A cross-cultural comparison of UI components preference between Chinese and Czech Users

Abstract

Thanks to the intensification of globalization through communication technology, we are faced more and more with UIs coming from different cultural backgrounds. In order to fit the user's cultural expectations as closely as possible, designers need to combine usability knowledge with cultural insights. By defining a usable set of UI design guidelines for a target culture, designers could market their products with lower costs than with cross-cultural testing. To promote this line of research, we carried a pilot study targeted at the habits, mental models and UI preferences of Chinese and Czech users. Our findings show there is a strong influence of globalization on the cultural markers mainly through the use of common software platforms. However, we found many important culture-specific differences as well in both groups. We present our results as guidelines that could be used to enhance the user's acceptance of the UI in a specific culture. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.