Tanja Walsh

Cultural differences in smartphone user experience evaluation

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 Hofstedes cultural dimensions in the analysis of the data gave us better understanding of the impact of specific culture on the results.

Collecting cross-cultural user data with internationalized storyboard survey

Globalization and the search for experiential aspects of technology products and services have increased the demand for cross-cultural user feedback. Remote methods would suit agile global data collection, but only few common practices yet exist. Thus, the goal of the present study was to determine ways in which common visual stimulus material (internationalized storyboards) are perceived similarly and differently by cross-cultural respondents. An internationalized remote online storyboard survey was designed to collect cross-cultural user data of 252 respondents, from the USA, Brazil, India, Italy and Finland -- around the topic of mobile content sharing concepts. It was found that, for the majority of situations and details, storyboards supported a similar interpretation by users from different cultural backgrounds; and internationalized pictures assisted respondents in providing rich answers to a long survey because of a sound understanding of the intended situations and ease of imagining themselves in different usage situations.

Axe UX: Exploring long-term user experience with iScale and AttrakDiff

Positive user experience (UX) is an important goal in product design. Positive long-term UX is believed to improve customer loyalty, therefore being vital for continuous commercial success. Most UX research investigates momentary or short-term UX although the relationship between the user and the product evolves over time. There is a need to develop methods for measuring long-term UX and evaluate their feasibility in different product contexts. In this explorative study, 18 customers reported their experiences during the first three months of use of a non-interactive design tool, an axe. UX was evaluated with retrospective iScale tool and monthly repeated AttrakDiff questionnaire. iScale demonstrated the long-term trend of the attractiveness of the product well and provided information about the causes of the change in the experience. The AttrakDiff questionnaire was a good indicator of attractiveness during a longer period of time and is also well suited to remote studies.

Approaches to cross-cultural design: two case studies with UX web-surveys

Cross-cultural design has become an area in HCI that needs more research in order to be able to respond to the demands of globalization and emerging markets. Agile ways of gathering local user data are needed to help designers to create better products and services and minimize the risk of failing in the target market areas. The aim of this paper is to introduce approaches related to cross-cultural design focusing on the advantages and challenges of web-surveys in international UX evaluation. Web-surveys allow quickly reaching remotely a vast amount of users in different corners of the world. We looked at two case studies where web-surveys were used to collect UX data about online services in different countries. We found that UX web-surveys were fast to implement and very suitable for a cross-cultural user sample that has access to Internet. We argue that UX web-surveys have potential to gather user data even from larger areas than now, as ubiquitous technology products and services are getting accessible for wider user groups.

Introducing game and playful experiences to other application domains through personality and motivation models

We discuss the use of the PLEX playful experience model a system to introduce games design aspects into alternative application and product domains. We report an exploratory study to relate the relationships between playful experiences and real world values and personalities. The method led to a prototype model of playful experiences associated with values and personality based motivations, emotions and behavior, and could be a useful tool for playful concept creation. As consumer offerings are increasingly differentiated by the quality of the experience, our approach promises to enhance the fun, and widen the engagement, of many products and applications.

Localization of storyboards for cross-cultural user studies

Storyboards are useful for presenting ideas visually to users helping them understand possible uses of technology allowing them to identify with use situations, especially when no prototypes are available to demonstrate. Storyboards are good for cross-cultural user studies, because they reduce the amount of text users with different native languages have to read. Storyboards are easy to implement in online surveys, which are convenient in gathering data from geographically dispersed groups of users. However, creating localized storyboards requires considering a number of culture related factors. Little research exists in Human-Computer Interaction about how to create localized storyboards for online UX surveys although the need for gathering global user feedback of technology products and services noticeable. We used two focus groups with Chinese participants to inform the design of localization of storyboards for an online survey. Results showed that localization was successful and some design implications were found of localizing storyboards.

Cross-Cultural Issues in Working with Users in the Design of Interactive Systems

Globalization of markets means that interactive systems need to be usable and provide positive user experience (UX) to users in many different cultures. There is an increasing realization that systems may need to be localized to different cultures, but less realization that methods used to work with users also need to be localized. We present two case studies which investigate cultural differences in users’ interpretation of and reactions to methods used to elicit usability and UX information. The first case study investigated the use of photos and sketches with Nigerian and Anglo-Celtic participants, the second investigated the use of three different question types, Likert items, sentence completion questions and open-ended questions with Chinese and British participants. Conclusions are drawn for conducting cross-cultural user research.