Knowing What a User Likes: A Design Science Approach to Interfaces that Automatically Adapt to Culture

Abstract

Adapting user interfaces to a user's cultural background can increase satisfaction, revenue, and market share. Conventional approaches to catering for culture are restricted to adaptations for specific countries and modify only a limited number of interface components, such as the language or date and time formats. We argue that a more comprehensive personalization of interfaces to cultural background is needed to appeal to users in expanding markets. This paper introduces a low-cost, yet efficient method to achieve this goal: cultural adaptivity. Culturally adaptive interfaces are able to adapt their look and feel to suit visual preferences. In a design science approach, we have developed a number of artifacts that support cultural adaptivity, including a prototype web application. We evaluate the efficacy of the prototype's automatically generated interfaces by comparing them with the preferred interfaces of 105 Rwandan, Swiss, Thai, and multicultural users. The findings demonstrate the feasibility of providing users with interfaces that correspond to their cultural preferences in a novel yet effective manner.

Exploring the Educational Effectiveness of Culturally-enhanced Serious Game in Education

“…Though the use of VSM as a basis to generalize a culture receives critiques from some scholars, many well documented studies suggested that VSM could explain on a society's choices of symbols, preferences, behaviour, interfaces and game strategies preferences [13]. Additionally, VSM is also one of the most establish, widely replicate, has better level of validity as compare to other alternative models as well as repeatedly refer by scholars [12], [13,16].…”

“…Additionally, VSM is also one of the most establish, widely replicate, has better level of validity as compare to other alternative models as well as repeatedly refer by scholars [12], [13,16]. For example, VSM was deployed in designing websites [16] while others incorporated it into user interfaces [16].…”

“…VSM is used to distinguish one culture from another; which clarifies on the differences of a society's selections and preferences towards their own symbols, heroes, rituals and values. The VSM is extensively utilized in varies domains stretching from ICT to interpersonal communication [12,13]. This study used a serious game which was constructed based on VSM.…”

Can icons enhance requirements engineering work?

“…The user preference framework has also been accompanied with the class RE Experience, which includes role, year, and month, which afford information pertaining to a user's competency. It is worth noting that the UFM draws upon Reinecke and Bernstein's (2013) user cultural ontology theory because its concept has proved useful in adapting preferences to suit personal background. …”

Communicating Nascent Design Theories on Innovative Information Systems through Multi-grounded Design Principles

“…[2][3][4][5]). There is general consensus that design science focuses on the acquisition of new knowledge through the design and evaluation of artifacts.…”