1	Colors, Buttons, Words and Culture Designing Software for the Global Community
2	Susan M. Johns 1997 CODI Conference Pittsburg State University Axe Library Pittsburg KS USA suzyq@mail.pittstate.edu
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10	Definition of Culture Culture is the beliefs, value system, norms, mores, myths,and structural elements of a given organization, tribe, or society More than mere language translation Nakakoji
11	Cross-Cultural Communication Develop user interfaces for products with a global market When outsourcing to other countries, we work and communicate with people we have never met in person Work culture values and views differ from our own
12	Technology As Cultural Amplifier “Although technologies transform culture and thought to amplify human productivity...a system’s functionality... is often unconsciously affected by the underlying traditions of the system designer’s culture.” Nakakoji
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14	The Tale of Three Interfaces 54 Americans 35 English-speaking citizens of other nations 43 Males 46 Females
15	The Tale of Three Interfaces Designed For (Design 1) English-speaking European adult male intellectuals (Design 2) Caucasian-American women (Design 3) generic English-speaking consumers of an “international-style”
16	The Tale of Three Interfaces Moral of the Story There are no generic cultural guidelines Issues cannot be solved by using overly generalized characterizations of user populations, and ...
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19	Cross Cultural Development Culture exists across professions End-users and developers share cultural understanding Should users be able to state their requirements clearly and precisely a priori when they simply do not have the knowledge to do so?
20	Cross Cultural Development Software engineering and application domain knowledge work together Develop knowledge among stakeholders Exploit opportunities to establish successful cross cultural collaboration
21	The International Need Customers want systems that use their own language and meet their own cultural conventions Some countries require products to reflect their culture and language Internationally competitive companies must consider cultural preferences of their customers
22	PeopleSoft Goes Global Identify common processes around the world Deliver languages and localizations Add global complexity with manageable implementation
23	PeopleSoft Goes Global Architecture for core functionality Understand local functions and cultures Use Customer SIGs
24	PeopleSoft Goes Global Shorter implementation Customization times diminish Ongoing maintenance is reduced
25	PeopleSoft Goes Global Global customers have more in common than differences Vendor must understand what is different and what is similar Everybody (vendors) is “Embarking”
26	What is Internationalization The process of providing a computer system that handles a variety of language, country, and cultural conventions
27	Internationalization (I18N) Eliminate cultural specifics Design culture-independent user information and interfaces
28	User Information
29	What is Localization A locale is an operating system database of language and country conventions Developing software to support multiple locales is Localization
30	Localization (L10N) Localization of product for each user culture Language, date and number formats Graphical representations/icons Color Physical flow of objects
31	System I18N Uses multilingual products instead of monolingual or bilingual products Allows switching between different locales and languages Provides software that meets international standards
32	System I18N Challenges Treat English as just another language Use one program source for all languages to reduce costs for maintenance and documentation
33	System I18N Challenges Plan for extra disk space needed. To save space, ship only the languages purchased by a customer What is the delay from when the package is available in the vendor’s local country to when it is available in other languages?
34	System I18N Challenges Monitor acronyms and mnemonics for negative meanings in different languages Understand differences among U.S., British, and global English Be aware of different dialects in the same language
35	System I18N Challenges Use care when sorting lists Use numeric indexes instead of sorted alphabetic indexes whenever possible Keep illustrations, tables, and figures simple Verify translations back into English
36	Standards and the World of Uni- and Zed- Unicode UNIMARC Z 39.50 Z 39.69 Z 39.70 Zzzzz...
37	History of Unicode ASCII, a “U.S.” Standard (ISO 646) DBCS - double byte character system (some chars 1 byte, some 2 bytes) Unicode - all chars 2 bytes (16 bits)
38	History of Unicode Unicode is a subset of ISO 10646, as are ASCII and Latin-1 (8-bit ASCII) Unicode eliminates duplicate Han characters in Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) ISO 10646 stores chars in 4 bytes; Unicode stores chars in 2 bytes
39	Definition of Unicode The Unicode standard is a fixed-width, 16-bit character encoding system that contains codes for every character needed by the major writing systems currently in use in the modern world, along with codes for a full range of punctuation, symbols, and control characters (Davis et al.)
40	Definition of Unicode Punctuation marks Diacritical marks Uppercase, lowercase, and uncased letters Characters used to represent digits Control characters
41	Unicode Problems Universal standards for dates, measurements, and money Simplified encoding of Chinese characters does not depict “classical” Chinese Storage (twice as much?) Transmissions (twice as long?)
42	UNIMARC Definition implementation of ISO 2709 for the structure of records containing bibliographic data intended to be a carrier format for exchange purposes does not stipulate form, content, or record structure of data within individual systems
43	UNIMARC Problems Software developers must rewrite their existing software the existing MARC formats use a unique definition of extended ASCII How do you convert 40 million MARC records without anyone noticing?
44	UNIMARC Benefits Allows addition of foreign titles without transliterating the data Users able to search library catalogs in all languages rather than just by call number or ISBN Assumes software/virtual keyboards and other input devices needed to generate the CJK characters
45	Sorting and Conditional Formatting English: A-Z, a-z German: Characters with an umlaut sort directly after characters without an umlaut Swedish: Ö sorts last in the alphabet after Z Spanish: double characters (ll and ch) that sort as single characters
46	Other Issues Upper and lower case, subtract 32 no more! Wild card symbols in search/find boxes Hyphenation of long words and word breaks Gender in language Tense and case
47	Message Catalogs Files used to store program input and output strings All program strings used interactively by the user should be contained in one or more message catalogs Messages stored in database locales Makes messages more customizable
48	Menu Space 30-200% extra space depending on the number of English characters Ex: “Preferences” translates “Bilschirmeinstellungen” Boxes should be self-sizing and movable
49	Conventions and Format Differences Dates: May 12, 1959 is 12/5/59 5/12/59 1959-05-12 Calendars: Gregorian, Hebrew, Islamic, Japanese Imperial Era Times: 8:32 p.m. is 20:32 20,32,00 20.32 KI 20.32
50	Conventions and Format Differences Numbers: 3,912.45 3.912,45 3 912,45 Currency: $2,456.78 2,456,78 DM 2.456$78 Don’t forget yen and pound symbols Paper sizes: A3, A4, A5, JIS-B4 JIS-B5 Punctuation : << >> ; ¡ ¿
51	Formats for Patrons Z39.69 and Z39.70 NISO standards for patron personal data and patron transaction data I14N and L10N aspects of patron data need to be considered Not limited to address, postal code, phone, ID#, and confidentiality issues around the world
52	Color, Music and Sound Color combinations Color balance (theme and secondary) Color association (appropriateness based on abstract concepts) Music and sound more easily linked to a photograph than an icon Music associations highly dependent on culture
53	Icons Trashcan icon can look like a postal box in Britain If you use books, make sure they open in the proper direction for the target market Email icon of a rural post box with a red flag has no meaning outside rural America
54	Icons Colors within icons may be culturally insensitive Try not to use text: think in terms of international driving symbols Think: what is the symbol for ISBN other than ISBN?