LISA Forum USA

Building a Globally Integrated Organization

Reducing the Learning Curve

Cross-Cultural User-Experience Design

Instructor: Aaron Marcus

09:00 - 17:00 : Thursday, June 26, 2008

Workshop Program

Introduction to Workshop and Background of Speaker

• Welcome, introduction
• Who's who?
  • Presenter's philosophy, experience
  • Participants
• Participant expectations
• Workshop overview
  • Objectives, goals
  • Outline
  • Methodology

Lecture 1: Culture Dimensions and UI Design

• Participants experiences of culture
  • Good, bad
• Introduction to terminology of user-interace components
  • Metaphors, mental models, navigation, interaction, appearance
• Culture models, analysis of one model's culture dimensions
  • Power distance, individualism/collectivism, gender roles, uncertainty avoidance, time-orientation
• Application of model to Websites
  • Universities, national parks, national airlines, etc

Exercise 1: Cross-Cultural Conversations

• Practical experience recognizing culture cues
• Relating culture differences to culture dimensions
  • Review 8-12 Sample business conversations
  • Present findings to group

Lecture 2: Applying Cultural Models to UI Design

• Study of how users learn complex systems in China, Germany
• Applying composite of culture dimensions to predict reactions
• Comparison of user interviews results with theory
  • Interview methods
  • Predictions
  • Results
  • Lessons learned
  • Implications for improved documentation

Exercise 2: Mapping Culture Dimensions to UI Component

• Practical pen-paper exercise mapping one culture model's culture dimensions to user-interface components
  • Culture dimensions
  • User-interface components
  • Review of sketches
  • Present findings to group

Lecture 3: Culture and Corporate Website Design

• Study of culture differences in 12 B2B and B2C global Websites
• Illustrations of differences in metaphors, imagery, navigation, terminology, color, etc.
• Summarizes, comments on speaker's 64-page journal article
  • Culture dimensions
  • User-interface components
  • Detailed observations
  • Implications for design

Lecture 4: Best of Breed Culture Dimensions

• 9 Models provide 39 dimensions of culture
• 60 experts worldwide surveyed to determine best
• Best five composite dimensions results
  • Method of survey
  • Analysis of results
  • Visual technique for comparing designs
  • Implications for content management systems

Exercise 3: Designing a UI for a Culture

• Practical pen-paper exercise to design home page and one other screen of healthcare website for a specific country's citizens with specific culture characteristics
  • Applying culture knowledge to design
  • Review of sketches
  • Present findings to group

Workshop ends

• Summary of the day's contents, results