The cultural usability (CULTUSAB) project: studies of cultural models in psychological usability evaluation methods

  • Authors:
  • Torkil Clemmensen;Tom Plocher

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Informatics, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark;Honeywell Labs, Minneapolis

  • Venue:
  • UI-HCII'07 Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Usability and internationalization
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

Cultural models in terms of the characteristics and content of folk theories and folk psychology have been important to social scientists for centuries. We suggest that they should be at the heart of the scientific study of human-computer interaction (HCI). The CULTUSAB project is conducting an in-depth investigation of the key dimensions of culture that affect usability testing situations, including language, power distance, and cognitive style. All phases of the usability test are being evaluated for cultural impact, including planning, conducting, and reporting results. Special attention is being focused on subject-evaluator communication and cultural bias in the test design and structure of the user interface being tested. Experiments are being replicated in three countries: Denmark, India and China. The research will result in new testing methods and guidelines that increase the validity of usability tests by avoiding cultural bias, and allow us to produce comparable results across different countries.