Mobile Phone Interface Design Preferences From The Perspective Of Nationality And Culture(with Concentration On Middle East)

In the current international market, it is important to overcome the barriers of language and culture, which have created boundaries across nations. Diverse audiences from different countries, different disability groups, and different religions speak different languages, have different values and beliefs and therefore have different perceptions and expectations from products. The current trend of globalization has lead to wide diversity among users of the same product; therefore for a product to be successful in the global market it must accommodate as much diversity as possible. Picturing cultural dimension on user interface design has no long history. Since companies trying to get global with their product, globalization and localization become inevitable.Cross-cultural study is trying to give a framework to measure the cultural differences and since this branch of study is in his young age there is a long way to go and questions that should be answered. About web interface design and cultural values there has been some studies but none of them have been considering verbal and non-verbal culture at the same time and their affects on interface design. Most of these studies have been focused on nonverbal language since they never had been taking a country with different language writing system as a target group.Since mobile phone is a new device and the speed of spreading was so fast that seems there is a need for complete study of the changes that this small but powerful brought to our society. There are only a few studies that address cultural studies and mobile phone interface design. And most of them use the same measures and paradigms that have been used for websites interface preferences. This study focused on user experience for perception, preference and satisfaction by placing emphasis on culture. Using E.T Hall’non-verbal language theories and Hafested’s cultural dimension to define a frame work to picture the cultural affects on user interface design. The target culture for this study is the verbal and none verbal culture of Arab nations and the differences. Middle East as most conflicting region always has been ignored in the proceeds and process of developing new technologies. The differences in both spoken and writing languages the verity of religious and ethnic cultures makes Middle East hard to study. Writing system in Most of the languages of the region are from RTL and still yet by passing a century of inventing Computer there is no an international standard for this languages (like Arabic, Persian and so on). Narrowing down the all the Arab countries to Arab World and ignoring their ethnical group differences are the only choice to make this study practical.Culture is not only language but in the some part of this study there was no choice to focus on some cultural elements more than other; such a writing system and language that are a main feature of the most nations in Middle East. Writing system from Right To Left and having a really different typeof letters is affecting other cultural part in the Arab World. But in this study all the effort was toconcentrate on culture that Sir Edward Tylor defined as a “complex whole which includesknowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by manas a member of society”.