Cultural difference and mobile phone interface design: Icon recognition according to level of abstraction

Abstract

Mobile phone market has widened to a global scale and consequently mobile phones are distributed throughout the world. This tells that the user interface in mobile phones inevitably confronts cultural difference as much as other products and consequently the user interface suited to each cultural trait is required. To clarify the relation between cultural traits and mobile phone interface, UI elements which would be influenced by cultural traits in interaction between user and mobile phone were extracted and hypotheses related to the UI elements were proposed. For a pilot study, 20 subjects (10 subjects each from America and Korea) participated in the icon recognition test. The test parameters were task completion time, recognition rate, preference. The results show that Korean subjects performed significantly better in the set of concrete icons while American counterparts showed quite the opposite tendencies. No significant differences in preference according to icon style were found. The results suggest a possibility of cultural impact on icon recognition according to the level of abstraction.