1. Usability Techniques for Web-based Services
Diversity and Technology

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

3. 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)

4. 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

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

6. Internationalisation
The Culture is in the Detail

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

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

9. 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

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

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

12. 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

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

14. Cultural Interfaces
(White American Women)

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

16. What is American here?

17. Folders

18. Whose computer?

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

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

21. 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)

22. Beeps
Beware of generating beeps from an application

23. 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)

24. Currency
Makes the user feel at home.

25. 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’

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

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

28. Greek version

29. French version

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

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