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Translated application interfaces - issues of engagement

Abstract
In New Zealand, English is the language that dominates contemporary technologies. Usability testing was completed on a range of applications, available with a Māori-language interface, to gauge levels of awareness, engagement and perception. Nearly all of the respondents were unaware of the availability of these interfaces but most indicated they would prefer to use the Māori-language versions. In terms of engagement and usability, users initially engaged using Māori but switched to English when they wanted to quickly complete the task at hand. Few remained fully engaged with the Māori-language interfaces. High levels of language switching were reported and some frustration as the participants encountered new and unfamiliar uses of words. At face value the feedback suggests the translated interfaces contained unnecessary complications and that better design and content might have enhanced the user experience. However, there is evidence that extended use would enable users to become more familiar with the interfaces alluding to initial barriers created by a previous competence in another language -- in this case English. With this previous competence in mind it might be more useful to employ design concepts that would alleviate initial difficulties and serve to keep the user engaged in the target language for longer periods of time.
Type
Conference Contribution
Type of thesis
Series
Citation
Mato, P. J. (2015). Translated application interfaces - issues of engagement. In Proceedings of 15th New Zealand Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 3-4 September 2015, Hamilton, New Zealand (pp. 1–4). New York, USA: ACM. http://doi.org/10.1145/2808047.2808061
Date
2015
Publisher
ACM
Degree
Supervisors
Rights
© 2015 Copyright is held by the author.