Webpage Designs for Diverse Cultures: An Exploratory Study of User Preferences in China

Abstract

Abstract.A wealth of studies has revealed a cross-cultural difference in the user preference on webpage designs. Users from other cultures often criticize a widely accepted webpage design in one culture. Designs for diverse cultures are thus expected to be specific to address diverse user preferences. This study investigated the preferences of Chinese users on four essential design elements related to the readability of texts of the result pages of search engines. The results suggested that the search result pages of the Bing search engine designed for typical 'US users' did not satisfy Chinese users. Chinese users, in general, preferred huge-sized texts for titles, a more compact layout of the search result pages, and keywords to be highlighted in red. The findings of the study contributed to webpage design guidelines for Chinese users, and may serve as a catalyst in exploring user preferences in designing for diverse cultures.

Timeline Localization

“…The minimization of restrictions on access to markets brought about increased competition. The amount of products that is aimed at international audience is constantly growing [16,11]. This gives more choice to consumers.…”

“…Such variations can impact user performance in the interaction with a product, his/her satisfaction and finally its acceptance. In the HCI field, these factors were particularly analyzed in the context of applications or Web sites implementation and design [11][12][13][14][15][16].…”

“…A great deal of research has been focused on the identification of cultural markers, it is elements typical of members of a given culture and likely affecting their preferences. It was demonstrated that software and Web designers should be aware of inter alia colors and fonts usage; wording of warning, error and help messages; or menus' architecture [12,11,13,16]. Thus far, the following temporal cultural markers have been distinguished and examined: 1) date and time format [16]; 2) style of time management (mono-chronic culture 3 versus poly-chronic culture 4 ) [17]; 3) time orientation (importance people attach to the past, present and future) [19]; 4) long-term or short-term orientation (degree to which people in a given culture are willing to defer present gratification for the sake of greater future reward) [18].…”