Current Status of Usability in the Chinese IT industry (Part Two)

(...continuation of part one)

3. Lack of multidisciplinary background.
The majority Chinese practitioners come from graphic design or computer science backgrounds rather than psychology or other disciplines. Therefore, some practitioners still think that UI design is only small GUI, such as icon design. At the same time, most of the HCI research is only concentrate on some limited HCI technologies, such as multimodal interfaces using speech and pen, and software architecture, while paying little attention on usability aspect.

4. Lack of recognitions of the importance and the ROI of UCD from the managing board.
Although communication with users has been assigned high priority, Chinese enterprises rely mainly on accumulation of experience rather than well-disciplined methods for this purpose. Usability practitioners find it is hard to make managing directors to realize that the problem can only be solved by improving the process to make it more user-centred. Designers are not only learning from the west but also teaching them to the business leaders. Therefore, they also require research result in the ROI and instructions on how to popularise usability.

One of the users on uiGarden's English forum asked why there’s so much colourful and animated area, such as moving texts, etc. on lots of Chinese web sites. Are the usability rules different in China? Our Chinese users responded that their boss thought more ads and moving elements meant their companies were more profitable. As the designers usually don’t have rights to make the decision of their design, the only thing they can do is to follow their bosses’ decision. And the Chinese audience seems more tolerant to ads and other annoying stuffs on the website. However, this also raises another question. That is, if users don’t mind, should we still change the design according to usability rules? The discussion continues on the forum.

5. Different preference on communicating methods and interface layout
There are much more users on the Chinese forum than on the English one. Our Chinese users prefer to communicating in public spaces rather than more individually liked spaces, such as mailing list, etc.

Another Difference I want to mention is that left is considered to be more important than right in Chinese people’s mind. Our forum uses a western forum system which has preview button on the left and the post button on the right. However, our Chinese user criticised it as being a usability problem because they are used to click the left button to post.

Current Status of Usability in the Chinese IT industry (Part One)

From the uiGarden project and my previous work experience in China, I have discovered some facts about HCI in the Chinese IT industry. I have been trying to summarise what I have found. I will present them in two parts. Here comes the first part.

1.Lack of expertise for usability and user-centred design methods.

The integral level of usability and user-centred design in China is still at the fledgling stage. Although UCD methodology is introduced by local branches of foreign enterprises in China and has been used in some large-scale domestic companies, such as Lenovo Group, there are still not enough convincing case studies in the industry.

The Chinese IT sector is growing at the rate of 22% under the government policy of promoting industrialization through digitalization. In addition, as the Chinese government gives benefits to software businesses, the Chinese software industry is growing at the high rate of more than 30% every year. Therefore, more and more people are participating in the process of user interface design. The UPA China branch has also formed last year in accordance with the growing demanding of learning usability theories and methods.

However, in contrast to the rising expectation of theory and methodology instruction, there are only about 20 research organisations conducting usability research and there is only limited numbers of dedicated journals or conferences in the subject of usability. The limited existence of this area inevitably had negative influence on the status of usability. Practitioners in the industry are still lack of experience and professional training on integrating UCD methods with the product development cycle. On the Chinese part of the forum at the uiGarden, lots of participators claimed that lacking in specialised publications, swift trade information and lateral communication in the industry, they are finding it difficult moving ahead whilst trying to develop.

In accordance to this situation, our team designed a special column on the Chinese part of the forums called basic knowledge and instructions to user-centred design. This column is now very welcomed by the Chinese users of the forum.

2.Lack of communication between the academic and the industry.

From the survey on uiGarden’s forum, apart from communicating with and having instructions from the west, Chinese practitioners also eager to read research essays and gain instructions from the Chinese academic researchers. They want to not only learn theories and know latest development from the west but also practical instructions on how to do from the Chinese researchers because it’s more fit their circumstances.

As I mentioned before, the big problem in China is that there’s only a small amount of research labs doing usability research. However, the even bigger problem is that the communication between those research labs and the huge number of IT companies is very limited. There is a gap between research and practice in the Chinese usability community.

Apart from foreign enterprises, only some large-scale domestic Chinese companies have connections with researchers in the academic field. Most small to middle-scale IT or Dotcom companies don’t have powerful support from the academic, nor take any research activities in their daily work. Therefore, designers in those companies (and they have taken the majority part of practitioners in China, also the main user of the forums at the uiGarden web site) find very difficult to improve their skills and to meet customers’ needs. They are eager to learn advanced technologies and to develop their skill sets.