Question

To help students understand the universal usability concept.

Topic of Discussion

The purpose of universal usability is to design products or services that are usable by almost every citizen. Discuss universal usability in the context of cultural and international diversity. Give some examples of such products that you think provide better universal usability in terms of cultural and international diversity.

Answer 1

Universal usability is a design of products or services which makes it user friendly and allows it to access and used by every person. Under this concept, it is tried that design of products or services should be usable by almost every citizen to the greatest extent possible and without the need for adaptation.

It is quite difficult to make universal usability in the context of cultural and international diversity as we all know that world has a lot of diversities in every aspect whether it is related to culture, tradition, food patterns, customs, lifestyle etc. and introducing the concept of  universal usability is crucial. It Includes issues such as race, cultural, linguistic, and ethnic backgrounds e.g.cultural differences: color “black” vs. “white” as an association with death etc. Another thing which is Globalization that promotes the need for adapting UIs to different cultures etc. Still, it. is tried and we can do this in following manner:

Like we can make currency symbol e.g. $ dollar, numbers & special characters (e.g., ß, §), Horizontal “right-to-left” and “left-to-right” vs. vertical “top-to- bottom” reading, Date and time formats (e.g., dd.mm.yyyy vs. mm/dd/yyyy), Address formats (e.g., “ZIP city” vs. “city, ZIP”) universal usable that can be used and understood in the same manner by every person.

Internet, social netwoking sites, diferent web pages can be the best examples of universal usability in terms of cultural and international diversity which connects persons in every corner and with diverse culture and lifestyle and provides a user friendly interface that is accessed by every person in the same manner. These are such kind of platforms where user feels integrity in diversity and gives due respect to this concept of "universal usability ".

Cultural events or programs, Books or journals on cultural and international diversity can also bring integrity and make it usable universally.