Cultural Interface Design Advisor Tool: Research Methodology and Practical Development Efforts

Within the cultural user interface design research and development project we address the need in culturally appropriate user interface design that is brought up by globalization. Globalization is affecting most computer-mediated communication and, in particular, user interface design for the Internet applications. To address this need, we are building a cultural "look and feel" advisor tool that is based on the research study utilizing cultural analysis of a large number of websites for a particular locale. This paper addresses the research methodology we employed in manual evaluation of specific cultural markers on a large set of country-specific websites and reports on several important aspects of transferring our research results into the practical implementation of the cultural design advisor tool.