March 14th, 2011 by Mohammed - Comments Off
This study investigates the cultural differences of web interfaces. It compares how American-English speakers and Arabic-language speakers interpret web user interfaces. The goal is to explore how cultures affect users’ understanding of web interfaces.
A group of thirty users from both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia participated collectively in the survey for this study. The participants were chosen based on three categories: American users who speak English only as a native language, bilingual Arabic users who speak English and Arabic, and users who speak Arabic only as their native language.
Thirty participants did usability tasks on the Dell website. The English and the bilingual users (users who speak both English and Arabic) did the usability tasks on the English version of Dell website.
The other users who speak Arabic only did similar tasks on the Arabic version of the Dell website.
The information extracted from the survey and the usability sessions were compared and analyzed to explore the cultural differences that can effect web interfaces perception. The results show that culture influences how users understand or interpret web user interfaces, which in turn impacts the usability of global web interfaces.
Table of content
Home | Introduction | Methodology | The results | Discussion | References