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Usability Half-Way Round the World - 7 March 2005
by Whitney Quesenbery
Read this article in Chinese (translated by Sean Liu)
As I headed off to Beijing for User Friendly 2004 (held on December 18-19 and sponsored by UPA China and UPA Hong Kong), I checked my notes for my tutorials and presentations. The storyteller in me likes to use anecdotes and real examples to make a point, but I always have to think about whether the stories that play well in New York will work in another cultural setting.
But there was a more important question on my mind: Is usability the same in China? As I thought about it, this is really two questions:
- Is our professional practice the same? Are we working from the same basic assumptions about how to approach the job of making products and applications work for their users, and do we use the same techniques and methodologies?
- Do western usability principles apply to a Chinese audience? Can we apply what we have learned from usability tests in the US and Europe, or are cultural differences so great that we must rethink what usability “means?”
Is our professional practice the same?
If there was any doubt that our world is getting smaller, at least as far as how quickly and easily ideas can travel, the consistency of usability practice should put it to rest. From presentations on formal research to networking conversations about our work, it was clear that we are all approaching usability testing in the same way. The description and pictures of the usability lab at ISAR (a usability and design consultancy in Beijing) are similar to any other similar web page at companies around the world.
Many of the labs are working with eye tracking systems, part of a new trend in usability testing. This makes a lot of sense in China, where many of the products are mobile devices. Without the big screen and visible pointer, the eye tracking data is important in helping designers understand what part of the device is capturing the user’s attention, particularly the split between the screen and tactile controls.
Ever the worrier, I wondered whether the presentations and tutorials were too basic for an audience already familiar with usability testing. I asked someone who regularly facilitated usability tests about this. She said that although some of the material was a review for her, it was helpful to hear that her professional practice matched ours.
One of the signs that we were all influenced by the same theories and standards was that we quoted the same definitions and sources. Even for someone who doesn’t read Chinese, this menu, with an entry for ISO 9241 (the standard definition of usability) is familiar (Figure 1).
Figure 1. This clip is from the ISAR web site. We can see an entry for ISO9241 here.
Similarly, another clip from the same web site also shows the same cycle of user research, design prototyping and evaluation, as well as a concern not only for efficiency but for the emotions of user experience.
Figure 2. Another clip from ISAR. I highlighted these familiar words.
This reminded me of an experience at a conference in Italy. As I listened to the other speakers, I was often able to guess at the contents of the slides simply by seeing some of the cognate words and the reference. The translator and I made it a game, but what it showed was the degree of consistency in practice around the world. This is important. As more products are created by global teams, our ability to work together effectively depends on a common practice. Methodology becomes important when many different people need to work together, or when projects are passed from group to group. Without a shared vocabulary, and underlying philosophy of the work, each team interaction becomes a negotiation rather than a collaboration.
One other thing was very familiar. Many people told me that they wanted to do more usability testing, more iterative prototyping, “like you do in the US.” I was forced to admit that things are not so perfect in the US either. Although some companies are developing mature user centered design practices, many of us also do “what we can” and wish for better integration of prototyping and evaluation in the design and development process.
There is a glimmer of hope that user experience will be accepted as important more quickly in China, and with less struggle. I noticed that many business cards included quality (ISO 9000) or process maturity (CMM-levels) standards. Perhaps this focus on process and quality will be an opportunity for a user centered process as well. If it is true that experience—the pleasure of both good design and of ease of use—is a critical marketing factor, maybe an industry that is coming of age right now will do it better.
Do western usability principles apply to a Chinese audience?
One theme that came up several times was whether there should be a different approach to design in China, based on differences in the Chinese audience. In a Q&A session at User Friendly 2004, several people made this point, saying that Chinese web users liked more color, more animation and so on. They thought that this made the “rules” of usability different in China.
I have never done usability testing in China, so this is not something I can answer. Patrick Larvie, Yahoo’s Director of International Design, however insisted that he’s “never had a user ask for something more distracting or difficult to use.” Yahoo is a good case study, since it is has local sites all around the world, but also has a strong brand identity.
If you look at the home page of Yahoo.com (Figure 3), Yahoo France (Figure 4) and Yahoo China (Figure 5), the two pages look like close variations, with the Yahoo brand clearly recognizable (though clearly reinterpreted for the local audience).
Figure 3. Yahoo.com. Let’s assume that this represents the standard template for the Yahoo sites.
Figure 4. The Yahoo France home page is very similar, using most of the same icons, section headers and overall layout.
Figure 5. On the Yahoo China site, the icons have changed, and though the layout is similar, the style of the site is distinctly different from the Yahoo.com template.
The biggest difference, however, is that the Chinese version has at least six animated elements on the home page (Figure 6): The areas shown as 1, 2 and 3 are animated ads. Number 4 is a moving ad that floats down the page and 5 is a scrolling headline marquee. The 6th animation is a blinking indicator on the mail icon. Although there are still sites with animated ads, it would be very surprising to see a main-stream site with six animated elements in the US, especially if they were paying attention to accessibility.
Figure 6. Six animated elememnt on Yahoo China home page.
I didn’t have a chance to ask if the design changes were a reflection of design preferences, or if usability testing had shown that Chinese audiences had problems with the standard Yahoo design (or, for that matter, what usability testing might have shown about the Chinese variation). Is this a case of a deep different in local design sensibility and a sign of an important difference in what makes a webs site usable? Or is this simply a variation in local tastes at a particular point in time (or a reflection of a young, advanced audience for the web)?
As President of Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA), I am happy to see UPA playing a role in promoting usability and user centered design in China. An important value of a global organization, is that we can help promote exchanges of usability research and techniques among usability and design practitioners around the world.
One thing seems clear: exploration of the boundaries between standardization and localization will provide lots of opportunities for research and discussion as more products and services are offered in many markets by global companies. I’m looking forward to following this healthy debate.
Whitney Quesenbery is a user interface designer and usability specialist with a passion for clear communication. As the principal consultant for Whitney Interactive Design (wqusability.com) she works with companies around the world to develop usable web sites and applications.As a principal at Cognetics Corporation for 12 years, she was instrumental in building a great design staff, and the design leader for many design and usability projects. Her project credits include work with companies such as Novartis, Deloitte Consulting, Lucent, McGraw-Hill, Siemens, Hewlett-Packard, and Dow Jones. While at Cognetics, she was one of the developers of LUCID (Logical User-Centered Interaction Design), she promotes the importance of a user-centered approach and usability in design. Read more about her biography.
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