Relationship Model in Cultural Usability Testing Qingxin Shi and Torkil Clemmensen Department of Informatics, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark {qs.inf, tc.inf}@cbs.dk Abstract. Culture plays an important role in the global market today. It not only affects products, but also impacts on usability evaluation methods. In this paper we first introduce culture theories and two kinds of relationships in thinking aloud usability testing and then review previous research. Based on the discussion, we extract the potential factors which may influence cross-culture usability testing and then propose a relationship model. Finally, we discuss how the two thinking aloud approaches may be used in cross-culture usability testing. Keywords: Usability test, culture, thinking aloud theory, localization 1 Introduction With the advent of globalization and IT revolution, we can no longer overlook the aspect of culture in the design of user interfaces and products. In order to capture global markets, the products and software must be tested in target cultures to make sure that they are acceptable and suitable for people’s cultural characteristics. But some previous studies have found that culture not only influences the products or interface design, but also the design methods used in building interfaces [1]. Culture affects the usability evaluation methods (UEMs) of focus groups, questionnaires, structured interviews, and the understanding of metaphors and interface design [2]. Yeo’s study [3] shows culture also impacts on usability testing. Usability testing, also called the thinking aloud method, has been extensively applied in industry to evaluate a system’s prototypes of different levels of fidelity [4]. The primary goal of a usability test is finding a list of usability problems from evaluators’ observations and analysis of users’ verbal and non-verbal behavior; thus, the relationship between the evaluator and user is very important for finding accurate usability problems. Tamler [5] suggested establishing a trusting and supportive relationship in order to make the users honestly disclose their thoughts and feelings. During usability testing, representative users are required to complete pre- established tasks by using the system. This measurement is largely related to specific users and specific tasks. However, people differ across regional, linguistic and country boundaries; therefore, if the evaluator and user have different cultural backgrounds, they may be strongly influenced by their local cultural perspective, perception and cognition, so the interaction and communication between them may be different from those who are from the same culture. Since usability testing involves human-human interaction, the evaluator and user’s cultural background must be considered, or else there may be a misunderstanding between them. Therefore, how to