A cross cultural study on knowledge representation and structure in human computer interfaces

This study investigates the effects of cultural differences on computer performance of users with different cultural backgrounds, and ways to design appropriate interfaces to accommodate cultural differences in order to enhance computer performance for Chinese users. The cognitive and cultural differences for the Chinese and the American populations documented in past studies include cognitive style (concrete versus abstract) and thinking process (thematic and functional). An experiment was conducted in Taiwan to examine the differences and to compare the results with those of the previous study in America and Mainland China. In the previous study, 40 American participants, and 40 Chinese participants in Mainland China participated. Forty Chinese participants in Taiwan participated in this study. The independent variables were knowledge representation (abstract and concrete) and interface structure (functional and thematic). Information search tasks with different manipulations of the knowledge representation and interface structure were designed. Results indicate that, for Chinese participants, in Taiwan as well as in Mainland China, advantages were associated with thematic structure in terms of error rate. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.