Keywords

ACM Classification Keywords

1 Introduction

In the developing of any kind of interactive and information applications, multicultural aspects, usually, have not been considered [1]. 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. Differences in cultural mentalities and environments lead to different needs towards computing systems across different cultures, and this will often influence the interaction between computers and users [10]. Culture is a shared, learned, symbolic system of values, norms, beliefs and attitudes that shapes and influences perception and behavior. Multicultural aspect is one of the emerging research areas in HCI (Human Computer Interaction). The interface is one the main components of any interactive system, because it is the way of communication between the computer and the user, therefore, the design should be useful and usable. In that way, interaction design patterns [3] are used because they are widely accepted and they collect designers’ prior experiences in creating users interfaces. So, those best practices are reused in development of interactive systems. Interactive system interfaces have basic characteristics such as usability, usefulness and attractiveness that define the user experience [4]. The User eXperience (UX) is everything which stakeholders have contact, a product or a service [5]. Also, it takes into account the cultural context and emotions of users [6].

Patterns for HCI have recently been developed by a significant number of researchers [7]. This paper aims to present a set of interaction design patterns including multicultural attributes, in order to help to create usable interfaces and can increase the users’ satisfaction degree. Usability techniques and an emotional evaluating tool were used with participants from Panama, Colombia and Spain.

The following section describes aspects related with cultural models, then some related works are presented, then the proposal is depicted. Finally, there is a section which presents some conclusions and further work.

2 Cultural Models

When talking about culture aspects, one quickly notices that many different understandings and definitions have been derived from different methodological assumptions exist. Culture is hard to grasp in concepts, let alone to define in precise terms. Although many scholars in different disciplines have tried to come up with an all-inclusive and universal definition of what culture actually is, to this day is lacking a universally agreed-upon definition of culture. Culture could be defined as a way of life of a group of people [9]. Some scholars delved into finding what culture means and what the major components of culture itself are. Three of such studies are Hofstede’s four cultural dimensions [2], Trompenaars’ seven elements of culture [25] and Hall’s high and low context cultures [26], which determine some cultural attributes studies.

3 Our Proposal

The proposal we design includes a set of steps allowing the integration of multicultural attributes into the interaction design patterns. The first part was to select the countries which will be analyzed: Panama, Colombia and Spain were the selected countries, they have a language like cultural element in common and there is a closer relationship between participants of these countries. These countries give a great opportunity for knowledge and value in the results.

Select a Website.

Once the countries were selected, it is necessary to select a website of a company or organization which has been designed for the three countries. The interface of this website must have similar design in order to not create all the interface design for the prototype. Then a home page of any of the three countries is selected. For this work we selected the website of Toshiba (http://www.toshiba.co.jp/worldwide/region/index.html); which has a version of the three countries selected. The interfaces for those three countries are very similar and have language as commonality.

Identification of Interaction Design Pattern.

Interaction design patterns are a way to describe solutions to common usability or accessibility problems in a specific context [3]. They document interaction models that make it easier for users to understand an interface and accomplish their tasks. The interaction design patterns are identified taking into account the Home page of Spain. These interaction design patterns are taken from the repositories of Tidwell [7] and Van Welie [11]. These authors are selected because they have studied pattern designs and developed the most complete repositories. Moreover, these authors have established a structure to show the patterns, so stakeholders can reuse them and be guided by examples presented.

Select Multicultural Attributes.

This research is based on dimensional Hofstede’s model [2] to recognize cultural behaviors of users, UX implications [6] to know some relationship between culture and user interface design, and cultural markers [13] that define interface design elements influenced by culture. Multicultural attributes are studied in order to identify those markers that can be used in the design of web interfaces. Therefore, there is an analysis of the cultural characteristics and behaviors of the users that predominate in each country that are being studied. Table 1 shows the multicultural attributes that are extracted.

Table 1. Multicultural attributes
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Pattern with Multicultural Aspects.

After identifying the multicultural attributes and interaction patterns, the next step is develop a list of interaction design patterns with multicultural aspects. For every pattern identified, the multicultural attribute is included that helps to achieve its function. The interaction design patterns with multicultural aspects are validated by designing prototypes for every country studied, see Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.
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Interaction design pattern with multicultural aspects

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Prototyping.

The interaction design patterns with multicultural aspects are applied on the home page for Toshiba’s Spain website. This prototype is taken as a basis for the prototype for Panamá and Colombia. Additionally, the information in the home pages of the websites of Toshiba and Colombia are taking into account for the design. To design the prototypes is used the rapid prototyping tool Justinmind Prototyper [23]. The first prototype corresponds to Spain. The second prototype corresponds to the Republic of Panama, with an example for November month, to stands out the historical facts of the country in this month. So, in order to apply one of the multicultural patterns, it is taken this historical month for Panama. Finally, the third prototype corresponds to Colombia, which shares several cultural characteristics with Panamá, since both countries are part of Latin America. As a result, the interface design has some similarities.

The interaction design patterns used in each prototype are explained bellow in detail. In some cases, the interaction design pattern is repeated, because the pattern is represented in a different way for each prototype, see Fig. 2. The patterns are:

Fig. 2.
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Websites prototypes

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Visual Framework.

(1): (a) The layout is symmetric, horizontal (top) for menus and images, and vertical (bottom) for categories, news and favorites section. (b) This prototype has symmetry both horizontal and vertical. At the top, the menus, banner and images gallery (horizontal symmetry) are shown. In the bottom, the section is divided in two columns (vertical symmetry), at one side the products categories are shown, and in the other side the news.

Grid of Equals.

(2): (a) It is presented a set of grids that contains images. They are categories of information presented to the user by topics or modules. Soft colors were used for the background of the images. There are leaves shapes for larger images (aesthetic and emotional design). (b) It is represented a set of grids that contain images, that are categories of information presented to the user by topics or modules. The color tends to be strong, but also there are soft colors to contrast the interface.

Language Selector.

(3): The option to select language is not shown, since the interface has been designed totally in Spanish. The reason is to show the information clearly and precisely.

News Box.

(4): (a) In the Favorites section it is shown social responsibility topics (individualism) o offered by the company to its customers. (b) In the news section of Colombia, it is shown performance and humanistic titles. So, for this case Toshiba shows headlines about deals for father’s date (humanism) as an important date for Colombians. Also, it shown headline about needs (performance) that requires the Colombian consumer from Toshiba products.

Testing.

The prototypes were validated in order to know the impact of the interaction design patterns with multicultural aspects on users. A questionnaire was used as a usability measure tool of the interfaces, and PrEmo [24] as a tool to evaluate users’ emotions about the prototypes. In the evaluations, five users from each country participated. Those users must have born and currently residing in their native country and also practice a profession related to computing system or Information Technologies (IT).

The questions presented in the questionnaire apply theory of heuristic principles of Nielsen and Molich [12]. Results show that users have commented about the prototypes or identified the following details:

  • Properties like symmetry, uniformity, formality and order must be used in websites.

  • User can explore and know what the website offers through information represented by modules or topic, and also show messages during the interaction.

  • The information must be precise, clear, and aesthetically consistent so that the user will not get distracted.

  • The colors are used for contrast in the background and text, order, attraction or changes. The Panamanian population rather uses soft colors because strong colors represent rudeness and sobriety.

  • Panamanian population feels identified with the cultural elements shown with the company logo, even some of them have felt to see the “pintado” hat with the Holy Spirit flower which is a Panamanian unique cultural element. The people who did not like have said that the elements must be consistent to the festive season.

  • Use native language. The users from Panama mentioned that when they display the menu Computers, they expected to find the word desktops not laptops. Generally, the word laptop is used to refer to laptop in Spanish, so it is recommended to use this word to avoid confusion.

  • Users think some topics are relevant in some cultures. This is the reason why is taken into account the topics related to social responsibility and achievements.

Measure Emotions.

PrEmo tool measures fourteen emotions, which are depict using a cartoon with universally known facial expression for each emotion. Seven feelings are positive (amusement, surprise, fascination, satisfaction, admiration, inspiration, and desire) and other seven are negative (boredom, disappointment, dissatisfaction, fear, sadness, disgusting, and shame). The purpose of this tool is to measure the level of emotional response of users without having a conversation to get the emotions [24].

The objective of the questions is to know what users feel toward the interface features. For each question, there are fourteen cartoons showing different emotions. The scale used is “−” to describe I do not feel, “+/-” to describe I feel some emotion, and “+” to describe I feel the emotion, and “+” to describe I feel the emotion [14]. The user must answer the question with each cartoon.

In order to show the results from the test, the emotions felt by users during the test are listed. Also, it is important to know the interest from users to identify cultural elements in the interface. Moreover, the results shown that users from Panama feel pleasantness when they identify Panamanian cultural elements, and also said that may be used to offer deals during the festivities. It is important to design the interface in a manner that shows clearly the information transmitted to user, so that the interface will not confuse the user. The users assessed the prototypes with positive emotions.

Also, users want to see an interface with good aesthetics that is why the aesthetics is a fundamental part of every design. The users from Panama and Spain perceived pleasantness from the appearance, however some users from Colombia expressed feeling somewhat displeased in the test.

About the contrast of background colors and text in the interface, the users from Spain felt high level of positive emotions. The users had no problem, while visualizing the information; therefore they rated the interface with positive emotions. However, the users from Colombia perceived positive and negative emotions about the contrast of the colors.

Users’ reaction about the contrast of colors in the images is: the prototypes of Spain and Panama provoke few negative emotions in users, whereas the prototype of Colombia provokes positive emotions in users.

The results have shown that the design of the interface vary according to cultures, some results were expected while others no. In the next section it is discussed some ideas about the results from the usability test.

4 Conclusions and Further Work

HCI patterns research is still relatively new, and researchers have been debating the basic concepts of patterns. Many existing pattern collections do not include cultural aspects. Nowadays, there is no interaction design pattern with multicultural aspects for Spain, Panama, and Colombia users. This work presents five interaction design pattern with multicultural markers. It is proposed to use a methodological framework to increase the list of patterns with multicultural aspects, since the evaluations showed that these patterns were widely accepted by users. In fact, Panamá stood out by using cultural elements in the interface design during festive season, which provoked positive emotions. Each culture has words with different meaning in their language, so it is important to take into account the terms used in the interface. Hence, users will not reject the website or being confused by the words. Moreover, some topics of interest are more important than others for some cultures, so it is important to identify those topics and take into account in the design.

Furthermore, the aesthetics and colors have a significant role in every design. Some cultures feel pleasantness by the contrast of colors both in images and in the background of the interface. Due to this fact, it is recommend to know the colors will be used in the interface, whether strong or soft colors. The proper uses of colors evoke positive emotions in users, as well as attract users’ attention, and show organization or changes. Additionally, the aesthetics of the design must be consistent for all the pages in the website.

In conclusion, the methodological framework proposed here may be considered as the beginning for studies to combine interaction design patterns and multicultural aspects. Therefore, their implementations can extent the list of patterns with multicultural aspects in order to identify characteristics in the design for other cultures. Also, those elements can be validated in real scenery by using websites’ interfaces and evaluation methods, which involve the user.