Cultural differences in the use of mobile devices

Transcription

1 Cultural differences in the use of mobile devices Leiber, Paul and Spanner-Ulmer, Birgit Chemnitz University of Technology This paper aims at giving answers to the question of how and why mobile device usage patterns differ in China, Germany and the United States of America. Triangulation was chosen as the appropriate research method: qualitative date from focus groups is complemented with quantitative date from an online questionnaire. Firstly, a short overview over past research results on psychological differences between people from different cultures is given. Then, qualitative data gathered in focus groups is presented. Quantitative data on mobile device usage patterns from an online questionnaire in the three countries is presented. About 300 questionnaires were completed and evaluated. Many statistically significant effects from the quasi-variable culture could be found. For example, although almost all participants from all three cultures use mobile devices for communication purposes, the usage frequencies of other functions differ strongly. Cultures differ also in the acceptance of autonomous interventions by a technical system. Probable explanations for these differences and their consequences on HMI design are discussed. INTRODUCTION Mobile devices like mobile phones, smartphones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) or personal navigation devices (PNAs) have an enormous impact on economy and society. Almost everywhere in the world, mobile devices play an important role in peoples everyday private and working lives. The reasons for the usage of these devices are as diverse as the cultural backgrounds of their users: The European manages contacts, the African pays bills, the North American makes phone calls, and the Chinese plays games. Many research projects have shown that users prefer human-machine-interfaces (HMIs) that are localized (adapted to the users cultural background) over HMIs that do not distinguish between different cultures, and that they perform better with such localized systems. The adaptation of technological products to specific cultures can thus impact both productivity and customer satisfaction, and eventually also the product s economic success. To achieve such localized HMIs, it is crucial to collect information on the usage patterns and the preferences of mobile device users in different target cultures. Cultural Differences BACKGROUND Many scientific studies indicate that there are profound differences in the ways that people from western and eastern cultures interact with their environment and in the ways they think. Many of these differences are relevant for designing HMIs for different cultures. The most obvious difference is language. Similarly obvious are differences in graphics and icons (Choong & Salvendy, 1998; Pappachan & Ziefle, 2007), text and data formatting (e.g. text direction, dates and times) (Aykin, Honold Quaet-Faslem & Milewski, 2006), and the meaning of colours (Chan & Courtney, 2001; Noiwan & Norcio, 2006). Less observable are differences in perception and cognition. One of the most prominent works in this domain is (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005). It describes cultural differences with differences in five cultural variables, namely power distance, collectivism/individualism, femininity/masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long term/short term orientation. A collection of these variables for China, Germany and the USA can be found in Table 1. These variables, together with other variables (Gould, 2005), build the foundation for a variety of usability studies and frameworks, for example (Marcus, 2005) or (Röse, 2002). Of a more fundamental order are the results of various studies presented in Nisbett (2004): He found strong differences between Easterners and Westerners in object recognition, in the role of situational constraints, in object categorization, and in the application of logic reasoning. A new approach took (Katagiri, Nass, & Takeuchi, 2001) who tested social-psychological hypotheses in an international context. They found that people from the United States, the country with the highest individualism score, treated computers of the same brand differently. On the other hand, Japanese users treated all the computers from the same company similarly. This seems to correlate with the medium individualism score of Japanese people. Table 1: Hofstede's culture variables for China, Germany and the United States (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005) China Germany USA Power Distance Individualism Masculinity Uncertainty Avoidance Long Term Orientation

2 The Diffusion of Mobile Devices The growth rate of mobile phone subscribers is nearly the same for China, Germany, and the United States, as can be seen in Figure 1. However, the relative numbers differ significantly. In Germany, the number of mobile phones has surpassed the number of inhabitants in The percentage of mobile phone subscribers for the United States has reached about 80% in 2006, while in China only every third person had a mobile phone. From these figures, it can be expected that in Germany the market will be growing at a slower pace, while the market in China is still at the beginning of its expansion. Focus Groups A semi-structured discussion storyboard was designed for the focus groups. Four to six invited participants discussed areas of interest in sessions of two to three hours in May till July The participants were divided by age into two groups ( 36 years and 49 years). In each age group, three different subgroups were defined compromising only male participants, only female participants, and one mixed group. The participants received a remuneration of 6.- per hour. The focus groups were recorded on videotapes; photographs were taken of several special results. The data was evaluated afterwards. Evaluation was conducted regarding age, gender and culture. The results show that there are significant differences as well in the desired HMI as in the distribution of the most important and most frequent utilized functions. The total number of focus groups held was 10. The group composition can be seen in Table 2. Further information on the focus groups can be found in Leiber et al. (2008). Table 2: Gender and age distribution of the German focus group participants Gender Age Fem. Male Mean SD Age Group 1 (20-35 years) Age Group 2 (>47 years) Figure 1: Mobile phone subscribers per Country (International Telecommunication Union, 2008) Based on the premise that users from different cultures prefer different user interfaces, it is obvious that if the producers of mobile phones want to have a share of the emerging markets like China, they need to adapt their products to the respective local requirements. The same applies for the producers of devices that can connect to mobile phones, for example car equipment manufacturers. Special Challenges in HMI Design for Nomadic Devices While ergonomists still tackle with the task of designing HMIs for classical information technology, mobile devices like the ubiquitous mobile phone pose even greater constraints on HMI design. Among those constraints are the small screen, the input devices, the abundance of devices and (non-)standards, the diverse contexts in which mobile devices are used, and the ever growing number of functions that modern mobile devices can perform (Longoria, 2001). Geven, Sefelin and Tscheligi (2006) have shown that contrary to desktop use, mobile device users prefer deeper menus.. METHODOLOGY In order to gather information on differences in the use of functions in China, Germany, and USA, two complementary approaches were chosen. Firstly, focus groups were chosen as a qualitative method to find out why people use certain functions. Secondly, an online questionnaire was designed and distributed to participants in the three different countries. Hypotheses Based on the literature review and the preliminary results of the focus groups, several hypotheses were formulated in order to be tested by means of an online questionnaire. Hypothesis 1: The culture variable uncertainty avoidance and the preliminary results from the focus groups pointed towards cultural differences in the number and type of functions of mobile devices that are used in different cultures. Hence, hypothesis 1 (H1) reads: Chinese use more functions of mobile devices than users from the USA who use more functions than users from Germany. Hypothesis 2: The cultural variables uncertainty avoidance and power distance indicate that people from China are more willing to accept autonomous interventions by a technical system that assumedly incorporates expert knowledge. An example for such a system is the so-called workload manager in automobiles. The workload manager adapts the information flow towards the driver according to an estimated workload on the driver in order to prevent information overload in critical situations. Hypothesis 2 (H2) therefore reads: Chinese users are more willing to accept autonomous interventions by a workload manager than people from Germany and the USA. Online Questionnaire The online questionnaire comprising 43 questions was designed using LimeSurvey (2008). The questions were

3 grouped into three parts concerning demographic data, questions on the use of mobile devices, and questions on cultural differences. The question corresponding to H1 was put as follows: Which of the following functions/applications would you like to have in your next cell phone (again)? The question concerning H2 was: Imagine there was a system in your car that decides whether you can answer a call or not. It is integrated in the car and there is no need to switch it on or off. In case the traffic situation does not allow answering the call right now, the system does not forward the call to your phone. How well would you feel with this technology? A pretest with 8 German participants was conducted under observation. The pretest participants took around 20 minutes to fill in the questionnaire. No major difficulties showed up. The questionnaire was translated by native speakers into simplified Chinese and American English. The translations were then back-translated and corrected for errors. The actual survey took place between July and October The subjects were recruited through personal contacts. Each participant was encouraged to forward the survey to other participants. Altogether, there were 309 responses to the online questionnaire, 78 of which originated in China, 166 in Germany and 65 in the United States of America. Age and gender distribution can be seen in Table 3. Table 3: Gender and age distribution of the online questionnaire respondents Gender Age Country Fem. Male Mean SD China Germany USA RESULTS A comprehensive discussion of all results of the focus groups and the online questionnaire would go beyond the scope of this paper. Therefore, results for two questions included in the online questionnaire will be given. Then, correspondent findings gained in the focus groups will be presented. These results will then be analyzed for their effects on HMI design. It is remarkable that only these four functions and Music were selected by more than 50% of the German participants as important to them. Although the ranking of the adjusted most important functions is not identical, similar patterns can be found in the results of the focus groups with German participants (see Table 4). Table 4: Adjusted comparison of the German participants ranking of the most important functions Rank Focus Groups Online Questionnaire 1 Phone Calls Phone Calls 2 Navigation Contact Manager 3 Messaging Messaging 4 Internet Scheduler 5 Music Playback Music Playback 6 Contact Manager Translator 7 Scheduler Navigation 8 Radio Radio (Stream/Broadc.) 9 Movie Playback Internet 10 Translator Games 11 Payment Movie Playback 12 Games Payment Intervention Acceptance The aggregated results for the question on intervention acceptance are shown in Figure 1. It can be seen that American and especially Chinese participants were much more likely to accept the interference of the described workload manager than German participants. The differences are highly significant (χ 2 =0.00, p >.05). However, over 40% of the participants in China and the United States would reject such a system. Similar observations could be made in the focus groups with German participants who seemed rather skeptically concerning technology in general. For example, they agreed (independent of age group) to the statement Our society relies too much on computers. Important Functions The results for the question in the online questionnaire regarding important functions are reproduced in Figure 2. It can be seen that the values of the Chinese participants are much more evenly distributed over the functions (M=72.50, SD=15.09) than those of the German participants (M=52.57, SD=31.70), the American participants lie in between (M=59.96, SD=26.29). For the functions Address Book, Test Messaging, Phone Calls, and Scheduler, no significant differences between the cultures could be found (χ , p < 0.05), while all other functions showed significant differences between the cultures (χ , p < 0.05). Figure 1: Online questionnaire results for Intervention Acceptance

4 DISCUSSION It is proposed that both hypotheses should be accepted based on the results from the online questionnaire with 309 participants from three cultures. Chinese use significantly more functions than US-Americans who use more functions than Germans, as H1 stated. This can be explained with each culture s value in the variable uncertainty avoidance. This variable can be interpreted as openness towards changes. New technology often comes along with changes in the way of living. It seems that German users, who have a higher score in uncertainty avoidance than Chinese and US-Americans, are very cautious in applying new technology. When asked about a hypothetical workload manager for automobiles, the Chinese and US-American users were significantly more prone to accept autonomous interventions by such a system than were the German users, as H2 stated. This can partly be explained by the same caution the German culture shows towards changes. On the other hand, the variable power distance, which measures the importance of hierarchy and the likeliness to question decisions made by authorities, may explain why Chinese users would feel comfortable with a workload manager. However, power distance cannot explain the differences between German and US-American users, as their values in this variable do not differ strongly. Three conclusions can be drawn from these results: New technology should be tested first in China and in the USA, as users there are more open to new developments. The trade-off between menu depth and breadth should consider the number of functions used in a culture. If very few functions are important, as is the case in Germany, menus can be deeper. If a wide variety of functions is important, like in China and the USA, the menus should be flatter. Assistance systems like the workload manager which intervene autonomously are likely to be rejected in Germany, while they may be considered useful by large parts of the populations in China and the USA. REFERENCES Aykin, N., Honold Quaet-Faslem, P., & Milewski, A. E. (2006). Cultural Ergonomics. In G. Salvendy, Human Factors and Ergonomics (pp ). Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons. Chan, A. H., & Courtney, A. J. (2001). Color associations for Hong Kong Chinese. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 28, pp Choong, Y.-Y., & Salvendy, G. (1998). Design of icons for use by Chinese in mainland China. Interacting with Computers, 9, pp Geven, A., Sefelin, R. and Tscheligi, M. (2006), Deapth and Breadth away from the Desktop the Optimal Information Hierarchy for Mobile Use. In: Mobile HCI 06, Helsinki, Finland, 2006, p Gould, E. W. (2005). Synthesizing the Literature on Cultural Values. In N. Aykin, Usability and Internationalization of Information Technology (pp ). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hofstede, G., & Hofstede, G. J. (2005). Cultures and organizations - Software of the Mind. New York: McGraw-Hill. International Telecommunication Union. (2008). World Telecommunication/ICT Inidicators. Retrieved 2009/03/13, from Katagiri, Y., Nass, C., & Takeuchi, Y. (2001). Cross-Cultural Studies of the Computers are Social Actors Paradigm: The Case of Reciprocity. In M. J. Smith, G. Salvendy, D. Harris, & R. J. Koubek, Usability Evaluation and Interface Design: Cognitive Engineering, Intelligent Agents and Virtual Reality (pp ). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Leiber, P.; Spanner-Ulmer, B.; Jentsch, M.; Hamberger, W. (2008). Cultural differences in the use of nomadic devices. In: Karwowski, W. and Salvendy, G. (Hrsg.). AHFE International Conference Louisville, KY, USA: USA Publishing. LimeSurvey (2009). Retrieved 2009/03/31 from Longoria, R. (2001). Designing Mobile Applications: Challenges, Methodologies, and Lessons Learned. In M. J. Smith, G. Salvendy, D. Harris, & R. J. Koubek, Usability Evaluation and Interface Design: Cognitive Engineering, Intelligent Agents and Virtual Reality (pp ). Mahwah, N.J. Marcus, A. (2005). User Interface Design and Culture. In N. Aykin, Usability and Internationalization of Information Technology (pp ). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Nisbett, R. E. (2004). The Geography of Thought - How Asians and Westerners Think Differently... and Why. New York, N.Y.: Free Press. Noiwan, J., & Norcio, A. F. (2006). Cultural differences on attention and perceived usability: Investigating color combinations of animated graphics. Int. J. Human-Computer Studies, 64, pp Pappachan, P., & Ziefle, M. (2007). Cross-Cultural Comprehensibility of Icons in Mobile-Computer-Interaction. Work with Computing Systems Computing Systems for Human Benefits. Stockholm. Röse, K. (2002). Methodik zur Gestaltung interkultureller Mensch-Maschine-Systeme in der Produktionstechnik. Kaiserslautern: Verlag Universität Kaiserslautern.

5 Figure 2: Online questionnaire results for Important Functions