Stanford University | neema@moraveji.org
Dalian Maritime University | liuzhj@dlmu.edu.cn
March + April 2008
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without the fee, provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage, and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy other wise, to republish, to post on services or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. © ACM 1072-5220/08/0300 $5.00
How many mobile phones does the average South Korean have? What is the rage among Chinese websites designed for young people? Do we need to design different products for different cultures, or simply localize our existing line?
Everyone in the HCI community faces the barrage of information heralding the implications of globalization on designers and researchers. At the same time, Chinese designers attempt to assimilate Western thinking into the design of local products. uiGarden (http://www.uigarden. net), a Chinese-operated webzine, was developed to address these two needs, as proclaimed in their mission statement:
s "RING THE NEWEST 7ESTERN RESEARCH AND DEVEL- opment to China.
s "ECOME A BRIDGE ;FOR= THE 7ESTERN ;(#)= COM- munity [to understand] Eastern culture.
Founder Christina Li says that her goal, beyond the mission statement, “is very straightforward: When people think about usability and user-experience design in China, I want the first word that comes into their mind to be uiGarden.” Li started the site in 2004. She says for the month of November 2007, “we had more than 31,000 page views in total, and on average more than 500 unique visitors every day. Visitors came from 105 countries around the world. About 56 percent of them came from China, 18 percent from the U.S. and the UK, and 26 percent from the rest of the world. Most of them are UX practitioners or students.” uiGarden clearly has an audience in China.
Each month uiGarden publishes Chinese and English versions of a few well-chosen articles, usually written by Westerners or Chinese-Americans. These are either original articles for uiGarden or are reprinted from appropriate journals or conference proceedings such as CHI or
DUX. These are not just cursory blog posts commenting on the latest trend or cultural difference in using technology; they are thoughtful pieces on myriad topics of interest to the audience. The topics and articles selected reflect the new-est development in usability and UI design and provide new thoughts and concepts. The articles help Chinese readers to broaden their view and to be aware of trends in this field. The content is easy to read, with many examples from daily life, which help readers gain a better understanding of the concepts.
Examples of recent uiGarden articles include:
s h4HE 'AP "ETWEEN 3ECONDS AND
Seconds”—a comparison of the design of a
Chinese-brand air-conditioning unit to its
Japanese cousin shows the evolving nature of
usability in Chinese products.
s h-EANING OF #HOPSTICKS IN !SIAv&(!!#x88!!);A DISCUSSION
on the intricacies of chopsticks in Asia, and how
these relate to cultural values and norms.
s h$ESIGN FOR %MOTION 2EADY FOR THE .EXT
Decade?”—an article on emotive product design
showing how Chinese porcelain has evolved cer-
tain emotive characteristics.
s h'LOBAL -ARKET 'LOBAL %MOTION 'LOBAL Design?”—a discussion of attempts to identify a “global experience” and designing “global” products suggesting that, until context is sufficiently shared (through media, movies, virtual worlds, and so on), the “global experience” will remain elusive.
For Chinese readers, uiGarden provides an opportunity to read articles in their native language, gleaning greater and subtler meaning than if read in English. For Western readers, uiGarden is useful in that it acts as a highly targeted publication whose readers might be pleasantly
References:
Archives