Judul Asli : Improving Performance, Perceived
Usability, and Aesthetics with Culturally Adaptive User Interfaces
Penulis : KATHARINA REINECKE and
ABRAHAM BERNSTEIN
Pengkaji : Aditya Raka Ghiffary / G24130067
Abstrak asli :
With the exponentially growing number ofWebpages on the
Internet, searching for the best information increasingly becomes a search for
the best information presentation. Many sites
simply contradict one’s personal understanding of “good design.” But
even worse, bad design often goes hand in hand with bad
usability. Such findings have led to a growing
awareness that aesthetic design is a key component of usability [Hassenzahl 2004;
Norman 2004], and a decisive aspect for marketplace success [Bloch 1995]. If neglected,
many users rightly decide on another, more attractive and usable Website offering
similar content [Lindgaard and Dudek 2003]. With this in mind, research has long
discussed the magic formula for a “perfect design” and tried to define what is perceived
as beautiful and usable.
To some extent, it seems that we can indeed generalize
what users consider usable and attractive (e.g., when
designing according to the laws of Gestalt Psychology). Some aspects,
however, are certainly a matter of personal taste [Norman 2004], or strongly influenced
by cultural values [Ito and Nakakoji 1996]. The same conventions apply to user
interface preferences, which highly vary across cultures: Asian Websites, for
instance, are commonly bright and colorful, with frequent
animations that try to attract the user’s attention. Their
high complexity is often perceived as information overload by
Westerners, who prefer more structured content [Marcus and Gould 2001]. Asians,
in contrast, have been shown to efficiently filter such dense information [Nisbett
2003].
Users also differ in their design preferences and in
their perception of usability at the country
level [Barber and Badre 1998; Callahan 2005]. The importance of considering such
culturally determined partialities for a certain look & feel of user
interfaces has been demonstrated numerous times. For example,
interfaces designed for users from a specific
country were perceived as much more attractive [Corbitt et al. 2002], and improved
the work efficiency of those they were intended for [Badre 2000; Ford and Gelderblom
2003].
Thus, with the Internet being an increasingly global
market place, it is unreasonable to design
one common Website for everyone, and yet expect to attract an international audience.
A more desirable solution would be to design many different versions of a Webpage
in order to cater to users’ cultural preferences. Unfortunately, in this case, designers
would soon experience the problem of scale due to the complex and intangible nature
of cultural background.
To bridge this dichotomy between the need for Websites
that cater for individual cultural backgrounds, and
an inexpensive method to develop them, we have previously proposed
an approach called cultural adaptivity [Reinecke and Bernstein 2007]. The
idea is that Websites automatically compose personalized interfaces based on
the
individual
cultural backgrounds of its users.
We expect cultural adaptivity to improve
the performance, as well as the user satisfaction of a personalized web site compared to a nonadapted
version of the same site.
We refer to performance as the
objectivelymeasurablework efficiency, and to user satisfaction as
an umbrella term for the users’ subjective perception of the interface,
composed of their impressions of both usability, and aesthetics.
According to ISO 9241-11 [1997], usability consists
of effectiveness (e.g., a user’s ability to successfully find information and
accomplish tasks on a Webpage), efficiency (he or she can do so in an adequate
time frame without frustration), and satisfaction (whether the user enjoys using
theWebsite).Note that rather than being three independentlymeasurable terms, these
aspects of usability have been found to interact [Lindgaard and Dudek 2003]. The
user’s judgement of his or her satisfaction, for instance, is thought to be
influenced by the perceived usability (as denoted by the
effectiveness and efficiency), but also by affective
aspects, such as aesthetics [Lindgaard and Dudek 2003]. In the following, we use
attractiveness, appeal, and beauty as synonyms for these affective aspects.
In an evaluation with 41 users of different cultural
backgrounds, we demonstrate the benefit of our approach
by showing that the majority preferred their culturally
personalized interfaces over a nonadapted version. Moreover, our
participants were able to work 22% faster with the
culturally adapted interface, showing that our approach improves
both the performance as well as the user satisfaction.
In the following, we first discuss the related work,
before providing some background on our
approach to cultural adaptivity in Section 3. Section 3.2 details the
implementation of this approach in our culturally adaptive prototype,
which was first introduced in [Reinecke and Bernstein
2009]. The experiment conducted with the system is described in
the subsequent section, followed by a discussion of the implications of this
approach
for international users.
Ulasan/Kajian :
Performance adalah efisiensi kerja obyektif terukur dan user
satisfaction sebagai istilah umum untuk persepsi subjektif user
'antarmuka, terdiri dari kesan mereka pada usability dan aesthetics.
Usability
terdiri dari :
1. effectiveness
(misalnya, kemampuan user untuk berhasil menemukan informasi
dan menyelesaikan tugas-tugas di halaman web),
2. efficiency (user
dapat melakukannya dalam jangka waktu yang cukup tanpa frustrasi),
3. satisfaction
(apakah user menikmati menggunakan Website).
Perancangan sistem yang secara
otomatis menyesuaikan diri dengan latar belakang budaya user
pertama membutuhkan pemahaman yang mendalam tentang istilah budaya, dan dampaknya pada preferensi user interface.
Sementara budaya telah dijelaskan berkali-kali,
antropolog budaya memiliki waktu yang lama untuk menyetujui bahwa istilah
tersebut tidak dapat di definisikan secara terbatas. Oleh karena itu para
peneliti sering menguraikan aspek yang mempengaruhi budaya yaitu identitas
nasional seseorang yang lahir ke dalam, yang sering disetarakan dengan negara
asalnya. Antropolog memiliki pemahaman yang lebih komprehensif, mereka
membedakan antara "tempat," yang mengacu pada keberadaan seseorang
saat ini berada, dan "ruang", yang menggambarkan afiliasi mental
seseorang seperti dalam kasus ambiguitas budaya. Dengan demikian, hal ini tidak cukup untuk
menyesuaikan interface ke negara asal
user, karena praktek umum di
lokalisasi. Sebaliknya, mungkin negara-negara bekas tempat tinggal dan perbedaan
kebangsaan dari orang tua juga dapat mempengaruhi preferensi user interface, dan karena itu, harus
diperhitungkan dalam pendekatan untuk adaptivitas budaya. Salah satu studi
paling komprehensif terhadap klasifikasi tersebut adalah salah satu yang
dilakukan oleh antropolog budaya Hofstede.
Ada banyak aspek dari budaya yang telah
diketahui mempengaruhi interface preferences seperti penggunaan bahasa, agama, tingkat pendidikan,
bentuk pendidikan. Faktor lainnya adalah norma-norma sosial dan politik, yang
mempengaruhi apakah orang berpikir untuk diri sendiri, atau melihat diri mereka
sebagai bagian dari kelompok.
Sementara aspek tersebut
menggambarkan kemungkinan pengaruh pada budaya, antropologi telah menghindari
mendefinisikan satu set terbatas pengaruh tersebut. Namun, dengan berbagai
disiplin ilmu menyerukan kemungkinan untuk membandingkan negara dan budaya
nasional mereka, beberapa peneliti telah berusaha untuk mendefinisikan apa yang
disebut dimensi budaya.
Meskipun dimensi
Hofstede ini telah sering dikritik karena generalisasi konsep beragam budaya,
dan menguranginya ke kebangsaan, peneliti telah menerapkan dimensi dalam
berbagai disiplin ilmu, mulai dari komunikasi interpersonal, dan interaksi
manusia-komputer. Banyak pekerjaan telah diinvestasikan dalam membandingkan
situs web dari berbagai negara dan menemukan hubungan antara desain dan dimensi
budaya Hofstede. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa dimensinya berdampak pada desain
antarmuka user, dan dapat digunakan
untuk menjelaskan perbedaan tata letak antara berbagai negara. Selain itu,
temuan dari disiplin lain dapat ditafsirkan untuk mengungkapkan kebutuhan untuk
interaksi dengan komputer.
