Ergonomics
ISSN: 0014-0139 (Print) 1366-5847 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/terg20
Internationalization and localization: evaluating and testing a Website for Asian users PEI-LUEN PATRICK RAU & SHEAU-FARN MAX LIANG To cite this article: PEI-LUEN PATRICK RAU & SHEAU-FARN MAX LIANG (2003) Internationalization and localization: evaluating and testing a Website for Asian users, Ergonomics, 46:1-3, 255-270, DOI: 10.1080/00140130303527 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00140130303527
Published online: 09 Nov 2010.
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Date: 18 February 2016, At: 00:37
ERGONOMICS, 2003,
VOL.
46,
NO.
1 ± 3, 255 ± 270
Internationalization and localization: evaluating and testing a Website for Asian users PEI-LUEN PATRICK RAU{* and SHEAU-FARN MAX LIANG{ {Department of Management Information Systems, Chung Yuan Christian University, Chunli 320, Taiwan
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{Honeywell Laboratories, Honeywell Building, 17 Changi Business Park Central 1, Singapore 486073 Keywords: Website Usability; Internationalization and Localization; UserCentred Design The objective of this study was to combine internationalization and localization of Websites and improvement of Website usability with user-centred design methods. This study designed for internationalization and localization of Websites for Asian users, and implemented usability engineering into every phase of Website usability testing, based on the internationalization and localization perspectives of the honeywell.com/your home Website. The ®rst step was to develop the usage scenarios. Three Asian usability specialists carried out one heuristic evaluation session for the current honeywell.com/your home Website. The usability problems were analysed and possible solutions to these problems were discussed. In the next phase, cluster analysis was utilized to test current information architecture. The results provided options for future information architecture development for this Website. Finally, a performance measurement test was conducted to investigate the performance for Asian users. Based on the results, suggestions for improving the Website usability from the localization perspective were provided. The results demonstrate the user-centred design (UCD) approach and stress international and local issues in Website development to Website designers.
1. Introduction As the use of computers and the Internet has become widespread throughout the world, the importance of internationalization and localization for designing Websites has been perceived by global software and services providers. Internationalization is a process of designing and developing a generic base product, free of linguistic and cultural biases. Localization is a process of adapting or customizing a product to speci®c area (Fernandes 1995). An internationalized interface can be localized by translating (language localization), embedding support for appropriate hardware (technical localization), and incorporating support for culture-speci®c customs, conventions and visual design objects (cultural localization) (Nielsen 1990, Russo and Boor 1993, Uren et al. 1993, Prabhu et al. 1999).
*Author for correspondence. e-mail:
[email protected] Ergonomics ISSN 0014-0139 print/ISSN 1366-5847 online # 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/0014013021000035406
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Prabhu et al. (1999) introduced a generic software internationalization/ localization process for product design, proposed by Ziegler (1993). The process includes a project plan, set requirements, identifying architecture, design, implementation, testing, integration, testing, and shipping. Internationalization is considered the ®rst phase of the design process. Localization activities are engaged in the implementation phase. Lehder et al. (1999) discussed lessons learned from AT&T's experience in globalization. Creating a knowledge platform is the ®rst stage of globalization. There are three phases in this stage: exploratory research, incountry visits/competitive analysis, and ®eldwork. The second stage is designing a global product and service platforms. Internationalization and localization are the two critical steps in the second stage. Marcus (1999) considered three diverse issues, metaphors, mental model and interaction styles eective in Website designs. Aykin (1998, 1999) developed design guidelines for internationalization and localization. Three steps, eliminate cultural content from a product (internationalization), enhance the product to ®t the users of a particular locale (localization), and usability testing are suggested by Aykin (1999). Aykin (1999) stressed the importance of internationalization and localization in Websites. However, few studies focus on combining internationalization and localization and Website usability. Localized Website development includes language localization and cultural localization. Conducting usability testing with localized users occurs in the implementation stage of Website development. Generally speaking, localization for designing Websites for Asian users, particularly cultural localization, is relatively less developed. Usability testing for Website localization for Asian users is not emphasized. The objective of this study was to design for internationalization and localization of Websites for Asian users. This study also aims to implement usability engineering into the localization phase of a Website development process for Asian users. The goal is to suggest and examine user-centred design methods on the basis of internationalization and localization perspectives. Usability methods such as scenario development, heuristic evaluation, a card sorting test, and performance measurement test were utilized in this study. 2. Honeywell.com/your home Website The honeywell.com Website is built to demonstrate products and services. The honeywell.com/your home Website, developed in the US (®gure 1), is aimed at introducing home and building control products, such as centralized home control, humidity control, thermostats, etc. The content of the honeywell.com/ your home Website (Honeywell 2001) consists of products and services, concerns, home advice, your home, etc. The two channels, products and services, and the concerns, are considered the main content of this Website. There are four major service concerns in the honeywell.com/your home Website, comfort, convenience, safety, and health. Products and services are classi®ed into these four concerns. The information architecture of the Website is presented in table 1. The honeywell.com/your home Website had been developed before the usability evaluating and testing for internationalization and localization, which were not the main concern in the development lifecycle in the US. Asian usability specialists would determine which usability method to apply with the purpose of reconstruction or improvement. Therefore, implementation of
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Evaluating a Website for Asian users
Figure 1.
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Honeywell.com/your home Website (Honeywell 2001).
usability engineering of Websites of this study does not emerge from the particular step in many past studies. Usability specialists in Taiwan and Singapore conducted a series of usability tests. Four usability methods, scenario development, heuristic evaluation, card sorting test and thinking aloud test, were utilized in this study. Scenario development and heuristic evaluation were used to address the dierences in basic utilities and the variety of expected users of a Website in dierent locales. The card sorting test was used to address the dierences in information architecture in a Website for dierent users. A performance measurement test was conducted to investigate the performance and to observe actual use by Asian Web surfers. 3. Scenario development The scenario development goal was to accommodate the Website to the users. Daily life scenarios are helpful for designers to de®ne the target audience in a particular locale or area, and to characterize what happens when users perform typical tasks. Three Asian usability specialists participated in developing the four scenarios. The four scenarios were developed to help usability specialists and Website developers to de®ne their users, user tasks and goals for the Website. The tasks for the target audiences included: . . .
General browsing; Searching; Reading.
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Table 1.
Information architecture of the Honeywell.com/your home (Honeywell, 2001).
Concern
Type
Hyperlinks
Comfort
Concerns
A breath of fresh air Too hot? Too cold? Banish hot spots Energy savings Is your home parched? What's cooking with your windows? Ventilation System* Thermostat Centralized Home Control Temperature Zoning System Humidity Control Central Heating Control Air Cleaner & Filtration System*
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Products
Convenience
Concerns Products
Assisted Living Video Monitoring Audio/Video Monitoring Bene®ts of Advanced Wiring System Web-enabled Home Controller Gateway Wireless Devices
Safety
Concerns
Every move they make Money down the drain Home safe home Detection is the best protection Monitored Security System
Products Health
Concerns
Products
Itching for change? Humidity: A threat to your health and home Mould can wreak havoc with human health Building a healthy home Ventilation System* Home Water Products Air Cleaner & Filtration System*
* Repeated link
The goals of the target audiences include: . . .
Learning about products; Comparing Honeywell products with others in the retail market; Looking for services provided by Honeywell.
The Asian target audience and the four Website user scenarios are summarized in the following. .
Scenario 1: The target audience is a father around 40 years old living with his wife and two children in their own apartment in a big Asian city like Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Taipei or Tokyo. This potential customer is planning to buy a new air conditioner for his children's room and a new washer for the laundry room. He is not familiar with the brands, products, prices and other information about air conditioners and washers because he
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.
.
.
259
has not paid attention to them for several years. One morning reading the ®nancial news about Nasdaq on the Web, he clicks a banner for honeywell.com/your home for a quick check. His interests for information have switched from speci®c products to general home control. He ®nds the information to be very useful, so he saves it with his bookmark. Scenario 2: The target audience is a 30-year-old male computer engineer with a Master's degree in Computer Science who has been preparing for his wedding and moving into a new apartment. He surfs on the Web for information about electronics. He collects all kinds of information to help him make up his mind as carefully as possible due to his tight budget. He searches for the honeywell.com Website because he has seen `Honeywell' on the air conditioning control box in his oce. He learned about the products and services of Honeywell, and related information about home control. Scenario 3: The target audience is a 35-year-old bank assistant manager searching on the Web to collect information for electronics and home facilities. She learned about Honeywell while studying for her MBA in the US. She clicks honeywell.com/your home because `your home' seems to ®t her needs. She quickly learns that the content is not designed for people living in an Asian City, where the living space and the weather are dierent from North America. She then tries to link to local language content on honeywell.com. She ®nds only the telephone number and the address of the local branch oce, rather than hyperlinks to the local Honeywell Website. Scenario 4: The target audience is a graduate level engineering student that always listens to the radio when driving his car home. One day he is attracted by a commercial about air cleaners on the radio. He remembers his friend's recommendation for Honeywell home control products. Later he searches on the Web for information about Honeywell air cleaners. On honeywell.com/ your home, he looks for the introduction to Honeywell products. He clicks the link `Air Cleaner', and prints the Web page out.
The four scenarios were developed to demonstrate the dierences in the target audience. Without translated content, the target audience in Asia is limited to Web users with a certain education and social background. Second, lack of localized content about services and products may aect the users' browsing experience. These results were provided to the development team and utilized for the heuristics evaluation in the next phase. 4. Heuristic Evaluation 4.1. Method Heuristic evaluation is de®ned as a systematic inspection of the user interface design for usability (Nielsen and Molich 1990, Nielsen 1992, 1994a, 1994b, Mack and Nielsen 1993, Nielsen and Mack 1994). The goal is to ®nd the usability problems in the interface. A small set of evaluators was used to examine the interface based on the heuristics, which are usability principles. The goal of conducting this heuristic evaluation was to ®nd the usability problems for the honewell.com/your home Website from a local perspective. Three Asian usability specialists conducted one Heuristic Evaluation session for 1.5 hours. These usability specialists had been participating in HCI-related
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Category
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Information Design
Consistency
Navigation
Operation
Errors
Heuristics.
Heuristics
Reference
Richness: the abundance of information items and ways to reach Aesthetic and minimalist design Ease: information accessibility and how easy to grasp operations Match between system and the real world Oer informative feedback Design dialogues to yield closure Help and documentation Reduce short-term memory load Recognition rather than recall Readability: the overall feeling about an application's validity
Garzotto et al. 1995 Neilsen 2000 Garzotto et al. 1995 Nielsen 2002 Nielsen 1994b Nielsen 1994b Nielsen 2002 Nielsen 1994b Nielsen 2002 Garzotto et al. 1995
Consistency: conceptually similar items in a similar fashion and dierent items dierently Consistency and standards
Garzotto et al. 1995
Self evidence: how well users guess the meaning and the purpose of content or navigational element Support internal locus of control
Garzotto et al. 1995
Visibility of system status Predictability: how well users anticipate an operation's outcome Reuse: using objects and operations in dierent context and for dierent purposes Flexibility and eciency of use Enable frequent users to use shortcuts User control and freedom
Nielsen 2002 Garzotto et al. 1995
Error prevention Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors Oer error prevention and simple error handling Permit easy reversal of actions
Nielsen 1994b, 2000
Garzotto et al. 1995
Garzotto et al. 1995 Nielsen 2002 Nielsen 1994b Nielsen 2002 Nielsen 2002 Nielsen 2002 Nielsen 1994b Nielsen 1994b
research projects for at least 1 year. They had more than 3 years experience in Web design. The evaluation was carried out individually to ensure independent and unbiased evaluations. The four scenarios developed in the earlier phase were provided to the three usability specialists. The three sets of heuristics (Garzotto et al. 1995, Nielsen 1994b, 2002) were categorized into ®ve categories: information design, consistency, navigation, operation and errors, by the usability specialists. These heuristics were utilized to evaluate the honeywell.com/your home Website. The evaluation procedure included ®ve steps: 1. Usability specialists went through the honewell.com/your home Website at least twice. 2. Usability specialists discussed the heuristics. 3. Usability specialists discussed the four scenarios developed in the former phase.
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4. Usability specialists evaluated honewell.com/your home separately for 1.5 hours. Usability problems found with references to the violated usability heuristics were recorded. 5. Usability specialists discussed identi®ed usability problems and suggested improvement solutions. 4.2. Results The results of the heuristic evaluation are brie¯y presented in table 3, with the usability problems and referred heuristics. As shown in table 3, many usability problems were found with richness, consistency, readability and self-evidence heuristics. Thirteen problems were found with the richness, aesthetic and minimalist design. The other three heuristics, readability, consistency, self-evidence and the match between the system and the real world were also associated with several usability problems. These results imply that the content of the honeywell.com/your home Website and the presentation of the content may be not satisfactory to Asian users. Some usability problems identi®ed by the three usability specialists were localization problems and are discussed in the following: 1. Information design: . `Information on the Website is too rich for non-native English speakers.' (Information design) For non-native English speakers in Asia, browsing an English Website takes more eort than browsing a Website in their native language. . `Hyperlinks and articles are presented in dierent font sizes. Hyperlinks are too small to read.' The font size of hyperlinks is 8-point, that is too small to read. Table 3.
Category Information Design
Heuristic Evaluation Abstract Results.
Heuristics
Total Number of Usability Problems
Richness: the abundance of information items and ways to reach (Garzotto et al., 1995) Aesthetic and minimalist design (Neilsen, 2000) Ease: information accessibility and how easy to grasp operations (Garzotto et al., 1995) Match between system and the real world (Nielsen, 2000) Readability: the overall feeling about an application's validity (Garzotto et al., 1995)
13
Consistency
Consistency: conceptually similar items in a similar fashion and dierent items dierently (Garzotto et al., 1995) Consistency and standards (Nielsen, 1994, 2000)
6
Navigation
Self evidence: how well users guess the meaning and the purpose of content or navigational element (Garzotto et al., 1995) Support internal locus of control (Garzotto et al., 1995) Visibility of system status (Nielsen, 2000)
5
1
8
2
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P.-L. P. Rau and S.-F. M. Liang .
. . .
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.
`The metaphor of home is presented in North American style.' The image of `home' is usually presented like a house in North America. However, many people in Asia live in apartments, and some people live in Asian style of houses, such as Chinese, Korean, or Japanese styles. `Some content is not designed for Asian consumers.' The usability specialists suggested providing an international information architecture and localized content for the honeywell.com/your home Website. `The background colour of the text on some Web pages is bright orange.' Bright orange is not appropriate for users to read. 'Some images are too small to perceive the detail.' Small images are dicult for users to perceive. `The background image on the feedback button was a couple enjoying a happy time at home, which is not associated with the concept of feedback.' Three usability specialists had a problem understanding the relationship between the background image and the concept of feedback. Many Web designers in Asia use hyperlinks for feedback purpose. A mailbox or an envelope is often used as a metaphor for feedback.
2. Navigation: . `The information architecture presented on the left side of the Home page is not presented in every page.' Asian usability specialists were used to presenting the ®rst level of the information architecture of a Website, or the top structure of the Web content on the left side of every page. The results also indicated that only a few of the identi®ed usability problems involved the heuristics concerning user operation and tasks, such as predictability, ease (of use), and internal control support locus. This fact implied that the Website was not dicult to browse. The likelihood that local users would become disoriented while browsing the current Website is expected to be low. According to these results, the usability specialists suggested improving the Website content and its presentation to ®t the needs of local users, particularly about products and services, without changing the other parts of the Website. 5. Card Sorting 5.1. Method Card sorting is a technique for discovering the mapping between the user conceptual model and the information displayed in the interface (Nielsen 1993). This technique could be applied to explore how users organize information on a Website. The User Interface Architecture and Design group at IBM successfully utilized the card sorting technique for designing the overall structure of the IBM Website (Lisle et al. 1998). Knowledge elicitation techniques such as verbal reports, clustering methods, scaling methods, or experimental simulation are often used to measure or evaluate an individual's knowledge (Benyshet al. 1993). The outcome from card sorting is used for clustering analysis or multidimensional scaling. Clustering analysis emphasizes the categories in the data (Eberts 1994). Clustering analysis was used to group 271 functions in a system according to the ratings of experienced users (Tullis 1985). Clustering analysis can also be used in Website design, clustering related items or links in a Web page to show their meaningful relationships.
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Figure 2.
263
Feedback button design (Honeywell 2001).
The card sorting technique was utilized to retrieve subjective judgments on the similarity of the honewell.com/your home content. This method could be used to explore how cultural background aects categorization of information in a Website. Asian participants were asked to construct an information architecture using the information items of the honewell.com/your home Website. Clustering analysis was then conducted to construct the hierarchical taxonomy. The material, participants and procedure are discussed in the following. 5.1.1. Material: Two out of the 31 items in the information architecture of the honewell.com/your home Website were repeated links, so that 29 items were chosen to represent the content of the honewell.com/your home Website with original labelling by Honeywell. These items were products and concerns, categorized into four major concerns. All of these items were printed on cards in English. A dictionary and instructors were available if participants had any question about the meaning of these items. 5.1.2. Participants: The background of Information Technology and management were the main criterion of choosing participants. Sixteen undergraduate and graduate students were chosen from the Department of Management Information Systems, CYCU, Taiwan. However, the background of these 16 participants was closer to the background of the target audiences in scenario two and four than the background of the target audiences in scenario one and three. The ages of the participants ranged from 20 to 36 years old (Mean=25.2, SD=4.37). Nine participants were male, and seven participants were female. 5.1.3. Procedure: A deck of index cards with the 29 items displayed was prepared. The cards were randomly ordered and provided to the participants. Each participant
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was tested in an individual session, to assure that the other participants did not in¯uence their responses. The participants were required to arrange the index cards into groups according to the logical relationships. The participants were instructed to combine their initial groupings into larger clusters. Participants were also asked to name the groups and explain their naming criterion while all of the cards were grouped into a single cluster. The card sorting results were recorded and used for cluster analysis. 5.2. Results The test results from card sorting were collected for the cluster analysis. The cluster analysis results showed that approximately four clusters were derived according to the card sorting results (table 4). There were four concerns on the honeywell.com/your home Website: comfort, convenience, safety and health. The comfort concern was identi®ed by the participants as Cluster 1 and the second half of Cluster 4, without three items. The convenience concern was also identi®ed as Cluster 2, without two products, Web-enabled Home Controller Gateway and Wireless Devices. Two out of the three comfort concern items absent in the original category were categorized as a convenience concern. The third concern, safety, and the fourth Table 4. Cluster 1
Concerns
Products
2
Concerns Products
3
Concerns
Products
4
Concerns Products
Card Sorting Test Results.
Items
Original Category
A breath of fresh air Itching for change? Too hot? Too cold? Banish hot spots Video Monitoring Ventilation Systems Thermostats Centralized Home Control
Comfort Health Comfort Comfort Convenience Comfort, Health Comfort Comfort
Is your home parched? Assisted Living Energy Savings Audio/Video Monitoring Bene®ts of Advanced Wiring System Every move they make Humidity: A thread to your health and home
Comfort Convenience Comfort Convenience Convenience Safety Health
What's cooking with your windows? Mould can wreak havoc with human health Money Down the Drain Home Water Products Monitored Security Systems Web-enabled Home Controller Gateway Wireless Devices Temperature Zoning Systems Home safe home
Comfort Health Safety Health Safety Convenience Convenience Comfort Safety
Detection is the best protection Building a healthy home Humidity Controls Central Heating Controls Air Cleaner & Filtration Systems
Safety Health Comfort Comfort Comfort, Health
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Figure 3.
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Clustering analysis results.
concern, health, were grouped together most of the time. These two concerns were not as close as the convenience concern to the comfort concern. This result indicates that these two concerns were conceptually close to one another for the participants. According to the above results, the original concept of four major concerns for the Honeywell/your home Website was not fully accepted by the participants. The comfort concern was the major concern for these participants. The convenience concern might be one dimension of the comfort concern. The safety and health concerns were identi®ed as the same group. The second group was comfort and convenience. This indicated that the participants considered safety and health as one concern, or parts of some other concerns. However, English-speaking users may categorize these information items dierently. Further analysis is required to review the four-concern concept and to develop the information architecture of the honeywell.com/your home Website for Asian users.
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6. Performance Measurement 6.1. Method In the ®nal phase of this study, a performance measurement test was conducted to investigate the performance and to observe users in Asia using the site. The participants, performance variables, test design, tasks, and procedure are discussed in the following. 6.1.1. Participants: The background of Web usage was the main criteria of choosing participants. Five undergraduate students and one graduate student volunteered to participate in the experiment. Their experiences of using the Internet were at least 3 years. The sample size is limited by the short development and test lifecycle. The ages of the participants ranged from 21 to 23 years old (Mean=21.3 SD=0.82). Three participants were male and the other three were female. Their major was Management Information Systems. Their experience using the Internet was 3 years (Mean=4.2 SD=0.75). They were target users of the honeywell.com/your home Website, as indicated in the development phase scenario results. 6.1.2. Performance variables: Successful rate, and preference rating. The success rate was de®ned as the number of tasks completed by each participant. Participants' subjective rating scores de®ned the preference rating. 6.1.3. Test design: The card sorting test results indicated that the four concerns, comfort, convenient, safety and health were not clearly identi®ed by the participants. Two other types of information architectures were also compared with the four-concern structure in the honeywell.com/your home Website. The ®rst structure was an alphabetical item sort (see ®gure 4a). The second structure included three major concerns: comfort, convenience, safety and health (see ®gure 4b). These two types of information architectures were compared with the original four-concern structure (comfort, convenient, safety and health) on the homepage. Because of time and learning eect limitations, a 3-by-3 Latin Square design was used. Six participants were randomly assigned to three groups. The participants in each group performed three tasks using three types of information architectures. 6.1.4. Tasks: There were three tasks for the participants to perform. A pilot test was conducted to determine the time limit. The results of a pilot test indicated that most information should be easy enough to retrieve around 5 minutes on the honeywell.com/your home Website. The time limit for each task was set at 6 minutes. If a participant did not complete the task within 6 minutes, he/she would be asked to skip the task and move on to the next task. Participants were asked to perform the tasks only on the honeywell.com/your home Website starting with the homepage. Also, the practice session was set as 3 minutes for the participants to be familiar with the operation of the test Website. The three tasks were: 1. What software was utilized by Honeywell to control the operating speed of the central heating furnace? 2. How much is thermostat CT51? 3. How much is air cleaner F50?
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a
b
Figure 4.
(a) Alphabetic information architecture. (b) Three-concern information architecture.
6.1.5. Test procedure: The participant was invited into a computer laboratory and then given the instructions for the test. The laboratory assistant introduced the honeywell.com/your home Website. The participant was given 3 minutes to browse the honeywell.com/your home Website freely. The three tasks were given to the participant consecutively. The participant was asked to ®ll out a background questionnaire and to give a preference rating. Finally, the participant and the experimenter discussed the performance test. 6.2. Results The successful rate of alphabetic information architecture was 83%, the successful rate of three-concern information architecture (comfort, convenient, safety and health) was 83%, and the successful rate of four-concern information architecture
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(comfort, convenient, safety, and health) was only 17%. The preference rating of alphabetic information architecture was 2.33 (out of 3), the preference rating of three-concern information architecture (comfort, convenient, safety and health) was 1.67, and the preference rating of four-concern information architecture (comfort, convenient, safety, and health) was 2.0. A few participants reported in the post-test discussion session that the three-concern or four-concern information architecture were helpful to the browsing tasks. In summary, the four-concern information architecture was associated with lower successful rate in the performance measurement test. However, the preference rating of four-concern information architecture was not the least preferred design. The test results also showed that the test participants considered product information the most important information. The test participants frequently browsed the product information section. Presenting all of the concerns on the homepage was found helpful to browsing. Also, browsing an English Website like honeywell.com/your home was not easy for Asian participants. Asian Web users would need extra supports browsing an English Website. The participants and the authors suggest that Website developers not to view Asian users as a homogeneous group. Some of the dierences in various Asian populations are greater than the dierences between North America and Asia, or Europe and Asia. Further and continuous study of Asian users is necessary to provide more useful products and service for the Asian market. 7. Conclusions This study implemented usability engineering into the localization phase of a Website development process for Asian users. The goal was to suggest and examine user-centred design methods on the basis of internationalization and localization perspectives. Scenario development helps usability specialists and Website developers to de®ne their users, user tasks and the goals of the Website. By de®ning the target audience for the honeywell/your home Website in Asia, Website developers were able to identify local design issues. The heuristic evaluation results suggested improvement for the Website content and its presentation for Asian users, whose native languages were not English, particularly in relation to products and services, without changing the other parts of the Website. The results of the card sorting test, which reviewed the four major product and service areas, provided options for future information architecture development for this Website. The results of the performance measurement test suggested that Asian users need more time when browsing English content. The three or four-concern information architectures were helpful in the browsing tasks. The importance of internationalization and localization for designing Websites has been perceived by global software and services providers. Development and improvement of Website usability have drawn attentions in the community of HCI researchers. This study attempts to combine internationalization and localization of Websites and improvement of Website usability with user-centred design methods, particularly for Asian users. The results demonstrated the usercentred design approach and stressed international and local usability issues to Website developers. There were only four usability methods applied due to the time limitation and late involvement of internationalization and localization design in development lifecycle. Without these two limitations, dierent usability
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methods for internationalization and localization for designing Websites and improvement of Website usability would be applied in dierent phases of development lifecycle. Also, the focus of this study was the information needs of Asian users. The variety of cultural background in Asian users would be a research issue for the continuous study. Acknowledgements This research is collaborated with and supported by Human Factors program at Honeywell Laboratories. The authors would also like to express their gratitude to National Science Council in Taiwan (NSC 89-2213-E-033-066) for their support.
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