BIB_14: Thacker, C., & Dayton, D. (2008). Using Web 2.0 to conduct qualitative research: A conceptual model. Technical Communication, 55(4), 383-391.

This article focuses on research methods. Specifically, the authors propose ways to take advantage of the user-generated content of Web 2.0 to conduct qualitative content and textual analysis. The authors point out the benefits of using Web-based communication in qualitative research if the website enables them to "impose some uniformity of structure on and embed metadata in the textual information as it is collected," "facilitate timely interaction to clarify and elaborate the texts first presented by informants," "provide data exploration tools built into the primary data collection platform," and "enable teams of researchers to work closely together to collect and analyze information presented over time by many informants" (p. 384). These are criteria for researchers to use to choose appropriate websites to use. The authors then point out that Web 2.0 websites generally meet these criteria. Finally, the authors discuss some issues such as confidentiality, ethical and legal requirements and expansion and transfer of websites that encounter researchers when they use Web 2.0 websites to collect data.

This article offers a convincing argument of the benefits of using Web 2.0 in research, which can be used in the method section in my dissertation to justify the online-ethnographic method I will use to collect data. It also points out important issues I need to consider when use this method.

BIB_14: Wolff, W. I., Fitzpatrick, K., & Youssef, R. (2009). Rethinking usability for Web 2.0 and beyond. Currents in Electronic Literacy, (John Slatin Memorial Issue). Retrieved from http://currents.cwrl.utexas.edu/2009WolffFitzpatrickYoussef

In this article, the authors point out the gap in web usability studies in the Web 2.0 environment. They summarize some characteristics of Web 2.0 that differ from Web 1.0 such as user-generated content, seamless interaction between websites, and transformation in software and hardware system structure. The author surveyed Web 2.0 sites and provide case studies that reveal some issues in web usability of Web 2.0 arise from the functions and terminology. The authors conclude that more research needs to be done to further our understanding of Web 2.0 usability.

This article provides a starting point for us to conceive usability in Web 2.0 and the authors have proposed some interested issues and directions of the future web usability studies. The case studies, however, only show a fraction of the issues that need to be considered. Also, the methodology employed, which is website inspection, is very limited because it only offers us insight from the site of design, but does not say anything about the user's experience. Nevertheless, since there has not been much literature focusing on Web 2.0 usability, this is a useful article for my dissertation project.

RR_14: Web 2.0 and usability

A run of Google search for “Web 2.0” today will yield more than 340 million hits. Web 2.0 is here, despite the fact that some view it as another “marketing ploy” in the IT industry after the dot-com boom (Dilger, 2010, p. 15). “Web 2.0” was coined by Dale Daughtery and O'Reilly in 2003 to distinguish the emerging web that was “qualitatively different” from its earlier version (Wolff, Fitzpatrick & Youssef, 2009, par. 2), which signified a “turning point for the web” after the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001 (O'Reilly, 2005, par. 2). According to O'Reilly, “Web 2.0” is not a concept that has “a hard boundary,” but rather one that has “a gravitational core” (par. 7). It is visualized by O'Reily as “a set of principles and practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all of those principles, at a varying distance from that core” (ibid). These principles include, according to O'Reilly, the web as platform, harnessing collective intelligence, data management as a core competency, end of software release cycle (constant and frequent iterative development), users as co-developers, lightweight programming models, design crossover multiple devices, and rich user experience. More recently, O'Reilly and Batelle (2009) also emphasize on the high-level of automation, or the machine's ability to “learn” about its users and “sense” the world, as well as other deeper and more extensive developments of the characteristics of Web 2.0.1 Web 2.0 , as part of the complex world of technologies today, is messy and fast-changing, but 'Reilly's description of Web 2.0 perhaps is among the most systematic and comprehensive. In order to make use of this concept to inform usability, I will focus a brief discussion on two most fundamental and interdependent characteristics of Web 2.0: (1) web as a platform, (2) web as a database.

First, Web 2.0 is a “platform” (O'Reilly's, 2005), and websites existing on this web have gone beyond a collection of web pages. A Web 2.0 site does not only provide information from its owner to its audience. Rather, it provides services to its users, such as helping them manage their bookmarks (delicious.com), helping them store their documents and access from multiple locations (dropbox.com), or helping them keep up to date the blogs they are interested in (Google Reader and other readers enabled by RSS). The boundaries between websites and applications are blurred in Web 2.0, and the web has become a platform to run applications with which the users can do something. B. Dilger (2010) summarizes this characteristic succinctly: “As opposed to the 'strategic positioning' of the Web as a conduit for information delivered in discrete units metaphorically called 'pages,' Web 2.0 imagines itself as a platform much like a computer operating system on which applications are run and services delivered” (p. 17).

Second, the web has becoming a huge database. As O'Reilly (2005) has pointed out, data are of core value in Web 2.0. Different from Web 1.0, where information is usually provided by the owners of a websites, in Web 2.0, a great amount of data are generated by the users, either consciously (as in the cases of twitter, blogging, and folksonomy) or unconsciously/automatically by simply using the web (as in cases of search data and IP addresses). Through data management, Web 2.0 “mixes” the user data and creates a sort of “collective intelligence” (O'Reilly, 2005), one of the web's most valuable assets.
Consequently, Web 2.0's functionality is increasingly complex and heterogeneous, websites within the web and the web and other media and technologies are highly interconnected, and the users' participation is deeper then ever. These consequences have profound implications to web usability.

Cooper (2006) has remarked that when one crosses a thing, be it a camera, a alarm clock, or a warship, with a computer, it becomes a computer. Now, in a somewhat absurd way, Web 2.0 verifies this observation once again: when one crosses the web with a computer, the web becomes a computer. The complexity and sophistication of web applications of Web 2.0 is incomparable to Web 1.0, and the users' web experiences are richer than ever before—think of web apps such as Google Documents. These developments mean that only focusing on aspects of static “documents” such as page layout or “little” IA that only involves “organizing the content of a website” (Redish, 2010, p. 196) is not sufficient for web usability. Instead, we need to take a broader view of web usability, a “big” view that considers user's experience, or the “big” usability” in a richer context and aims at creating websites that “work for its users” (ibid).

In addition, the sophisticated and heterogeneous functionality of Web 2.0 affords heterogeneous user goals when they use the web. This is distinct from Web 1.0, where, according to Barnum (2002), users want to use the web for three reasons, “information (content), sales (commerce), and interaction (communication with other people)” (p. 365). In Web 2.0, users can manage their bookmarks (Delicious), citing sources (Zotero), making flash presentations (Prezi), managing your personal library (Library Thing), and above all, interacting with other users. Again, users use the web more and more like using their own computer, only with the added value of collective intelligence and sense of community. Therefore, web usability in Web 2.0 must take into account of the heterogeneity of use; a goal-oriented and user-centered approach in web usability is more than ever necessary.

Another consequence of the heterogeneity of website functionality that affect usability is the emergence of two large groups of websites, which has not been addressed in existing web usability literature. The first group consists of websites that function as applications. Some examples in this group are Dropbox, WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, or, let's not forget, Google. The other group consists of “traditional” websites, which increasingly incorporate Web 2.0 applications such as RSS, sharing, geotagging, and blogs. Some examples include cnn.com, whitehouse.gov, amazon.com, and unesco.org. In the existing literature on web design and web usability, websites are categorized very often according to the entities that they are associated with. For instance, D. Farkas and J. Farkas's (2002) categorize websites according to “purposes” and “genres” into news and information, E-commerce, web portals, persuasion, building and sustaining community, and personal and artistic expression. Nielsen and Loranger (2006) categorize the “genres” of websites largely according to the industries the owners of websites belong to: “from automobiles and financial services to entertainment sites and intellectually oriented medical and cultural sites” (p. 7). Neither of these categorizations can properly place websites such as Delicious, a bookmark management application, Dropbox, a personal file management online system, or wikis, collectively created (usually) informational websites.

The new categorization has usability implications. Because of the different purposes and functions these two groups of websites have, perhaps different usability guidelines need to be developed according to their characteristics. For instance, the homepage designs can be very different between these two groups. Although the recommendations in Krug (2006)'s chapter on home page design in Don't Make Me Think! are still relevant to the first group, recommendations specially for each group need to be added for the severity of the issues they deal with may differ across groups, or even individual websites. One of the recommendations for the first group will be to put a short instructional video on the homepage if the function of the site is complex (e. g., prezi,com and dropbox.com). This is because these sites usually offer a specific and often new service, and therefore, learnability and the support to learning is of high priority on the usability list. On the other hand, this might not be a huge issue for the second group of websites.

Another consequence of two characteristics of Web 2.0—the web as a platform and the web as a database—is the distinct separation of the data and the interface as well as the deep interconnection among websites. In fact, the metaphors of “platform” and “database” already tell us something about this split— a split between content and form. This split enables websites to become tools to manage the shared data. In other words, data travel across the web faster and more easily in Web 2.0 than in Web 1.0 through features such as sharing and sidebarring (Wolff et al., 2009). Consequently, websites are deeply interconnected. By “deeply,” I mean that websites are not just connected by hyperlinks as in Web 1.0, but share and manipulate the same data. The “remixibility” (O'Reilly & Battelle, 2009) of data in Web 2.0 affords the “seamless” interconnection (Wolff et al., 2009) among websites.

One of the implications of these developments in web usability is the need for standardization in some aspects of design. If “seamless” connection has become not only a goal, but a requirement for Web 2.0, standardization has also become necessary. For instance, testing for different browser has been recommended by usability specialists before Web 2.0 took off (Barnum, 2002), but in the context of Web 2.0, as more competitive browsers are available such as FireFox, Safari, Chrome, IE, and Opera, it has become an integral process in website development. Beyond that, designers of traditional websites discussed earlier need to make sure that the content on their websites can be easily used by other websites. Issues such as tagging the images on the page for easy capture, and using technologies that are compatible with most websites have become important usability issues. On the other hand, designers of the first group of websites (such as Google Reader) are compelled to design better interfaces that can work with a variety of contents.

In addition, in terms of learnability and memorability, the standardization of terminology and visual elements such as icons that emerge with the new functions of Web 2.0 sites has become a problem. Traditionally, web usability requires compliance to conventions (Krug, 2006; Nielsen & Loranger, 2006). However, the fast changing Web 2.0 sites and emerging new features make this task a difficult one. This has been noted by Wolff et al. (2009) who argue that although the varied use of the same terms is considered poor in traditional usability, it is possible that Web 2.0 users are better at adjusting to the “shifting definitions” depending on the contexts of use (par. 25). In any case, these issues pose new problems for usability researchers to work on.

Not surprisingly, standard interface design has also been observed by many (Arola, 2010; Dilger, 2008). However, not all welcome this change. Arola (2010) argues that the standard design of Web 2.0, or “template,” such as that of Facebook renders the design and its rhetorical function invisible, and also takes away the users' power to express their identities through designing their own web page. It is important to acknowledge that standard designs of Web 2.0 sites do tend to efface individual user's “faces” in a way. However, Dilger (2008) is right to point out that function is the core of Web 2.0 sites. The simplicity and standardization of design relieves the users from the burden of interface designing and learning new interface constantly so that they can focus on what they want to do. In fact, making the interface transparent, a principle of good design, is in a way making the interface “invisible” to the users (which is the opposite of the critical view to making the interface “visible” (e. g. Arola, 2010; Selfe & Selfe, 2009). It is important that users should be invited to critique the design, but at the same time, to those who are interested in usability and user-centered design, this trend does not pose “threat” but new web usability challenges to meet.

Last but not least, Web 2.0 websites thrive on users' participation. Many have pointed out the characteristic of user generated content (Dayton, 2008; Wolff et al., 2009). However, they have not stressed enough the importance of user participation to Web 2.0. In Web 1.0 era, websites can function without the users' participation—at most they are just unpopular—but in Web 2.0 era, some websites, mostly those in the first group as discussed earlier, cannot even function without user participation—just imagine a Facebook without faces. As O'Reilly's (2005) has pointed out, users add value to the websites in Web 2.0. They go to many websites to use the information provided by other users or users as a collective whole. Therefore, designers of Web 2.0 must design websites elements that afford users providing, obtaining, and sharing information. For instance, we need to design elements of the websites to make it easy for users to tag an image or an article, to share the pages on other sites, or to leave comments. We need to study where to position links, buttons or icons for these purposes, and so on, just as we did with the search engine and other elements in Web 1.0 environment.

In addition, usability researchers need to understand how much control and what kind of control the users should have to strike a balance between efficiency and flexibility. Users are co-developers in Web 2.0 (O'Reilly, 2005), and designs must afford users' innovations and creative ways to use the web—what Sun (2004, 2006) calls the “user localization.” An example of user localization is MySpace users' taking advantage of a glitch in the design of the Web site to use html codes to customize their profiles, post pictures or videos in their comments or blogs, and so on. Another example is twitter users' use of “@” or “#” (“hashtags”) to indicate reply to other users' tweets or tag a topic (What are hashtags? 2010; What is an @rrply?, 2010). Good design in Web 2.0 environment should afford these unintended uses created by the users to meet their specific goals.

To summarize, all the discussions above share a common theme: the user must be positioned at the center of Web 2.0 design. The user is an agent who not only uses the applications, interacts with the machine and other users, but also generates data that add value to the web, who constantly innovates the web use, and who enjoys both a material and a virtual existence. Therefore, the tools of user-centered design and usability research are invaluable in understanding and designing usable websites and applications.

BIB_14: Dilger, B. (2010). Beyond star flashes: The elements of Web 2.0 style. Computers and Composition, 27(1), 15-26.

In this article, Dilger complicates "style" in the context of Web 2.0, and argues for a understanding of style "defined by its conceptual stand on truth, presentation, writer, reader, thought, language, and their relationships" (p. 16, quoted from Thomas and Turner's Clear and Simple as the Truth). He argues that the core value of style in Web 2.0 is function, functions are layered and never hidden, function provides identity. He further argues that the emphasis on functionality of Web 2.0 gives rise to different human and non-human writers and readers of Web 2.0, and thus is "the real engine of its much-ballyhooed participatory nature" (p. 20). Because for Web 2.0 style, "interoperation, not representation, must be transparent," Dilger argues, code has become a window that connects applications across the web required by the convention of sharing on Web 2.0, and standardization has become necessary. Moreover, Web 2.0 style welcomes a variety of conceptualization of "networking" which provokes fundamental changes on the web. As a result, users have become more important than ever, and because of the new "we" the emerged with Web 2.0, Dilger argues that a new design, "users-centered" rather than "user-centered," must be cultivated. The Web 2.0 style also recognizes the weak ties that link the applications and users, namely, low-risk, low-effect networking. Finally, Dilger revisits the problem of the style vs. substance question of Web 2.0, and call for critical apparatus to understand the new changes on the web, including in educational contexts.

This is a great article that puts some important issues on the table for us to understand the new changes on the web called by some, not unproblematically, Web 2.0. Many of Dilger's observations are useful for me to formulate a model to examine Web 2.0 sites/applications, especially the arguments for function and users.

BIB_14: O'Reilly, T., & Battelle, J. (2009). Web squared: Web 2.0 five years on. Paper presented at the Web 2.0 Summit. Retrieved from http://www.web2summit.com/web2009/public/schedule/detail/10194

BIB_14: O'Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. O'Reilly Radar. Retrieved from http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

BIB_14: Arola, K. L. (2010). The design of Web 2.0: The rise of the template, the fall of design. Computers and Composition, 27(1), 4-14.

BIB_13: Cyr, D., & Trevor-Smith, H. (2004). Localization of Web design: An empirical comparison of German, Japanese, and United States Web site characteristics. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55(13), 1199-1208.

In this article, the authors report the results of a comparative study between elements on 30 municipal websites in each of the three countries examined: Germany, Japan and the U.S. The results show that these elements vary across websites created by different cultures: language and scripts, different layout and spatial features, the use of cultural specific symbols, content and structural characteristics, preferences for navigation and search capabilities, numbers of external links and the functionality of links, and the use of colors. Little support was found for diverse multimedia use.

RR_13:

Over the past two decades, the World Wide Web has been increasingly used by a rapidly growing number of users across the world and has become an indispensable medium in public, organizational, and personal communication. By 2010, the world Internet user population has exceeded 1,966 million, with a growth of 444.8% since 2000, and the Internet penetration had reached 28.7% worldwide (World Internet users and population stats, 2010). The users of the Web are increasingly diverse in terms of regions and languages, as users populations in developing countries have dramatically increased in the past decade. As of 2010, although North America, Oceania/Australia, and Europe have the highest Internet penetration rates (respectively 77.4%, 61.3%, and 58.4%), Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America/Caribbean have the greatest growths in user population since 2000 (respectively 2,357.3%, 1825.3%, and 1032.8%) (ibid). These fastest growing regions are followed by Asia (621.8%), which has the largest Internet user population of 825.1 million that accounts for 42% of the worldwide Internet user population (ibid). In terms of languages used on the Web, although English speaking users constitute the largest language group (27.3%), the number of Chinese speaking users has grown 1,277.4% since 2000 and constitutes the second largest user group (22.6%) only by a small margin (Top ten languages used in the Web). Arabic and Russian speaking user groups have also grown dramatically since 2000 (respectively 2,501.2% and 1,825.8%) (ibid).

These statistics of Web use in the past decade indicate that users of a diverse cultural backgrounds, and in particular, non-English speaking users have an increasingly significant impact on the nature of Web based communication across the globe. To understand the Web and Web based communication and, in application, to design usable web technology and artifacts for a “universe of users” (Bowie, 2009), technical and professional communicators must take it seriously the imperative of the consideration of culture and its impact of how users use technologies and information artifacts in their specific contexts.

References:

Top ten languages used in the Web. (2010, November 7, 2010). Miniwatts Marketing Group. Retrieved November 22, 2010, from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm

World Internet users and population stats . (2010, November 7, 2010). Miniwatts Marketing Group. Retrieved November 22, 2010, from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

BIB_13: Shen, S.-T., Woolley, M., & Prior, S. (2006). Towards culture-centred design. Interacting with Computers, 18, 820-852.

The authors address issues of cultural factors in user interface design in HCI, and argue for a "cultured" and "design-based" system called "Culture-Centred Design" [sic.] (CCD) in computer interface design. The authors discuss globalization and its effects on interface design approaches such as internationalization and localization. They focus on one design element, metaphor, which is used to test the applicability of CCD to the design process. They redesigned the computer interface that is based on the "desktop" metaphor, and adapted a "garden" metaphor to the test design, which was hypothetically more usable and appealing to Chinese users. They then tested the design with international (Asian) and U.S. users through heuristic evaluation and user evaluation. Based on the results, the authors conclude that reiterative process of heuristic evaluation is appropriate for CCD process, and the use of culturally customized metaphor receive positive response from the users. 

The discussion of the importance of culturally sensitive design approach and some basic concepts expounded in the article provide situate the study nicely in a big picture of culture and design in HCI. However, the study itself is weak due to its sloppy research methods and researchers' assumptions of culture and users. For instance, the design of a test interface is a good way to investigate the process of design, but the design is not representative and thus the user evaluation should not be generalized. The authors carefully avoided generalizing the results explicitly, but a certain degree of generalization is necessary if the study is argued to be of any importance. In addition, the metaphor of garden is problematic without addressing the context of the interface use. Using the interface in a "modern" ("Western") office, which itself is an effect of globalization, will significantly affect the usability of the designs using "office" and "garden" metaphor. Globalization is a pervasive process, and investigating interface design without contextualizing the use in which globalization is an important factor is inadequate and can result in erroneous conclusions. 

BIB_13: Badre, A. N. (2000). The effects of cross cultural interface design orentation on World Wide Web user performance (Technical report). Atlanta, GA: Georgia Institute of Technology.

Badre takes a perspective of cultural usability in this article, and examines the patterns of cultural markers on websites categorized by countries/languages and genres. The cultural markers are identified from foraging study of websites around the world, including HTML specific, Icons/Metaphors, Colors, Specific Colors, Grouping, Flag, Language, Geography, Orientation, Sound, Font, Links, Regional, Shapes, and Architecture. Badre also identifies nine genres: Government, News & Media, Business, Education, Travel, Society & Culture, Health, Science, Art & Humanities. Websites of different countries of origin and genres then are examined for their patterns of cultural markers. Badre concludes that (1) patterns of cultural markers emerged "reflect cultural practices and preferences in websites, influence by country of origin and genre," and (2) "cultural markers can be cultural and/or genre specific and can be used to implement cultural usability guidelines" (p. 8).

Badre's notion of cultural usability stays within interface design and information architecture, especially the visual design of websites. The genres he identified are outdated for today's websites increasingly integrate their functions and increasingly interactive. The cultural markers, although useful in interface visual design, stay on the surface of web design. This article serves as a good example of many other studies that examines cultural factors in web design.

BIB_12: Sapienza, F. (2008). A shared meanings approach to intercultural usability: results of a user study between international and American university students. IEEE transactions on professional communication, 51(2), 215-227.

In this study, Sapienza reports the results of a user study between international students (non-native English speakers) and American students using an U.S. university website. He concludes that even among culturally heterogeneous users, there can be a space for shared meanings mediated with one shared language (in this case, English), which makes it possible for us to speak of a universal web usability. He calls this approach a "shared-meanings" or "shared-context" approach. 

Sapienza's study shows that international students can use English-based website effectively and efficiently. However, while he talks about a space for "shared-meanings," this space is mediated by a shared language, that is, in fact, a dominant language. If the international students do not have a choice, they will have to adapt to the English environment. Sapienza argues that there is no localization necessary, but this is at the cost of the international users. 

BIB_12: Zahedi, F. M., & Song, J. (2001). A conceptual framwork for international web design. IEEE transactions on professional communication, 44(3), 83-103.

In this article, Zahedi and Song develop a conceptual model for web design that address the impact of cultural and individual characteristics on users' perception and satisfaction of web documents. There are six cultural characteristics, which include power distance, individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, anxiety avoidance, long-term versus short-term orientation, and polychronic versus monochronic time orientation. There are six individual factors that include demographics (age and gender), professional knowledge, information technology knowledge, flexibility, information processing abilities, and cultural knowledge. The authors define document effectiveness as perceived usability, reliability, clarity, and comprehension.

The cultural characteristics this model uses are widely used in studies examining cultural factors on web design. However, the propositions the authors have concluded on the basis of the cultural and individual characteristics are without any empirical or other support. It seems that the authors just assume that groups that have these characteristics will prefer certain characteristics of the documents they use. To me there is really no new well supported ideas in this article but reporting information from other sources and speculations on the authors part.

BIB_12: Vatrapu, R., & Pérez-Quiñones, M. (2006). Culture and usability evaluation: The effects of culture in structured interviews. Journal of Usability Studies, 1(4), 156-170.

This is another article examining the effects of participants' cultural backgrounds on methods of usability studies. The authors reports a controlled study comparing the results of interviews with two groups of participants, one Indian and the other Anglo-American conducted by two groups of interviewers from the corresponding cultural groups of the participants. The results led the authors to conclude that culture (both on the participants' side and the interviewers' side) is a significant variable in international user testing and usability studies.

This article echoes the work of Hall et al. (2004). These are useful finding for researchers and practitioners to design their research and minimize bias that results from the lack of consideration of the participants' and the researchers' cultural background or identification, as well as the nature of the research questions.

BIB_12: Hall, M., De Jong, M., & Steehouder, M. (2004). Cultural differences and usability evaluation: individualistic and collectivistic participants compared. Technical Communication, 51(4), 489-503.

In this article, Hall et al. concern examine the effects of the participants' cultural background characteristics on usability evaluation. The authors draw on Hofstede's cultural dimensions--masculinity vs. femininity, strong vs. weak uncertainty avoidance, high vs. low power distance, individualism vs. collectivism, and long-term vs. short-term orientation--to classify the participants' cultural characteristics. They then conducted a study comparing two groups of participants' evaluation of a website using think aloud protocol. The results led the authors to conclude that cultural background of the participants is a relevant variable that may affect the feedback from the participants collected using various usability methods. It is also a factor that affect the discrepancy between behavior and self-reported results.

This is an interesting article. Actually, it support my criticism of the article by Donker-Kuijer et al. that examines the effect of color temperature on web usability. This article should be read with Vatrapu & Pérez-Quiñones's (2006) article that also looks at the cultural factors that affect the rigor of usability studies and choice of methods.

BIB_12: Amant, K. S. (2005). A prototype theory approach to international website analysis and design. Technical Communication Quarterly, 14(1), 73-91.

In this article, Amant examines the application of prototype theory in website design targeting different cultural groups. Specifically, his discussion focuses on how prototype theory can shed light on the use of metaphors in web design that are appropriate for target users of specific cultural backgrounds. Prototype theory, a construct from cognitive psychology, explains how human beings use prototypes to classify objects. Amant argues that this theory offers a method for us to understand how users from different cultural groups interpret icons based on their culturally constructed prototypes so as to design appropriate visual presentations of information on websites.

This article is an example of the studies that have been done in technical communication that examine the cultural factors and web design and web usability. Like many other studies, this study focuses on the visual presentation of web information. Prototype theory, while useful in determining what metaphors to use when designing websites, it does not offer a method to understand deeper needs of users from different cultural groups.

RR_12:

BIB_11: Singh, N., & Pereira, A. (2005). The culturally customized Web site. Burlington, MA: Elsevier.

Applying Hofstede's and Hall's cultural models, Singh and Pereira examine how difference cultural dimensions or values, specifically, individualism-collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, masculinity-femininity, and high-low context, affect web design and how this understanding can be applied to website localization. Singh and Pereira report the results of a study comparing the websites and users' perceptions from five countries, Italy, India, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland. The results show that users respond positively to the highly culturally adapted websites. The authors then provide guidelines for web localization according to the five cultural dimensions or values.

The book lays out the rationale for website localization, and is a pretty comprehensive application of Hofstede's and Hall's cultural models to web localization. It provides a basic framework for web localization, from which new consideration needs to be added to adapt to the new developments in Web 2.0. The authors' discussion of globalization, internationalization and localization in chapter 2 provides a theoretical ground for work in web localization.

RR_11:

BIB_11: Cardon, P. W. (2008). A critique of Hall's contexting model. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 22(4), 399-428.

This is a meta-analysis of 224 articles published in business and technical communication journals between 1990 and 2006 on Hall's theory of contexting, a model that has been used widely in international/cross-cultural technical and business communication. Cardon concludes that there is no empirical support for the theory, and therefore, the theory is unsubstantiated and requires further research to support it. Cardon offers five recommendations for the future research in this area:

1. Develop measures or instruments for contexting
2. Include more countries and cultures in studies of contexting model
3. Develop categories or dimensions of contexting
4. Focus on the circumstances in which various cultures use both HC and LC messages
5. Focus on areas of contexting other than directness

This is a good article that critiques the widely used contexting model. The high-context and low-context models remains problematic epistemologically and methodologically. This article mostly addresses the lack of methodological rigor in the studies of this model. The recommendations are useful, but Cardon has neither pointed out a way for technical communicators to use the model, nor argued that we should stop using contexting model (i.e., completely discredited it).