ABSTRACT
To compare the HCI/UX across different cultures we evaluated the following options:
Run a usability testing between Adobe Photoshop and the GIMP. The results would enhance the expert evaluation done in Part I, "Semiotics of Interaction." On the other hand, some of the users may have been familiar with the applications, which would distort the results. The test setting would be quite complex, and the results may have not shown a very large scope of cultural markers, because both the applications come from the Western context.
Run a usability testing of webpages from different cultural backgrounds. In this test we would gather more diverse results. However, some of the pages share the same design patterns across cultures, some of them are localized versions of Western web portals, which would limit our research scope.
Run a usability testing of a UI prototype built (or modified) according to our proposed guidelines. This would be perhaps the most time-intensive and risky approach to the research. Risky, because we would build on top of guidelines that we did not evaluate before.
Conduct an ethnographic observation and user interview. This kind of research would gather a large scope of cultural insights, but not all of them would be comparable between cultures. Also, we would not be able to focus on many cultural markers.
Validate both previous research results and newly generated hypotheses through usability testing and interviews. In this way we would create a ground, from where we could build our guidelines. Validating the results and hypotheses does not allow delving very deep into different research subjects, but would allow us to cover a large ground, while working with a larger sample. We chose this kind of method for our pilot study.
