Focusing on Cultural Design Features for an Indigenous Website

This paper reports on part of a user-centred study examining the design of a website for an Indigenous Australian community. It focuses on the capture of culturally relevant design features and describes the outcomes from a focus group undertaken with 12 members of the community stakeholders. Key cultural themes to emerge from the focus group were the need for visually relevant imagery, support for kinship and community, as well as fun, local language and traditional forms of music, dance and oral history. These themes were mapped into design features such as a virtual tour of the building and grounds, video messages from community members, a facility for feedback and interactive games. Many existing guidelines for cultural design were affirmed in the study, including the use of simple language, local imagery and the provision of an interaction style appropriate to the Indigenous group.