research-article

Cultural differences in smartphone user experience evaluation

Authors:

Rod WalshAuthors Info & Claims

MUM '10: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia

Article No.: 24, Pages 1 - 9

https://doi.org/10.1145/1899475.1899499

Published: 01 December 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Through globalization it has become increasingly important to understand how culture affects the user experience (UX) of mobile devices and services. Despite the importance of cultural factors in product design, not much research has been done to study them. Our aim was to discover cultural differences in the UX of a Smartphone with remote online sentence completion method. This paper presents the results of a remote online UX evaluation survey of a Smartphone with altogether 72 respondents from India, China, USA, UK and Denmark. The results indicate that there are cultural differences in how people experience the product and also in the way people respond to UX evaluation survey and share their experiences with the product. The results show that a remote online sentence completion survey is a relatively fast and easy way of gathering international user data, although the analysis can be challenging. The use of Hofstede's cultural dimensions in the analysis of the data gave us better understanding of the impact of specific culture on the results.

References

[1]

Aykin, N. 2005. Overview: Where to Start and What to Consider? In Usability and Internationalization of Information Technology, N. Aykin, Ed. Lawrence Erlbaum, New Jersey, 3--20.

[2]

Boddy, C. R. 2007. Projective techniques in Taiwan and Asia-Pacific market research. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 10, 1, 48--62.

[3]

Bruun, A., Gull, P., Hofmeister, L., and Stage, J. 2009. Let your users do the testing: a comparison of three remote asynchronous usability testing methods. In Proceedings of the 27th international Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Boston, USA, April 04--09, 2009). CHI'09. ACM, New York, 1619--1628.

Digital Library

[4]

Chavan, A. L, Gorney, D., Prabhu, B. and Arora, S. 2009. The Washing Machine That Ate My Sari -- Mistakes in Cross-Cultural Design. Interactions (Jan/Feb 2009), 26--31.

Digital Library

[5]

Choi, B., Lee, I., Kim, J. and Jeon, Y. A Qualitative Cross-National Study of Cultural Influences on Mobile Data Service Design. 2005. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Portland, Oregon, USA, April 02--07, 2005). CHI '05. ACM, New York, NY, 661--670.

Digital Library

[6]

Cockton, G., Kujala, S., Nurkka, P. and Hölttä, T. 2009. Supporting worth mapping with sentence completion. In Proceedings of the 12th IFIP TC 13 international Conference on Human-Computer interaction: Part II (Uppsala, Sweden, August 24--28, 2009). T. Gross, J. Gulliksen, P. Kotzé, L. Oestreicher, P. Palanque, R. O. Prates, and M. Winckler, Eds. Lecture Notes In Computer Science. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 566--581.

Digital Library

[7]

Del Galdo, E. Culture and Design. 1996. In International User Interfaces, E. Del Galdo and J. Nielsen, Eds. John Wiley & Sons, New York, USA, 74--87.

Digital Library

[8]

Hassenzahl, M. 2003. The thing and I: understanding the relationship between user and product. In Funology, From Usability to Enjoyment, M. Blythe, K. Overbeeke, A. Monk, and P. Wright, Eds. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA, USA, 31--42.

Digital Library

[9]

Hassenzahl, M. and Tractinsky. 2006. User Experience- A Research Agenda. Behaviour and Information Technology, 25, 2, 91--97.

[10]

Hoft, N. Developing a Cultural Model. 1996. In International User Interfaces, E. Del Galdo and J. Nielsen, Eds. John Wiley & Sons, New York, USA, 41--73.

Digital Library

[11]

Hofstede, G. 2001. Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviours and Organizations Across Nations. Sage Publications Inc., USA.

[12]

Hofstede, G. 2005. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. McGraw-Hill, New York, USA.

[13]

Holtzblatt, K., Burns Wendell, J. and Wood, S. 2005. Rapid Contextual Design. A How-To Guide to Key Techniques for User-Centered Design. Elsevier, San Francisco, USA, 159--179.

[14]

Honold, P. 1999. Learning How to Use a Cellular Phone: Comparison Between German and Chinese Users. Technical Communication, 46, 2, 196--205.

[15]

Ito, M. and Nakakoji, K. 1996. Impact of Culture on User Interface Design. In International User Interfaces, E. Del Galdo and J. Nielsen, Eds. John Wiley & Sons, New York, USA, 105--126.

Digital Library

[16]

Jones, M. and Alony, I. 2007. The Cultural Impact of Information Systems -- Through the Eyes of Hofstede - A Critical Journey. Issues in Information Science and Information Technology, Vol. 4, 2007.

[17]

Jordan, P. W. 2000. Designing Pleasurable Products. An Introduction to the new human factors. Taylor & Francis, London, UK.

[18]

Karat, J., Karat, C-M., and Vergo, J. 2004. Experiences People Value: The New Frontier of Task Analysis. In The Handbook of Task Analysis for Human-Computer Interaction, N. A. Stanton and D. Diaper, Eds. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, USA, 585--603.

[19]

Keesing, R. and Strathern, A. 1998. Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective. Forth Worth, TX, Harcourt Brace College.

[20]

Kujala, S. and Nurkka, P. 2009. Product Symbolism in Designing for User Experience. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces (Compiègne, France, 13--16 October, 2009), DPPI'09, 176--186.

[21]

Marcus, A. User Interface Design and Culture. 2005. In Usability and Internationalization of Information Technology, N. Aykin, Ed. Lawrence Erlbaum, New Jersey, 51--78.

[22]

Marcus, A. 2006. Cross-Cultural User Experience Design. Diagrammatic Representation and Inference, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4045/2006, 16--24.

Digital Library

[23]

Marzano, S. 2000. New Values for the Millennium: Philips Corporate Design. V+K Publishing, Eindhoven, Netherlands.

[24]

McSweeney, B. 2002. Hofstede's Model of National Cultural Differences and Consequences: A Triumph of Faith- a Failure of Analysis. Human Relations, 55, 1, 89--118.

[25]

Monahan, K., Lähteenmäki, M., McDonald, S. and Cockton, G. 2008. An Investigation into the Use of Field Methods in the Design and Evaluation of Interactive Systems. In Proceedings of the 22nd British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers: Culture, Creativity, interaction - Volume 1 (Liverpool, United Kingdom, September 01--05, 2008). British Computer Society Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. British Computer Society, Swinton, UK, 99--108.

Digital Library

[26]

Oyugi, C., Dunckley L. and Smith A. 2008. Evaluation methods and cultural differences: studies across three continents. In Proceedings of the 5th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer interaction: Building Bridges (Lund, Sweden, October 20--22, 2008). NordiCHI '08, vol. 358. ACM, New York, NY, 318--325.

Digital Library

[27]

Putnam, C., Rose, E., Johnson, E. J. and Kolko, B. 2009. Adapting User-Centered Methods to Design for Diverse Populations. Information Technologies and International Development, 5, 4, 51--73.

[28]

Schumacher, R, Ed. 2010. The Handbook of Global User Research. Morgan Kaufmann, Burlington, USA.

Digital Library

[29]

Smith, A., Gulliksen, J., and Bannon, L. 2005. Building usability in India: Reflections from the Indo European Systems Usability Partnership. In People and Computers XIX- The Bigger Picture: Proceedings of HCI 2005, T. McEwan, J. Gulliksen, and D. Benyon, Eds. Springer, 219--232.

[30]

Soley, L. C. and Smith, A. L. 2008. Projective Methods for Social Science and Business Research. The Southshore Press, Milwaukee.

[31]

Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, K., Roto, V., and Hassenzahl, M. 2008. Now Let's Do It in Practice: User Experience Evaluation Methods in Product Development. In CHI '08 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Florence, Italy, April 05--10, 2008). CHI '08. ACM, New York, NY, 3961--3964.

Digital Library

[32]

Walsh, T., Nurkka, P., and Kujala, S. 2010. Exploring Cross-Cultural UX Evaluation with the Remote Online Sentence Completion Method. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Workshop on Internationalization of Products and Systems (London, UK, 7--10 July, 2010), IWIPS2010, 11--22.

Cited By

Mortazavi EDoyon-Poulin PImbeau DRobert J(2024)Identifying the Importance of UX Dimensions for Different Software Product CategoriesInteracting with Computers10.1093/iwc/iwae00135:6(801-814)Online publication date: 2-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwae001
Lallemand CMercier E(2022)Optimizing the Use of the Sentence Completion Survey Technique in User Research: A Case Study on the Experience of E-ReadingProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517718(1-18)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491102.3517718
Lyu YCarroll J(2022)Cultural Influences on Chinese Citizens’ Adoption of Digital Contact Tracing: A Human Infrastructure PerspectiveProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517572(1-17)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491102.3517572
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Cultural differences in smartphone user experience evaluation
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. HCI design and evaluation methods
  2. Interaction design
    1. Interaction design process and methods
      1. User centered design

Recommendations

A remote study on east-west cultural differences in mobile user experience
UI-HCII'07: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Usability and internationalization

Most of current user interfaces and interaction systems are based on psychological and social models drawn from the European and American research traditions. However, recently, the applicability of these models is reconsidered after many products and ...
Cultural versioning of mobile user experience
CHI EA '10: CHI '10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Most current user interfaces and services are based on psychological and social models drawn from European and American research traditions. After identifying preferences and value orientations in different cultures from a series of user studies, this ...
User Experience in Digital Museums: A Case Study of the Palace Museum in Beijing
Culture and Computing. Interactive Cultural Heritage and Arts
Abstract
Digital technologies have enhanced the user experiences of museum visiting, both on-site visiting and online visiting. With smart mobile devices, people can visit digital museums and acquire information, service and learning materials anytime that ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

MUM '10: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia

December 2010

239 pages

ISBN:9781450304245

DOI:10.1145/1899475

General Chairs:
Marios Angelides,
Lambros Lambrinos,
Program Chairs:
Michael Rohs,
Enrico Rukzio

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

FRED-Cyprus: Frederick University Cyprus
University of Cyprus

In-Cooperation

SIGMM: ACM Special Interest Group on Multimedia

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 December 2010

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

MUM '10

Sponsor:

FRED-Cyprus

MUM '10: 9th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia

December 1 - 3, 2010

Limassol, Cyprus

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 190 of 465 submissions, 41%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

26
Total Citations
View Citations
1,981
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)61
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)4

Reflects downloads up to 02 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Mortazavi EDoyon-Poulin PImbeau DRobert J(2024)Identifying the Importance of UX Dimensions for Different Software Product CategoriesInteracting with Computers10.1093/iwc/iwae00135:6(801-814)Online publication date: 2-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwae001
Lallemand CMercier E(2022)Optimizing the Use of the Sentence Completion Survey Technique in User Research: A Case Study on the Experience of E-ReadingProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517718(1-18)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491102.3517718
Lyu YCarroll J(2022)Cultural Influences on Chinese Citizens’ Adoption of Digital Contact Tracing: A Human Infrastructure PerspectiveProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517572(1-17)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491102.3517572
Siltanen SHeinonen HBurova APalma PTruong POpas VTurunen M(2021)There is Always a Way: Organizing VR User Tests with Remote and Hybrid Setups during a Pandemic—Learnings from Five Case StudiesMultimodal Technologies and Interaction10.3390/mti51000625:10(62)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2021
https://doi.org/10.3390/mti5100062
Alshehri TAbokhodair NKirkham ROlivier PKitamura YQuigley AIsbister KIgarashi TBjørn PDrucker S(2021)Qualitative Secondary Analysis as an Alternative Approach for Cross-Cultural DesignProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445108(1-15)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3411764.3445108
Liu XQu WWang CZhang QGe Y(2021)A Survey Study of Factors Influencing Smart Phone FluencyEngineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics10.1007/978-3-030-77932-0_30(377-388)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77932-0_30
Stojko LTentori MWeibel NVan Laerhoven KAbowd GSalim F(2020)Intercultural usability of large public displaysAdjunct Proceedings of the 2020 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2020 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers10.1145/3410530.3414330(218-222)Online publication date: 10-Sep-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3410530.3414330
Srisopha KPhonsom CLi MLink DBoehm B(2020)On Building an Automatic Identification of Country-Specific Feature Requests in Mobile App ReviewsProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops10.1145/3387940.3391492(494-498)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3387940.3391492
Gao MKortum POswald F(2020)Multi-Language Toolkit for the System Usability ScaleInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2020.1801173(1-19)Online publication date: 19-Aug-2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2020.1801173
Swapana MPadmavathy C(2019)Factors Influencing Dependency on Smartphone and the Impact on Purchase BehaviourMultigenerational Online Behavior and Media Use10.4018/978-1-5225-7909-0.ch081(1518-1532)Online publication date: 2019
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-7909-0.ch081
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten