The impact of subjective cultural issues on the usability of a localized web site: The Louvre Museum Web site

This research examines the role of cultural issues on the usability of the Louvre Museum Official Web sire. Much Web localization currently focuses on linguistic translation and technical issues (like time and date conventions and character sets). Often, more subjective features of a site,like color, audience needs and expectations, presentation techniques, and graphics, are disregarded. However, people from different cultures have different expectations and needs, and meeting these needs improves the usability of localized versions of a multilingual Web site. Museums are of interest to, and visited by, people from all over the world. Likewise, a museum Web site must be accessible and usable across cultures. This paper examines general features that make a sire more usable. The primary research involves a usability study of different culture groups using the Louvre Museum Official Web Site, available in four languages. The participants, from France, Ireland, Spain, and Japan, were observed and video-recorded during co-operative evaluation sessions interacting with the site as they attempted to complete tasks. Results show that the site's neutral graphics were popular across all culture groups. Participants from all backgrounds admired pictures of the museum's artifacts. However, nor all graphic features were usable. Labels and captions on diagrams were nor localized. Results also illustrate that the usability of a multilingual Web space depends to a great extent on flexibility. The sire is best suited to French audiences, 100% of whom expressed overall satisfaction. Japanese participants were least satisfied with the site.