We did a research about the structural differences between Chinese and Western user instructions. And we tested if the culturally adapted user instructions based on the found differences work better for Chinese or Western users
Research shows that Western and Chinese technical communicators structure their documents in different ways. I attempted to systematically explore the effects cultural adaptations of user instructions have on users. Specifically, we investigate whether Western (from Europe and North America) and Chinese (from the People’s Republic of China) users would benefit from a document structure that is theoretically assumed to reflect their cultural preferences.
80 students from Enschede participated in the experiment, with half Chinese and half westerners. They used SDL Trados Studio 2014 and culturally adapted user instructions to finish tasks. Their task performance, knowledge, and appreciation of the software and the user instructions were measured.
Contrary to our expectations, no significant differences were found between the conditions. Both Western and Chinese participants performed equally well and were equally appreciative when using the Western and Chinese manual structure.
The results of our study raise questions about the validity and/or the relevance of the current insights regarding cultural differences in the structures of user instructions. Cultural differences found in content analytic research may reflect the habits of technical communicators rather than the preferences of users. However, caution is needed in interpreting our findings, as our research experiences also raised a number of methodological issues that must be addressed in future research.
Presentation, June 8, afternoon
''designing for users form different cultures''
Phd Student,
University Twente
Research topic is cultural differences and technical communication
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1 Comment on "Effects of a Culturally Adapted Manual Structure on Western and Chinese Users"
This is very interesting. I would have expected differences, simply from the difference of how a page of ideograms is scanned by the eye vs. phonetic writing. You can see this in the design of Chinese web pages vs. western ones, for example.
Do you think it is possible that there is a “comfort difference” that is not perceived consciously, but that might cause people to gravitate slightly more to one model or the other?