About the Author

Leah Guren is the Director of Training at In Other WORDS. She has been active in the field of technical communication since 1980 as a writer, manager, and consultant. She now devotes her time to teaching courses and seminars in technical communication, primarily in Israel and Europe. Leah is an internationally-recognized speaker in the field of technical communication. She appears regularly at the Society for Technical Communication world conference and other international technical communication conferences and conventions. Leah is currently serving on the STC Board of Directors.

STC UUX Community Newsletter
Usability Interface

Understanding Usability Issues of Bidirectional Bilingual Websites

By Leah Guren, Israel Chapter

Abstract

Over the past ten years, there has been an ever-increasing amount of usability recommendations for improving website design. Much of the data has focused on navigation of single-language websites. But few studies have tackled the problems of bilingual sites, and virtually no information has been gathered about usability of bilingual or multilingual sites where the languages are not written in the same direction (for example, English, which is read from left-to-right, and Hebrew, which is read from right-to-left).

With the help of staff at In Other Words, I conducted a study to determine if there were unique usability challenges presented when designing bidirectional multilingual websites and, if so, to identify guidelines to help future website designers and implementers.

Introduction

Many Israeli companies maintain websites that support both Hebrew and English. In addition, some also support Russian, Arabic, and European languages. As we worked with clients to help them improve website usability, we discovered that no one had analyzed the problems specific to sites using bidirectional languages. We assumed that the screen focal areas are influenced by the user's mother-tongue language and that this would affect the success of navigation elements. To test our theory, we launched our research in November 2004 and then ran a second phase in November 2006. The initial research findings were released at the European Information Development Conference (EIDC) in 2005.

Methodology

Websites

Nine websites were identified as a working base for the initial study. These sites represent government and industry, consumer products and service providers, and medium and large companies.

Participants

All participants were located in Israel. Participant mother-tongue languages were English, Hebrew, Arabic, Italian, French, and Spanish. Participant age range was 18 to 63. Participants were excluded if they were computer and Internet novices. For the initial study, 36 participants were selected from an initial screening sampling of 59. For the second phase of the study, 13 participants were selected.

Tasks

Participants were tested individually. Each was given a specific task to perform on a website they had never used before. A standard "think-aloud" methodology was used, where participants were asked to verbalize their thoughts and the facilitator remained quiet and observed all participant behavior. Participants were not necessarily seeing sites in their mother-tongue language, but were always free to find language links and switch content. Verbal communication was limited to either English or Hebrew.

Results

Task success was measured when the participant reached the desired goal (100%) or some percentage of that goal, which was counted as partial success. While no site scored a perfect 100%, some scored significantly higher than others. Participants were also asked to provide subjective comments and give a satisfaction rating.

There were no discernable gender differences in participant performance. However, the most significant differences were aligned with age and with the direction of the mother-tongue language.

The first findings can be identified by analyzing where participants clicked on the website page.

• For mother-tongue English, Spanish, and French speakers (where the mother-tongue language is left-to-right), there was a significant tendency to look for, and click, links appearing in the upper-left quadrant of the screen, which was the visual hotspot area for these participants (Figure 1).
• For mother-tongue Hebrew and Arabic speakers (where the mother-tongue language is right-to-left), there was a significant tendency to look for, and click, links appearing in the upper-right quadrant (Figure 2).

In both cases, it did not make any difference whether the actual content was in English or Hebrew; participants gravitated to the hotspots that were natural to them according to the orientation of the mother-tongue language.

Figure 1: webpage screen locations clicked by participants with a left-to-right mother-tongue language

Figure 2: webpage screen locations clicked by participants with a right-to-left mother-tongue language

Age differences were most obvious when looking at success rates of sites that required scrolling and sites that required scrubbing (that is, included "invisible" links). An invisible link is link that is not obvious to the user by color or underline.

Discussion and Recommendations

The findings confirmed much of the data already presented by such usability experts as Jakob Nielsen, William Horton, and Jared Spool. For example, while no perceptible gender difference was found, there was a very significant difference in user navigation techniques with older participants, reinforcing the need to chunk information and minimize below-the-fold content.

Older participants were significantly distracted and distressed by movement and color. For example, the Esc subsite (www.esc.co.il) on Pelephone (www.pelephone.co.il) produced a s atisfaction rating of 7.2 with participants aged 20 and under, but a shocking 1.3 with participants aged 45 and over! Similarly, older participants were most likely to miss navigational elements which appeared in non-dominant screen quadrants, even if the participant was fluent in that language.

You are probably wondering the older audience rated the Web site so low. It wasn't a matter of difficulty, but of "taste". The Pelephone Escape subsite is for intended for a younger audience; is totally Flash-driven and has no stationary navigation. The current site is much more structured, so I can't show what it looked like. However, imagine popup menus, invisible hotspots, and both vertical and horizontal scrolling that never seemed to end.

The satisfaction scale was completely subjective: 1 was (horrible), and 10 was (pure love). The participants awarded their own interpretation. We wanted to just get a sense of how much someone liked or disliked a site, without making them define their gut feeling.

The more experienced participants, despite age, were less likely to be confused by the placement of navigational elements in non-dominant screen quadrants. However, older participants, regardless of experience level, were more likely to miss subtle navigation cues (invisible links, links at the bottom of the window, links that don't look like buttons, links in small fonts, etc.).

Overall, the most successful sites followed these clear design guidelines:

• For a bidirectional website with links to change language content, keep all key navigation as a horizontal menu at the top of the screen. Avoid vertical menus, as left or right side placement may trigger inattentional blindness with non-native users (that is, when the user's mother-tongue language goes in the other direction).
• Make language links large, visible, and obvious. Do not use flags or icons to signify language choice. Write the name of the language in its native script, preferably as a button at the top of each page.
• Avoid hot colors (reds, yellows, oranges, etc.) combined with movement (Flash, Java, etc.). This seemed to be the biggest distraction and annoyance for older users.
• Chunk content to minimize screen scrolling (that is, below-the-fold content). This requires some initial planning to compensate for language bloat or shrinkage. For example, English requires about 30% more space than Hebrew; German requires about 40% more space than English.

References

• Web Usability 2004 (Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger)
• When Worlds Collide: How People Actually Use Help, Print, and the Web (Jared M. Spool)
• Bilingual Usability of Unitary Authority Web Sites in Wales (Daniel Cunliffe)
• Developing a Framework to Ensure your Website is Accessible (John Foliot)
• The Influence of Language Proficiency on Web Site Usage with Bilingual Users (William G. Hayward and Kwok-Kit Tong)