Designing interfaces for culturally diverse users

Cultural diversity is a phenomenon of increasing interest to HCI designers given the development of global markets and multi-user applications, such as Internet and CSCW. However, current HCI methods provide little specific guidance on how to design systems that are usable by a culturally heterogeneous user group. It is argued that the internalisation-localisation process, here called culturalisation, is inappropriate for shared applications because it deals with design for a specific, culturally homogeneous user group. This paper describes a study designed to examine the nature of Internet application usability problems due to cultural diversity. It is concluded that the main issue is centred in the relation between representation and meaning. Finally, a HCI design method that considers issues of cultural diversity, called Non-specific Representations Method (NSRM), is outlined.