Multicultural aspects in HCI-curricula

Abstract

In the developing of any kind of interactive and information applications, multicultural aspects, usually, have not been considered. Therefore, people need to adapt to the interfaces instead the opposite, interfaces adapting themselves to the user characteristics. Designing products for international users all above the world is a non solved challenge and will be one of the main goals for future marketing strategies. HCI area has experimented a growth that has occurred as a result of the generalization of computer use and of problems which originate from use by people who are not specifically trained in these appliances. Despite this growth, multicultural aspects in many cases are not included in the HCI Curricula. In recent years, diverse symptoms have expounded that the Ibero-American market is growing very fast to incorporate professionals with HCI backgrounds and solid knowledge about User Centred Design methods. Indeed, these kind of professionals are currently required when developing or localizing interactive systems in this particular scenario. In this paper, we describe the experience of starting the first HCI master in Spanish language for the wide Spanish speaking context held in the University of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain), where we have included specific courses including the multicultural aspects. They will orient the students to have in mind cross-cultural factors when developing international interfaces. In many cases, even it implies adapting evaluation techniques such as usability heuristics traditionally used in HCI courses.