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Designing Software to Meet the Needs of International Users

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Designing Software to Meet the Needs of International Users DESIGNING SOFTWARE TO MEET THE NEEDS OF INTERNATIONAL USERS A Project Report Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Anthropology San José State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by David Mohr December 2013 © 2013 David Mohr ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY The Undersigned Graduate Committee Approves the Project Report Titled DESIGNING SOFTWARE TO MEET THE NEEDS OF INTERNATIONAL USERS by David Mohr APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY _____________________________________________________________________________ Dr. Chuck Darrah, Department of Anthropology Date _____________________________________________________________________________ Dr. Roberto Gonzalez, Department of Anthropology Date _____________________________________________________________________________ Professor Awad Awad, Middle Eastern Studies, Department of Humanities, Date Arabic Coordinator, Department of World Languages and Literatures Abstract Most software applications are designed and built in North America, catering to English- speaking, North American users. Ethnography is commonly used to ensure the product addresses the needs of domestic customers, but there is no analogous research with regard to foreign consumers. As a result, often times the features in these applications fail to sufficiently address the needs, expectations, and workflow of non-English-speaking users. Although software engineering manuals minutely detail the technical aspects of bringing an English application to a foreign market and further touch on common design pitfalls, there are no recognized guidelines for how to most effectively design a product to address the requirements and needs of foreign customers. This report follows a concerted attempt on the part of Adobe’s Photoshop development team to design features specific to Middle Eastern users, particularly Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking users. Software engineers develop complex applications, but their cultural lenses often prevent them from perceiving the expectations of unfamiliar customers. As part of the engineering effort, the author consciously incorporated a number of anthropological techniques not commonly applied to designing software for non-domestic consumers, particularly ethnography and validation by a distributed structured network of foreign users. There is significant potential for improvement in the design and development process and anthropology appears well suited to enhance software internationalization. Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1 Designing for Culture ............................................................................................. 1 Why Is This Important? ......................................................................................... 4 Software Globalization ..................................................................................... 9 Theoretical Process................................................................................................ 9 Organizational Structure ...................................................................................... 18 Contemporary Practice ......................................................................................... 25 Inspirations for Innovation ................................................................................... 29 Project Context and Professional Skills ......................................................... 35 The Project Proposal and My Plan to Prepare Myself ............................................... 35 Globalization Personnel Snapshots ........................................................................ 40 My Project: For Adobe and For SJSU ..................................................................... 47 Anthropological Fieldwork ............................................................................. 50 Pre-Fieldwork: Learning the Basics ........................................................................ 50 Learning How to Learn......................................................................................... 53 Ethnographic Research ........................................................................................ 54 Determining the Target Audiences ........................................................................ 57 Conventional Wisdom versus Local Conventions ........................................... 61 Choosing Cultural Expectations over Globalization Paradigm Standards .................... 61 Turning a Liability into a New Feature ................................................................... 65 Breaking Western Traditions in Support of Eastern Norms....................................... 67 A Missed Opportunity for Excellence ...................................................................... 72 Redesigning a Feature ......................................................................................... 77 Diversity of Arabic Experience ....................................................................... 80 Linguistic Uniformity ............................................................................................ 80 Eastern Conventions ............................................................................................ 82 Western Conventions ........................................................................................... 87 Hebrew Support ............................................................................................. 91 Validation and Evaluation .............................................................................. 97 Creating a Distributed Network of non-English User Feedback ................................. 97 Corporate Evaluation ......................................................................................... 102 Anthropological Evaluation ................................................................................. 104 Generalizability .................................................................................................. 110 Limitations ........................................................................................................ 112 Summary and Reflections ................................................................................... 113 Appendix One: Globalization Respondents .................................................. 118 Appendix Two: Crude Demographic Calculations......................................... 119 Appendix Three: Numbers in an Arabic Context .......................................... 122 Appendix Four: Non-English User Interfaces and Keyboard Shortcuts ........ 125 Appendix Five: Examples of Hebrew Typography ........................................ 127 Bibliography ................................................................................................. 128 Endnotes ...................................................................................................... 133 Introduction Designing for Culture We have all at some point bought a product which was designed in another country. Sometimes the clues are minor and subtle, such as engine parts labeled in German for a Volkswagon Jetta, resulting in little tangible impact to the consumer other than a bit of head scratching when looking under the hood at the engine part names. Other times the impact is more substantial, such as difficult to understand instructions for the assembly or use of toys or software gadgets. These results might range from simply a good laugh to a vexing evening trying to put together a complex device or synchronize dissimilar electronic components. In yet other cases, however, the foreign design of the product might belie its use in a domestic context; whether because Mattel’s foreign manufacturers painted children’s toys with lead- based paint or simply because the American public is not yet ready to check their sick child’s temperature using a thermometer with only a Celsius scale. In fact, there is an entire domain in international marketing that specifically looks at how to bring a domestic product to a foreign market. Designing a product from the outset for that market is another matter. The United States is certainly no foreigner to failed international products. For example, American Motors tried to market its Matador coupe in Puerto Rico; while studies found the name implied virility and excitement, the term means “killer” or “murder” in the local dialect and held problematic connotations for the country’s then-hazardous roads (Time 1970). UPS had similar difficulties in both Spain and Germany; their brown vehicles were the color of Spanish hearses while the tag line “what can brown do for you?” was too reminiscent of the Nazi’s brown uniforms for Deutschland (Khalifa 2011). Coors, too, made a faux pas when they David Mohr Page 1 of 141 Friday, December 06, 2013 Project-Report Designing for Language & Culture translated their slogan “turn it loose” into Spanish where it was understood as “suffer from diarrhea” (Khalifa 2011). And yet, all these are simply examples of that first category of international blunder: the product and its design is sound, it is merely the branding or tagline that is problematic. There are, however, many examples of products which simply do not fit unaltered into a non-domestic context. Pepsodent had such a problem when it tried to sell “tooth whitening” toothpaste in Southeast Asia. The issue is that many
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