ISO 9241-210 and Culture? - The impact of culture on the standard usability engineering process

Abstract

In this paper, some ideas are presented regarding the question of whether standards can be valid internationally, i.e. worldwide and independent of the different cultures in the world, and how this question can be tackled. Exemplified by the standard usability engineering process in ISO 9241-210, the impact of culture on the main steps in the usability engineering process is analyzed. The output of the process is influenced by the process. If the process of usability engineering is culturally influenced and different for different cultures, the output of the usability engineering process, i.e. the user interface of the product, is also culturally influenced and different. Furthermore, the results are possibly not those as expected by the desired target culture. The presented ideas represent a first step towards deeper research in this area. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.