Are You Cultured? Global User-Interface Design for the Web
              Aaron Marcus, Aaron Marcus and Associates
 
The Web enables products and services to reach people in different
cultures and countries.  What should user-interface and
information-visualization designers know to make their designs more
usable and acceptable in different cultures and countries? Analysts of
world cultures have some answers, or at least know the right questions
to ask!  Geert Hofstede studied hundreds of IBM employees in 50
countries. In Cultures and Organizations, he identifies five cultural
dimensions that impact work, home/family life, and education, and that
appear in a nation/culture's symbols, heroes, rituals, and values:

Power distance
Individualism and collectivism
Femininity and masculinity
Uncertainty avoidance (in Western countries)
Short vs long-term orientation (in Eastern countries)

Aaron Marcus, who has studied and designed for cultural diversity
since 1978, will explain Hofstede's dimensions of culture and discuss
their impact on Web design.  Then, he will take the audience on a tour
of Websites to uncover cultural biases on the Web!


Biography
=========

Aaron Marcus, President, Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc. (AM+A),
California and New York, is a visionary thinker, award-winning
designer, and writer of four books about user-interface and
information-visualization design. AM+A's clients include Fortune 500
companies and Web start-ups, e.g., Sabre, a US Federal banking
institution, and Bank of America.

Suggested References and links
------------------------------

Marcus, Aaron, "User-Interface Design for a Vehicle-Navigation
System,"chapter in Bergman, Eric, ed., Information Appliances and
Beyond: Interaction Design for Consumer Products, Morgan Kaufmann, San
Francisco, 2000.

Marcus, Aaron, "Globalization of User-Interface Design for the Web,"
chapter in Stephanidis,Constantine, User Interfaces for All, Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, in press.

Marcus, Aaron, "Graphical User-Interfaces" chapter in Helender,
Martin, et al, ed., Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction, Elsevier,
North Holland, 1998.

An interview with Aaron Marcus:
http://webword.com/interviews/marcus.html

Aaron Marcus' recent Human Factors and the Web 99 paper about
user-interface design for the Web:

 http://www.amanda.com/resources/articles_f.html