Multiculturality & internationalization

MULTICULTURALITY & INTERNATIONALIZATION

Grau en Enginyeria Informàtica

User Centred Design

Index

• Internationalization and localization

• Culture

• User Interface elements

• Writing

• Codification schemes

• Internationalization and localization model

• Technical guide

• Cultural Models

• Examples

Multiculturality & Internationalization - User Centred Design 2 / 92

Some Concepts

• Internationalization and localization.

• Elements and international symbols.

• Culture: concepts, cultural elements, cultural levels, cultural representations.

• Understand meanings of colours, icons, numbers, currency representation, numerals, currency, writing, etc.


Internationalization and localization

• In computing, internationalization and localization are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional differences and technical requirements of a target market.

• Internationalization• the process of designing a software application so that it can potentially be

adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes.

• Localization • the process of adapting internationalized software for a specific region or

language by adding locale-specific components and translating text.

• Localization (which is potentially performed multiple times, for different locales) uses the infrastructure or flexibility provided by internationalization (which is ideally performed only once, or as an integral part of ongoing development).


Internationalization and localization

• The internationalization and localization process

Multiculturality & Internationalization - User Centred Design

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization

5 / 92




Internationalization

• Internationalized Software: product prepared to be used out of the region was conceived for.

• Goal: to reach international markets

• Problem: adjust the interface to different places

• Extreme cases: web sites


Internationalization

• Example: writing direction


Washing machine instructions from left to rigth vs from rigth to left

7 / 92

vsInternationalization

• Process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes. • An internationalized software

does not have elements related to language or culture in the code.

• Textual elements like messages or labels are outside of the code and they are included in a dynamic way

Localization

• Process of adapting internationalized software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text• Local conventions, culture

and language of a particular region.

• Set of characters used to write in a language (writing).


Advantages• The same program works in the whole world • Low cost codification

8 / 92

Culture

“A way of life, the sum total of one’s philosophy, beliefs, norms, values, morals, habits, customs, arts and literature…” Thomas Vulpe.“A way of life, the sum total of one’s philosophy, beliefs, norms, values, morals, habits, customs, arts and literature…” Thomas Vulpe.


Culture

• Culture is taken for granted. There is no exhaustive definition for culture.

• Culture is no limited to national cultures.

• Culture does not exist at national level only. • At least we should avoid assuming that there is one national culture

for every country.

• The culture of a region or country can perceive the same object in different ways.

• Example• “As soon as possible”

• means immediately in US, and

• could be during this month in Latin-American culture


Culture

• A shared understanding about the world works

• Shared patterns of behavior with shared meaning

Ways of behaving

Ways of thinking

Ways of feeling

That are learned, shared, transmitted and forgotten


CultureConsciousness

Folklore Grammar

Literature Theatre Art

Music Dance Food Clothing/costume

Postures/attitudes Politeness concepts of propriety

Representations of Beauty Grammatical functions

Raising / educating children “Going about” (Umgang) with other human beings

“Going about” with animals attitudes/postures towards nature hierarchical relationships

Cleanliness representations disease representations historical understanding

Values

Concepts of Virtues, Mistakes, Sins Linguistic interaction and discourse roles

Leadership qualities goal orientation industriousness attitudes towards work

Concepts of order Truth Sense of Justice concepts of time / space


Culture

• Learned but• We don’t know what we know

• We don’t know what we don’t know

• Communication provides shared understanding

• Without an effective

communication there

is no culture and

intercultural communication



Culture: Global Design

• What is for?


Culture: Global Design

• Send a letter


Culture: Global Design (global Signs)


Culture

• Take care how to draw men and women together and how they are dressed

• Some symbols such as the swastika, hammer and sickle, rising sun, crosses and stars represent political and/or religious beliefs

• What in a fundamentalist country can be understood as offensive, in the West may have no meaning• Moving head, say good-bye, women in bikinis, alcohol


Cultural markers

• Text

• Icons

• Audio clips

• Currency

• Date/time format, numbers

• Spelling

• Weights and measures

• Colours

• Graphics

• Telephone numbers

• Address

• Titles


Index


• Culture


• Writing


• Localization model

• Technical guide

• Cultural Models

• Examples


Icons

• Usually, icons have a deep language and/or culture dependence

• Examples:• Mail box

• spelling checker acceptance (tick)


Colours

• They have associated meanings through the tradition in most cultures• Occidental

• BLACK: colour associated with mourning and funerals

• WHITE: associated with marriage and birth

• Oriental

• WHITE: associated with mourning

• RED: associated with marriage

• Each culture has its standards, then, it’s difficult to generalize• Example: traffic lights

• RED (stop), AMBER (caution) and GREEN (go)

• Even it seems to be standard, this cannot be globally assumed (China standard: Blue/White: Cross).


colour Symbolism Chart by CultureUnderstand the Meanings of colour in Various Cultures Around the Worldhttp://webdesign.about.com/od/color/a/bl_colorculture.htm

22 / 92

http://webdesign.about.com/od/color/a/bl_colorculture.htm

Cultural Meanings of Colour and Colour Symbolism

• By mixing appropriate amounts of different colours however you can often neutralize inherent negative cultural connotations.

• However• Times change and old associations may

be slowly altered over the years.

• Western cultures have adopted some Eastern colour uses while some Eastern cultures have adopted Western ideas.

• The Internet has allowed people to learn about other cultures and to adopt what them like from these cultures.


http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/cultural-color.html

Cultural colour Meanings of OrangeWestern:

• affordable or inexpensive items• Halloween, combined with black

Eastern:• happiness• spirituality

Thailand:• colour for Thursday

Ireland: • religious colour for Protestants • appears on the Irish flag along with

white for peace and green for Catholics

Netherlands: • colour of the Dutch Royal Family

Hinduism: • Saffron, a soft orange colour, is

considered an auspicious and sacred colour

23 / 92





http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/colours-in-cultures

24 / 92





http

://b

log.

kiss

met

rics.

com

/col

or-p

sych

olog

y/?w

ide=

1

25 / 92

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/color-psychology/?wide=1

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/color-psychology/?wide=1

Calendars, dates and hours

• There are more calendars than Gregorian !!• Buddhist, Islamic, Chinese, Hebrew, etc.

• Even in one calendar, there are different formats:• dd/mm/aaaa 11 de Enero de 2005

• mm/dd/yyyy January the 11th, 2005Multiculturality & Internationalization - User Centred Design 26 / 92

Calendars, dates and hours

• in some countries the date format is day/month/year (e.g. the UK), whilst in others month/day/year (e.g. the USA) is the norm.

• In addition, some countries treat Sunday as the first day of the week, whilst others traditionally view Monday as the start of the week.

• Calendars must reflect these variations to prevent erroneous date selections.

• Therefore, cultural differences must be taken into consideration when designing event calendars as incorrect choices could lead to big problems, such as appearing at the airport on the wrong day.


Numbers, currencies and units of measure

• For each country we need to note the currency symbol and numeric format

• USA $ 1,234.56

• UK £ 1,234.56

• Euro 1.234,56 €

• Most of the world uses the metric system

• BUT United States or UK• Use miles (1.609 m), inches (2,54 cm), ...


Sorting

• Order forms are important in the process of internationalization and are a complex issue

• Initially ordinations of characters are A through Z, uppercase first, then lowercase, and numbers are arranged in 0-9

• This type of rule is not always acceptable, because there are rules more complicated when a second character must be considered.• Example: ‘CH’ and ‘LL’ in Spanish


• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabetical_order• Guidelines for Alphabetical Arrangement of Letters and Sorting of Numerals and

Other Symbols (National Information Standards Organization - American National Standards Institute, ANSI): http://www.niso.org/publications/tr/tr03.pdf

29 / 92

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabetical_order

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabetical_order

http://www.niso.org/publications/tr/tr03.pdf



Index


• Culture


• Writing



• Technical guide

• Cultural Models

• Examples


Alphabet

• Classified into ideograms and phonetic scripts• An ideogram has special meaning and is not related to its

pronunciation

• The letters of a phonetic script represent certain sounds

• The most important alphabets are:• Western (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic)

• Arabic or Middle Eastern

• East Extreme


Western alphabet

• Latin, Greek and Cyrillic

• Common characteristics:• Phonetics

• Left to right

• Use upper and lower case

• Numbers in Arabic format: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 y 9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet

Arabic

• There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms

• Alphabetical order two different ways:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet#Computers_and_the_Arabic_alphabet

33 / 92




East Extreme

• Based on chinesse ideografic characters

• Currently are used a lot of characters

standard:20.000 characters

extended:50.000 characters

Minimun to talk:3.000 characters


Fonts

• Culture impacts your

preference for fonts

• One explanation for why some fonts make you feel in a certain way is because of deep links to culture.

• Many people relate Helvetica with the US Government because it’s used in tax forms.

• These associations are difficult to remove and should be considered when deciding on a font choice.


Because fonts are designed by humans, there is usually some meaning attached to

them. You don’t want to choose a font that is easily associated with something in our

culture that’s markedly different than the vibe you’re trying to give off.

https://medium.com/who-what-why/1523564d966c

35 / 92



Translation

• All languages have different syntax and grammar

• The translated text could change of size, so its is neccesary to consider this aspect

• Example:• Move (in English) its translated as verschieben (in German)

• To be considered in:• Messages

• Grammar and syntax

• Menus design

• Prompts

• dialogue boxes

• IconsMulticulturality & Internationalization - User Centred Design

4char vs 11char

36 / 92

Index


• Culture


• Writing



• Technical guide

• Cultural Models

• Examples


Coding Schemes

• Each type of writing has to be represented in computer systems

• This representation takes the form of a coding scheme

• These schemes are encrypted through character mapping• Character maps allow the representation of scripts

in the computer and include characters that are not in the alphabet and punctuation

• Types of schemes• ASCII

• Map one byte character (SBCS)

• Map double byte characters (DBCS)

• UnicodeMulticulturality & Internationalization - User Centred Design 38 / 92

ASCII

• American Standard Code for Information Interchange

• Based on the English alphabet that encodes 128 specified characters• numbers 0-9, letters a-z and A-Z

• some basic punctuation symbols, some control codes (originated with Teletype machines), and a blank space - into the 7-bit binary integers

• Each character is indexed in the character map• Ex.: number 65 = ‘A’ and number 97 = ‘a’

• ASCII was the most commonly used character encoding on the World Wide Web until December 2007, when it was surpassed by the ASCII-derived UTF-8


http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_ascii.asp

39 / 92




ASCII

ISO Character Sets

40 / 92

ASCII ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1)


ASCII ISO 8879


Problems

• Duplicity in the character encoding

• Inconsistent characters codes due to national and industry standards conflicts.

• 7-bit ASCII & 8-bit ASCII codes are limited to 128 & 256 positions not useful for a global/wide context

• Internet has “complicated” this situation: it demands for a unique set of characters in the world


Unicodeenables people around the world to use computers in any language

• Because the previous character-sets are limited in size, and are not compatible in multilingual environments, the Unicode Consortium developed the Unicode Standard.

• Unicode Standard • covers all the characters, punctuations, and symbols in the

world.

• enables processing, storage and interchange of text data no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language

• Industry consensus • Apple, Borland, Digital, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lotus, Metaphor,

Microsoft, Next, Novell, Research Libraries Group, Sun, WordPerfect, Xerox


http://www.unicode.org

44 / 92

http://www.unicode.org/

http://www.unicode.org/

Unicode


Unicode

• Universal (wide capacity)

• Fixed width

• Not ambiguous

• Capacity: more than 39.000 characters


UTF-8

• Can represent every character in the Unicode character set

• Designed for backward compatibility with ASCII

• Dominant character encoding for the World Wide Web

• Recommended by the Internet Mail Consortium (IMC) for all e-mail programs (display and create mails)

• Increasingly being used as the default character encoding in operating systems, programming languages, APIs, and software applications


KANJI

• Defined by el JIS (Japan Industry Standard)• Level 1 3.000 characters

• Level 2 adds 3.500 characters

• Level 3, recently defined. It increments the map with more than 6.000 characters

• Based in a 7-bit format. Requires special ESCAPE sequences




April 2015: Support for utf8mb4

The character encoding of the database has changed from UTF8 to UTF8mb4, this adds a wide range of 4-byte characters set.

50 / 92

Index


• HCI and culture


• Writing



• Technical guide

• Cultural Models

• Examples


Localization Model

Localized resources +

ApplicationCode =

LocalizedProduct

• Contain data but not code• Contain string of characters and graphics used in the interfaces

• Contain specific elements of localization

• Contain application code that is executed in all countries and languages


http://www.humanfactors.com/coolstuff/the-future-of-global-user-experience-in-local-contexts.asp

• Key points for designing a localized product:• Place all data, text, graphics and multimedia in a separate data file (o

several files)

• Organize and document files

• Create a process to build the localized product

52 / 92






Localization Model

• Some examples



Localization Model

• Key points for designing a localized product:• Place all data, text, graphics and multimedia in a separate data

file (o several files)

• Organize and document files

• Create a process to build the localized product


Index


• HCI and culture


• Writing



• Technical guide

• Cultural Models

• Examples


Technical guide. Points to Revise

• Specific localization elements

• Convention text processing:• sorting, character classification, pronunciation, hyphenation,

character-chains management functions and exchanging information files

• Inputs management• keyboard driver support and other input methods

• Outputs management• Ex. Translating Text: every language has different grammar and

syntax

• Translated text is resized, growing must be expected

• Move (in English) = Verschieben (in German) [4 against 11]


Technical guide. Be aware of

• Messages

• Grammar and syntaxes

• Design of menus

• Prompts

• State Bars

• dialogue boxes

• Icons


Technical guide. Dialogues organization

• Organization of controls and window elements should consider text of labels growth

• In Hebrew and Arabic, the information is written from right to left (take care of text presentation)

• Some languages include diacritical marks that require additional space

• Rule: allow 30% of growth


Technical guide. State Bars and Menus

• State Bars • Do not fill all the bar with text

• English version should occupy 50% of bar space

• Menus• Avoid dense menus

• Accelerator keys coincide with the first character of a word. This can cause problems when translating.


Technical guide. Cultural elements

• ZIP code

• Solution

Allow flexibility


Technical guide. Programming

• Document ALL the resources hat must be localized

• It is useful to develop two locations in parallel in order to evaluate the internationalization

• It is important to have tools and utilities to make the location

• Ex.: java language• Supports Unicode:

• It has a 16-bit char type (in C + + is platform dependent)

• It has a notation for defining a Unicode character constant '\ uxxxx'

• It has predefined objects

• Extends Object Class java.util.Locale. A Locale object represents a handle to a region


http://www.w3.org/International


Internationalization Quick Tips for the Web: http://www.w3.org/International/quicktips/Overview

63 / 92

http://www.w3.org/International/

http://www.w3.org/International/quicktips/Overview

Index


• HCI and culture


• Writing



• Technical guide

• Cultural Models

• Examples


Cultural Models

• Edward Hall: Determine to send the correct answer more than send the correct message.

• Victor David: Determine the cultural aspects could be easily used in a communication in business scenarios.

• Geert Hofstede: Determine thinking patterns, feeling and attitude convey the mental culture.

• Trompenaars: Determine the way people resolve their problems.

• A cultural model could be used to • identify global information (relevant information in some contexts without

modifications)

• identify effective cultural metaphors

• avoid some mistakes (that could be offensive in some cultures)

• evaluate effectiveness of an interface used by an international user.


Hofstede Model

• Collectivism vs. Individualism

• the relationship between the individual and the collective/group which prevails in a given society

• Collectivism: Korea, Japan, Brazil

• Individualism: USA, France, Germany, Costa Rica.


Hofstede Model

• Feminity vs. Masculinity• predominant socialisation pattern is for men to be more assertive

and for women to be more nurturing

• work goals indicated a near consistency on men scoring advancement and earnings as more important, and

• women scoring supervision, social aspects of the job, working conditions, working hours and ease of work as more important.

• Hofstede calculated scores of Masculinity/Femininity that are available for a small group of nations

• Masculinity: USA, Japan, Germany

• Feminity: Costa Rica, Denmark, Norway


Index


• HCI and culture


• Writing



• Technical guide

• Cultural Models

• Examples


Some examples

Individualism - Switzerland

“You’re immediately at the centre of attention - your individuality, your everyday life, situations in which you recognize yourself and where you would like to see yourself.”


http://www.mcdonalds.ch

69 / 92

http://www.mcdonalds.ch/

http://www.mcdonalds.ch/

Some examples

Individualism – Germany, Switzerland


Some examples

Colectivism - India


Some examples

Colectivism - Japan


Design for China

• China – websites are more complex, more oriented towards entertainment (high context / collectivist)

more complex because of 1. Principle: “give the people what they want at once”

“…clearness and transparency in Chinese not only means, to ‘get an overview’ but also means ‘to find quickly what one is looking for’.

In contrast to western website that are characterized by a deep hierarchy and fewer elements on each level, Chinese websites have a flat hierarchy with as many elements on each level as possible.


Designing for China

more complex because of

2. “aesthetics of abundance” –Chinese popular culture, e.g., in New Year’s pictures, calendars, paintings. “…strong and rich colour, density, and opulent presentation symbolize happiness and wealth.”

3. search patterns:

• mainland Chinese prefer vertical layout

• Hong Kong Chinese prefer horizontal


China vs USA


Yahoo! US

Caract. Principales

Web Site Directory(14 Temas principales)

Noticias

Yahoo! Worldwide

Entret

enim

ient

o

Búsqueda

Overview: Yahoo! Services

Caract. Principales

Overview: Yahoo! Services

Web Site Directory(14 temas principales)

Noticias

Entretenimiento

BúsquedaBúsqueda

Yahoo! Worldwide

Servicios SMS

Deportes: Liga China de Fútbol

Advertisement

Musica & Email

Películas

Headlines

WallpaperDownloads

Películas

Compras

Sección miembros

Yahoo! Announcement

US Local Yahoo!

Search Field (2)

Other Yahoo! Services

Multiculturality & Internationalization - User Centred DesignYahoo! China 76 / 92

Examples – BMW


Examples – BMW


Examples – BMW

Argentinan Web of BMW does not use correctly the verbal times or the tone typic of Argentina, the web page uses the typica spanish style:: Mantenga el control (Maintain the control)..., Manténgase seguro (maintain safe)...


Examples – Use of colour


Examples – Individualism Vs. Colectivism


Nescafe (may ‘14)


Japan: http://nestle.jp Italy: https://www.nescafe.it/home

82 / 92

http://nestle.jp/

http://nestle.jp/

http://nestle.jp/

https://www.nescafe.it/home

https://www.nescafe.it/home

Nintendo (May ‘15)


Japan: http://www.nintendo.co.jp Spain: http://www.nintendo.es

83 / 92

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/

http://www.nintendo.es/

http://www.nintendo.es/

Nescafe (may ‘14)


France India: http://www.nestle.in/brands/beverages

http://www.croquonslavie.fr/corner-marque/nescafe/Pages/Homenescafe.aspx?hbxCmp=TD_NESCAFE

84 / 92

http://www.nestle.in/brands/beverages

http://www.nestle.in/brands/beverages




EEUU web site


Data format NOT consistentdd:mm:aaaa instead of mm:dd:aaa

MeasuresAmerican format US dollarsMiles and Galons

ColoursIn US RED and GREY are related with necessity and luxury

Colectivism

85 / 92

Brazil web site


ColoursLuxury referred with càlid colours and expensive elements (Chinese porcelain vase)

Colectivism or Individualism

undefined

86 / 92

Russia web site


Menus and coloursSimple and Austere

Alphabet

cyrillic

(some) Conclusions

• High localization (a different scheme for every country even Brazil and Portugal different pages)

• Japan very similar to EEUU

87 / 92

Examples – Writing


Examples - Writing


Conclusions

• Computerized market is global, in that way it is necessary to design for the whole world

• Internationalization is a necessity not an option

• It is precise to consider it at the early design


Interesting readings

• Cross cultural considerations for user interface design, by Nehal Shah, April, 2013: • http://

www.humanfactors.com/coolstuff/cross-cultural-considerations-for-user-interface-design.asp

• The future of global user experience in local contexts, by Apala Lahiri Chavan, February 2013:• http://

www.humanfactors.com/coolstuff/the-future-of-global-user-experience-in-local-contexts.asp

• International Usability: Big Stuff the Same, Details Differ, by Jakob Nielsen, 2011:• http://www.nngroup.com/articles/international-usability-details-differ

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization


http://www.humanfactors.com/coolstuff/cross-cultural-considerations-for-user-interface-design.asp






http://www.nngroup.com/articles/international-usability-details-differ

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/international-usability-details-differ




Bibliography

• Bucher, Hans-Jürgen. (2002). The power of the audience: Interculturality, interactivity and trust in Internet Communication. In F. Sudweeks and C. Ess (eds.), Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication. Proc. Third International Conference. Montreal, CanadaMurdoch University Press.

• Duncker, Elke. (2002). Cross-cultural usability of computing metaphors: Do we colonize the minds of indigenous web users? In F. Sudweeks and C. Ess (eds.), Proc. the Second International Conference on Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication, 217ff. Murdoch University.

• Collazos, C., González, M.P., Neyem, A., Sturm, C. (2007) Guidelines to develop Emotional Awareness Devices from a Cultural-Perspective: A Latin-American Example, LNCS, HCCI.

• Ess, Charles (ed.). (2001). Culture, Technology, Communication: Towards an Intercultural Global Village, with Fay Sudweeks, Foreword by Susan Herring. Albany, NY Press.

• Gil, R., Collazos, C. (2007). Integrating emotions and knowledge in aesthetics designs using cultural profiles, LNCS, HCCI.

• Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-related Values. Beverly Hills: Sage.

• Heaton, L. (2001). Preserving Communication Context: Virtual Workspace and Interpersonal Space in Japanese CSCW. In Ess (2001), 213-240. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

• Hongladarom, S. (2001). Global Culture, Local Cultures and the Internet: The Thai Example. In Ess, 307-324. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

• Jørgensen, G. (2003). Can an online library service bridge the gap of cultural understanding? Seeing design isues in the light of cross-cultural communication. IT University, Denmark.

• Kampurri, M. and Markku T. (2004). Culture in Human-Computer Interaction Studies: A survey of ideas and definitions. Proc. Cultural Attitudes Towards Communication and Technology 2004, 43-57. Murdoch, Western Australia: Murdoch University

• Würtz, E. (2004). Intercultural Communication on Websites: An analysis of visual communication in high- and low-context cultures. Proc. Cultural Attitudes Towards Communication and Technology 2004, 109-122. Murdoch, Western Australia: Murdoch University.
