Usability Techniques for Web-based Services Diversity and Technology

Introduction A thought experiment: What is special about sites that you return often to? What gets you coming back?

Why do people return to a site? Good content (75%) Usability (66%) Speed of downloading (58%) Frequently updated (54%) (the rest is noise: 14% and lower)

This tutorial About ‘diversity and technology’: recognising that people are different recognising that cultures are different identifying the technology and techniques to support such differences

Usability of Web-based Information Services for Hypermedia About the speakers Members of a team: UWISH Usability of Web-based Information Services for Hypermedia

Internationalisation The Culture is in the Detail

Internationalisation Often referred to as I18N Could just as well be D16N: Deparochialisation

Culture We all walk, eat, sleep, talk Culture is the difference Cultures are everywhere: national, gender, regional, technical...

The World Wide Web The Web: a European invention (An Englishman and a Dutch-speaking Belgian working on the border between Switzerland and France) For the first time Europeans can write their names in a platform-independent way

Email and News Email and news on the other hand were American inventions Greeks (and many others) have to use an agreed mapping to communicate with each other

User Interfaces User interfaces have three aims Efficiency Effectiveness Satisfaction Transparency Games

So why internationalisation? Make people feel at home Trust Even spelling in your own language area Why did Toys R Us fail in the Netherlands? Packing books

Are there ‘Cultural’ UI’s? Aaron Marcus 1993 (This is for a European Male)

Cultural Interfaces (White American Women)

Perhaps there are... Maybe worth a design competition… Currently: culture is exposed in the details

What is American here?

Folders

Whose computer?

Pay attention to the detail For instance: Addresses Dates Beeps Languages Currency Icons

Addresses (stupid stupid) Don’t require fields that not everyone has Don’t impose an order on the fields

Dates Don’t use all number formats 12/10/2000 is ambiguous Don’t require users to use your format (they’ll surely get it wrong)

Beeps Beware of generating beeps from an application

Languages (and not flags) Don’t use a French flag to represent the French language: there are many languages in France, and there are many other countries that speak French. (And the same for all other flags)

Currency Makes the user feel at home.

Icons Can be insulting Most combination of hand/finger positions is an insult somewhere in the world, even ‘Thumbs up’! Avoid visual puns, ‘run’, ‘step’, ‘save’, ‘change’, even ‘server’

The Role of Colours Don’t assume meanings to colours that you would expect. Black/white Red/green

Characters Don’t assume standard meanings to characters “?” vs “;” vs “i” #

Greek version

French version

Characters Checkbox: “x” can mean “no”, tick doesn’t necessarily mean yes This is a tick on homework in the Netherlands:

Conclusion Culture is in the details Being aware of the issues is an important first step Making the user feel at home builds trust