Templates for Cross-Cultural and Culturally Specific Usability Testing: Results From Field Studies and Ethnographic Interviewing in Three Countries

Abstract

The cultural diversity of users of technology challenges our methods for usability testing. This article suggests templates for cross-culturally and culturally specific usability testing, based on studies of usability testing in companies in Mumbai, Beijing, and Copenhagen. Study 1 was a cross-cultural field study of think-aloud testing done by usability vendor companies in the three countries. The result was a grounded theory of cultural variations in the production of a usability problem list. Study 2 was a follow-up, ethnographic interview study of how the companies typically perform usability tests. The result was the construction of templates for usability testing. The culturally specific templates were in Mumbai “user-centered evaluation,” Copenhagen “client-centered evaluation,” and Beijing “evaluator-centered evaluation.” The findings are compared with related research, and the implications are pointed out. The templates can be seen as a simple and practical way to plan, compare, and improve the way usability testing is carried out in multiple, different cultures and countries.

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by a grant from the Danish Research Council for Independent Research to the Cultural Usability project. Thanks to the anonymous individuals and the managers from the companies who agreed to take a lot of time out of their busy schedules to participate in this study. Thanks to Qingxin Shi and Jyoti Kumar for collaboration on Study 1, and to Pradeep Yammiyavar and Xianghong Sun for helping with access to companies in India and China.

Notes

¹Usability evaluation methods is a broad term for analytical (without live users) and empirical (with live users) methods that the usability professional uses to evaluate the interaction of the human with the computer. The purpose is to identify aspects of this interaction that need to be improved to increase the usability of the product.

²From this point forward, the national shorthand notation (IN, DK, and CH) is used together with numbers (1–6) to cite the participants in the tests and interviews.

³Parts of Study 2, in an earlier version, were published in Katre, Orngreen, Yammiyavar, and Clemmensen (2010).