Cultures, literacy, and the web

A cultural evaluation of Usability Engineering in the Namibian context reveals a number of good practices as well as locally inadequate methods. One major challenge in cross-cultural Usability Engineering is the implicit western understanding of usability and its associated assumptions which often lead to a locally inappropriate usability evaluation. Conceptualisation sessions held with different Namibian user groups confirmed a deviating perception of the term "usability". None of the groups mentioned terms "commonly" associated with "usability" such as speed, learnable, or memorable. Thus standard usability testing comprises a dual bias through the western definition of usability and the related choice of methods which aim to test an already biased objective. We therefore suggest an ethno-centric software development framework which incorporates a contextual redefinition of usability.

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Culture and Computers: A Review of the Concept of Culture and Implications for Intercultural Collaborative Online Learning

Vatrapu

Suthers

Intercultural Collaboration

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Cultures, literacy, and the web

Abstract: Cecil Rhodes wanted to build a railroad from Cape Town to Cairo in order to subjugate the continent. Now we want to build an information super-highway from Cape to Cairo which will liberate the continent [11]. 64 special section south africa

Cited by 20 publications

References 7 publications

Common Knowledge Based Access to Disparate Semantic Spaces: The Ontology Switching Approach

Common Knowledge Based Access to Disparate Semantic Spaces: The Ontology Switching Approach

Assumptions Considered Harmful

Culture and Computers: A Review of the Concept of Culture and Implications for Intercultural Collaborative Online Learning

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