Cultural Visual Interface Design

In our paper a research study that focuses on the identification, harvesting and analysis of the culture-specific visual web interface design elements is discussed. A new approach to user interface development that utilises a cultural “look and feel” tool is presented. The tool is based on the analysis of the data collected by the Web crawler that allows for automated “harvesting” of visual elements of web design for several thousands of Internet domains for several countries. The cultural “look and feel” interface design tool could be used to help Web development teams quickly produce the first draft of the culturally appropriate, “look and feel” user interface design for a particular culture or country. This user interface prototyping tool would be especially useful for SMEs that want to develop e-business applications for international markets, but frequently do not have in-house internationalization/localization expertise or the budget for hiring a professional localization company.