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_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.

BIB_10: Kostelnick, C. (1995). Cultural adaptation and information design: two contrasting views. IEEE transactions on professional communication, 38(4), 182-196.

In this article, Kostelnick discusses the global and the local approach to the cultural adaptation of information design. Kostelnick argues that cultural adaptation of information design is a continuum with global (universal) on one end and cultural-focused on the other. By analyzing the assumptions about perception, aesthetics, and pragmatics of information design these two approaches reveal, the author argues that the universal modernist approach to information design is losing ground to the culture-focused postmodern approach. However, he points out that the two approaches are complimentary to each other and offer pragmatic benefits and drawbacks depending on the rhetorical situations,

This article offers a theoretical ground for the issue of globalization and localization of information design, which can be applied to web design. It seems that at the time when this article was written, globalization and localization were considered contrasting each other. This dichotic view seems less prominent now, when the processes of globalization and localization may be considered two different aspects of the same process.

BIB_10: McCool, M. (2006). Information architecture: intercultural human factors. Technical Communication, 53(2), 167-183.

In this article, McCool seeks to converge information architecture and intercultural communication, specifically, the notion of cultural dimension, to achieve effective online localization.