Do Regional Variations Affect the CAPTCHA User Experience? A Comparison of CAPTCHAs in China and the United States

Systems worldwide deploy CAPTCHAs as a security mechanism to protect from unauthorized automated access. Typically, the effectiveness of CAPTCHAs is evaluated based on their resilience against bots. User perceptions of the interactive experience and effectiveness of CAPTCHAs have received less attention, especially for comparing the variations of CAPTCHAs presented in different regions across the world. As the first step toward filling this gap, we conducted semi-structured interviews with ten participants fluent in Chinese and English to investigate whether user perceptions are affected by variations in CAPTCHAs presented in China and the United States, respectively. We found notable differences in the perceived user experience and effectiveness across the different CAPTCHA types, but not across regional variations of the same type. Our findings point to a number of avenues for making the CAPTCHA user experience more universal and inclusive.