Developing interactive systems for different cultures
Tanja Walsh, Helen Petrie, Olufunmilayo Odutola · 2014
Evaluation of user experience (UX) in cross-cultural settings is vital for the development of interactive systems due to the globalization of markets and the search for good user experience in interactive systems. Although interactive systems are distributed globally, users are always local and this should be taken into consideration in methods and materials used in the cross-cultural UX research. A localized web-survey was designed and data collected from 92 respondents in two cultures, Nigeria and Anglo-Celtic (AC) countries (Australia, Canada, Ireland, and the UK). We found that Nigerian respondents are more positive in their ratings than AC respondents, irrespective of content, and are less likely to criticize in their feedback. The culture of the respondents and culture of the visual materials of the scenarios does matter in respondents' reactions, but the way it matters is not straightforward, and there are complex interactions. We expected that our results would show a strong identification with one's own cultural group, but this turns out to be only one aspect of a scenario that may affect respondents' reactions. Therefore care needs to be taken in localizing visual materials and in interpreting the results from different cultural groups.