors, like working in intercultural team to develop the website, performing international usability tests, and asking for feedback from the users. Keeping the website clear and simple, making the website easy to learn and easy to use are the keys to universally usable websites, as shown in the sample for good websites.
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Future progress needed
More research is needed on cross-cultural theory and how it affects the user interface design. Researchers need to keep records for each culture and their preferences, to help web developers in designing websites rather than performing analyses each time a new site is developed. In [11] providing supporting documentation was suggested, the construction of an international repository was also proposed. New tools need to be developed to accommodate those users from different cultures all over the world. One way is to develop multiple versions of websites. In [9] templates and specific versioning tools were suggested as a cost effective and feasible manner to do that.
More research and empirical studies are needed to determine whether the users prefer a localized interface [4]. More empirical studies are needed to determine whether the users from various communities understand the graphics, colors, icons, and phrases that are currently used.
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Resources
1. References
[1] The Usable web, the website maintained by the web usability consultant and information architect, Keith Instone, http://usableweb.com/topics/000445-0-0.html (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
[2] The CHI-web Posting Guidelines, ACM http://www.acm.org/sigchi/webhci/chi-web-guide.html (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
[3] The ACM SIGCHI Intercultural Issues, ACM http://www.acm.org/sigchi/intercultural/ (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
[4] E.A. Onibere, S. Morgan, E.M. Busang, D. Mpoeleng (2000) Human Computer Interface design issues for a multicultural multilingual English speaking country-Botswana. The Interdisciplinary Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, Volume 13, Issue 4, April 2001: 497-512
[5] Andreas Beu, Pia Honold, Xiaowei Yuan (2000) How To Build Up an Infrastructure for Intercultural Usability Engineering. The International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, Volume 12, Numbers 3&4, 2000: 347-358
[6] Pia Honold (2000) Culture and Context: An empirical Study for the Development of a Framework for the Elicitation of Cultural Influence in Product Usage. The International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, Volume 12, Numbers 3&4, 2000: 327-345
[7] A Wider World Wide Web: Global Usability and Water Websites, Symposium on water resources and The World Wide Web, Seattle, Washington, December 1999 http://www.awra.org/proceedings/www99/w14/ (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
[8] John D. Gould How To Design Usable Systems. Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction, the second completely revised edition, 1997: Chapter 10
[9] Aaron Marcus (2000) Cultural Dimensions and Global Web User-interface Design: What? So What? Now What? In the Proceeding of the 6th Conference on Human Factors and the Web in Austin, Texas, June 19th 2000
http://www.amanda.com/resources/hfweb2000.marcus.htm
(Accessed on April 15, 2001)
[10] Aaron Marcus (1999) Globalization of User-Interface Design for the Web. In the Proceeding of the 5th Conference on Human Factors and the Web in Gaithersburg, Maryland, June 1999
http://www.amanda.com/resources/HFWEB99/HFWEB99.Marcus.html (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
[11] Michael J. Mahemoff, Lorraine J. Johnston (1998) Software
Internationalization: Implications for Requirements Engineering. In the Proceedings of the 3rd Australian
Workshop on Requirements Engineering in Geelong, Australia,
October 1998
http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~moke/papers/reqsi18n/
(Accessed on April 15, 2001)
2. Useful links
This section contains useful links to relevant web pages about how to design universally usable web pages and especially how to accommodate users from cultures other than the US.
The W3C's efforts to make WWW technology work with many writing systems, many languages, and many cultural conventions.
http://www.w3.org/International/
(Accessed on April 15, 2001)
The worldwide CHI: Cultural User Interfaces, A Silver Lining in Cultural Diversity.
http://www.acm.org/sigchi/bulletin/1996.3/international.html#HDR2 (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
For information
on intercultural issues in human-computer interaction, globalization,
localization, language translation, and standards, you might visit the
following page:
The ACM SIGCHI Intercultural Issues, ACM http://www.acm.org/sigchi/intercultural/ (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
It contains links to useful books, companies, examples, etc.
The HCI
Bibliography: Human-Computer Interaction Resources.
http://www.hcibib.org/ (Accessed on
April 15, 2001)
The ACM SIGCHI
World Wide Web Special Interest Area
http://www.acm.org/sigchi/webhci/index.html (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
http://www.acm.org/sigchi/webhci/chi-web-guide.html (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
A book summary: Designing Web Usability By Jakob Neilsen. http://www.webreference.com/new/nielsenbook.html
For an advice on how to create usable designs and examples of those designs, you may refer to the following links:
The Usable web, the website maintained by the web usability consultant and information architect, Keith Instone, http://usableweb.com/topics/000445-0-0.html (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
The User Interface Engineering website: A Designer's Guide
http://world.std.com/~uieweb/booktoc.htm (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
Notes on Designing Web Usability, CSC485c course notes, Department of Computer Science, University of Victoria, Canada. http://www.csc.uvic.ca/~csc485c/course_notes/international.pdf (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
Jakob Nielsen's Website, useit.com http://www.useit.com (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
The CNET Builder.com, Solutions for site builders http://Builder.com (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
The ZDNet Developer
http://www.zdnet.com/devhead/filters/usability (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
http://www.zdnet.com/devhead/filters/0,,2133228,00.html (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
The webreview.com, Cross training for web teams.
http://webreview.com (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
General Universal Usability and Accessibility websites
The All Things Web
http://www.pantos.org/atw/access.html (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
http://www.pantos.org/atw/usable.html (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
The WDG, Web Design Group
http://www.htmlhelp.com/design/accessibility/tips.html (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
The webaim.com, the web accessibility checklist
http://www.webaim.org/standards/508/checklist (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
Accessibility Checkers
The CAST bobby, a Web-based tool that analyzes Web pages for their accessibility to people with disabilities.
http://www.cast.org/bobby/ (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
The Abacus Web Usability, a web usability Consultant to help you in substantially improving the user friendliness of your website.
http://abacuswebusability.com/ (Accessed on April 15, 2001)
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