Cross-cultural User Interface Design in a Global Marketplace: Building Appreciation for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Abstract

In today's increasingly global environment and with our growing reliance on the internet for communication and commerce, it is important to educate students about the cultural differences in audiences and how these differences relate to rhetorical and design strategies. This paper reports on a cross-cultural design module and Cross-Cultural User Interface (UI) Report implemented in a junior level communication, design, and engineering core course in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering in the College of Engineering at the University of Washington. The objectives of this module and report are multifaceted. They concern increasing students' understanding of cross-cultural values related to UI design and human behavior as well as their respect for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in communication, design, and the engineering workplace. The objectives also concern gaining an understanding of qualitative methods for assessing UIs, formulating results, and using written and oral research report formats. Finally, the objectives concern working effectively in collaborative teams. In the research report, students apply lessons learned in the module to analyze the effectiveness of two website UIs from the same company aimed at two different countries from the perspective of their differing audiences' cultural preferences, behaviors, and values. The students make recommendations for improving UI design to make them more culturally sensitive to their audiences. As students gain an understanding of differences in cross-cultural communication and UI design, they develop an appreciation and sensitivity to the creation of culturally appropriate marketing and advertising materials in our increasingly international marketplace. This assignment can be adapted in many classroom settings in a number of fields that touch on human computer interaction.