Group 3. Aspects related to visual elements

This section covers all those visual aspects, defined by Makki and Leppert with the term “cultural mark-ers” (2006). As previously discussed, cultural differences can represent a difficulty in websites design, as web sites not only need to be multilingual, but they also have to be multicultural (Hars, cited in Makki and Leppert, 2006, p. 8). In fact, these visual elements can have different cross-cultural meanings:

Studies show that different cultures react differently to certain visual stimuli and organisation techniques on websites. These stimuli can be simple pictures, icons representing a certain culture, colours, or even simply textual shapes (Makki and Leppert, 2006, p. 8).

Cultural markers must be taken into account for the design of multilingual and multicultural web sites.

Users from target countries may “experience dissatisfaction when viewing sites which are not designed

54 specifically for their culture” (Ibid.), and this dissatisfaction may cause “a feeling of discomfort, lowering the site’s usability” (Ibid.).

This section takes into account the use of icons, colours, images and text direction, and generally applies to web sites localised for distant target cultures. Considering that Italian and Anglo-Saxon cultures are both Western, this category does not apply to my study. I do not expect to find any major errors con-cerning this group. However, only a reviewer from one or several Anglo-Saxon countries could confirm my assumption. As users are not involved, and the two cultures are relatively close, the following guide-lines are not checked. Nonetheless, they are explained below to provide a general overview of the tool.

3.1 Icons: Icons “resemble the object they represent” (Singh, 2011, p. 161). In other terms, “an icon is a sign whose form suggests its meaning” (Ibid.). An icon can be illustrative or diagrammatic, as the “no-smoking” sign, figuring a red circle and line through a lit cigarette (Ibid.). When designing a web site with multicultural audience in mind, particular attention must be paid to the use of icons:

Customers in the United Kingdom found the trash can icon in the Apple Macintosh ‘Trash can’ very con-fusing, because it was a cylindrical bin, shaped exactly like mailboxes in Britain. In this case it was particularly difficult, because mail was mistakenly being sent to the trash can (Ibid.).

For this category, I should check if icons are adapted to different cultures. Sometimes icons are improp-erly used to display language selectors. Language selectors should avoid the use of icons, for examples flags. In fact, a country can have more than one official language (ex. Switzerland), and a language can be spoken in more than one country (ex. Spanish). Thus, the best practice is to present the language options in the spelling of the original language (Yunker, 2003, p. 89; Roturier, 2015, p. 58). Since the non-com-pliance score cannot be given only considering the use of language selectors icons, this guideline cannot be considered checked.

The non-compliance score for this category is 2 (medium error).

3.2 Colours symbolism: As stated by Singh and Pereira, “different colours mean different things to different people in different cultures” (2012, p. 44). For example, in Western cultures white is associated with marriage, as it reminds of a bride’s dress, while in India the same colour is worn by widows. Instead, green is the colour of fertility in Egypt, while it symbolises safety in the US, criminality in France, and danger in Malaysia (Ibid.). Even colours combination have their own meaning: in China black text on red background represents happiness, and it is widely used on wedding invitations (Ibid.). Thus, the use of specific colours and colours combinations on the web needs to comply with target users’ needs and

55 expectations (Ibid.). Andreu-Vall and Marcos (2012, p. 258) propose a chart representing colours mean-ing in different cultures in a simple visual format. The chart is available on the web site “Information is beautiful” (https://informationisbeautiful.net/).¹⁶

The non-compliance score for this category is 2 (medium error).

3.3 Images: When designing a web site, particular attention must be paid even in the choice of images and symbols, as some pictures and symbols may be considered appropriate for a culture, but offensive for another. For example, according to Singh and Pereira (2012, pp. 42-43), pictures of women and ani-mals are disliked in Arabic cultures. Whereas, nature symbolism (e.g. mountains, rivers, birds, etc.) is particularly appreciated by Eastern cultures like Japan and China. Further, religious symbols, animal fig-ures, hand gestfig-ures, and forbidden food are to use cautiously (Singh and Pereira, 2012, pp. 42-43).

The non-compliance score for this category is 2 (medium error).

3.4 Text direction: As mentioned in the previous chapter, ideographic languages, like Chinese and Jap-anese, are traditionally written vertically in columns going from top to bottom. Whereas, Semitic lan-guages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, are written from right to left. Web pages should be then designed to serve different audiences.

Spatial orientation is defined by Singh and Pereira (2012, p. 33) as the way web content is structured. In Arabic cultures, a left-justified web page might have a negative impact on users’ visual perception, affect-ing the web site usability. Whereas, in oriental cultures central composition is a “visual norm” when depicting graphics (Mooij, cited in Singh and Pereira, 2012, p. 33). For such reasons, web content struc-ture should be presented in a layout visually appealing for users. Richard Ishida (2014) gives us an insight on how some tools¹⁷ that can be used when dealing with spatial orientation and justification of non-Latin text. Justification becomes in fact more complicated when it comes to other scripts.¹⁸

16 The web site has been last accessed on 28 March 2018.

17 In Arabic, text is right-aligned going from right to left across the page. Received wisdom says that to do justification in Arabic it is not necessary to stretch the spaces in between the words, as it is required in English. In Arabic, one should stretch the words themselves. However, not all of the words are stretched in the same amount:

“One way you may hear that this can be done is by using a special baseline extension character in Unicode, U+0640 ARABIC TATWEEL” (Ishida, 2014). “Baseline extension tatweel is a tool that helps to produce text in a nice typographic style whatever your language or your script is” (MultilingualWeb, 2014).

However, one of the biggest problems with this approach is that rules for the placement of baseline extension are complex, as extensions can only appear between certain characters, and are forbidden around others. Furthermore, different font styles have different rules, producing different visuals. Lack of consensus about both rules and justification make this task difficult, so that there is still work to be done on this matter.

18 The Unicode Consortium’s glossary defines a script as “a collection of symbols used to represent text in one or more writing systems” (W3C, 2003). Ishida (W3C Internationalization Activity Lead) presented on “New Internationalization Develop-ments” at the World Wide Web Consortium in Madrid, 2014 (Ishida, 2014). His presentation focuses on a specific aspect of W3C work: layout requirements for digital publishing, like justification in CSS for non-Latin scripts.

56 As I am dealing with Italian and English text, I do not expect to find any errors. However, more clarifi-cations on this category have been provided in the notes because it is an important usability issue for which requirements are still being implemented.

When speaking of text direction in culturally customised web sites, particular attention should also be paid also on navigation modes. Navigation bars should follow the direction of the text. Therefore, a web site specifically designed for Arab users should include navigation bars moving from right to left. For example, the Swedish company Ikea “has taken note of this cultural preference” in its Kuwait web site (Singh and Pereira, 2012, p. 34), as seen in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Ikea Kuwait web site: ar.ikea.com/kw/ar/ (last accessed on 20 March 2018).

The non-compliance score for this category is 3 (major error).