Conscientious Design for International Audiences ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting May 15, 2004 Melissa Weaver

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver The Design Process Roles Writer Designer Programmer Roles Design Team Production Team End-user audience

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver Defining Audience The User The Audience

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver Visuals – graphics used in documents to represent ideas, actions and symbols. Visual Communication – Presenting information graphically to communicate concepts, tasks, and metaphors. Definitions

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver Overlaps Graphic Design Information Design Visual Communication

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver Leading Scholars Donis Dondis Edward Tufte Jan White Jacques Bertin

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver Design components Layout Format Typography Color Charts, tables, and data Icons & symbols

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver Design & Display

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver Localization International variables units of measurement, time, date, and currency formats Cultural variables socio-polictical, religious and technological (Hoft, 1995)

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver Simple Designs

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver Trend setting

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver What the literature tells you William Hortons Color Table

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver Be culturally aware Issues in cultural diversity are vitally important to the future of human-computer interaction, they cannot be addressed by prejudicing the results with overly generalized characteristics of user populations (Teasley, 1994)

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver Using Theory Apply processes and principles instead of following tips Gestalt theory stresses treating the structure as a whole and creating cohesion throughout that appeals to basic human visual perception consider cultural variables such as political, linguistic, and color associations throughout (Chu, 1999)

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver Designing Internationally Follow good localization practices Know your audience Uses process and team-work Test, test, test

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver Researching ethically Watch out for stereotypes – Region, language, gender, age – Color, amount of text, style, shape Test assumptions

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver Conclusions To integrate visual communication into International Information Design we need to test our assumptions about cultural preferences and research design recommendations with international users.

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver Bibliography Chu, Steve W Using chopsticks and a fork together: Challenges and strategies of developing a Chinese/English Bilingual Web site. Technical Communication, 46 2, Fukuoka, W., Kojima, Y., and J.H. Spyridakis Illustrations in user manuals: Preference and effectiveness with Japanese and American readers. Technical Communication, 46, 2, Gribbons, William and Arthur Elser Visualizing Information: An Overview of This Special Issue. Technical Communication, 45, 4, Hoft, Nancy Approaches to international technical communication. In International Technical Communication. New York, New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., Horton, William. (1993.) The almost universal language: graphics for international documents. Technical Communication, 4, Horton, William. (1994.) Icons for International Products. In The Icon Book. New York: John Wiley & Sons,

May 15, 2004 ASIS&T PNC Annual Meeting ©Melissa Weaver Bibliography Keyes, Elizabeth. (1995.) The Visual Component of Communication: Influencing Multiple Levels of Audience Response. Proceedings of IEEE 1995: Processing Visual Information, Marcus, Aaron. (1996.) Icon and Symbol Design Issues for Graphical User Interfaces. In Del Galdo, Elisa and Jakob Nielson (eds.) (1996.) International User Interfaces. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Pages Marcus, Aaron. (1993.) Human Communications Issues in Advanced UIs. Communications of the ACM, 36, 3, Masoeu, Arcilia and Carina de Villiers Web usability in a multicultural environment: a concern for young South African Web users? Proceedings of CHI No page numbers. Rosenbaum, Stephanie and J.O. Bugental. (1998.) Measuring the Success of Visual Communication in User Interfaces. Technical Communications, 45, 4, Teasley, Barbee, Leventhal, Laura, Blumenthal, Brad, Instone, Keith, and Daryl Stone Cultural diversity in user interface design: Are intuitions enough? SIGCHI Bulletin, 26, 1,