International User Interfaces [Paperback]

Elisa M. del Galdo (Editor), Jakob Nielsen (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471149659 | ISBN-13: 978-0471149651 | Publication Date: June 15, 1996 | Edition: 1

Leading authorities from around the world discuss the latest topics in international user-interface design.

With most major companies in the computer industry depending on exports for 50 percent or more of their sales, user-interface design teams face a major challenge in making their products both useful and accessible to the global marketplace. It is no longer enough to simply offer a product translated in ten to twenty different languages. Users also want a product that acknowledges their unique cultural characteristics and business practices.

In International User Interfaces, Elisa del Galdo and Jakob Nielsen head a team of acknowledged international authorities who confront some of the problems currently facing international user-interface developers, including:
* International Usability Engineering.
* Developing a Cultural Model.
* Arabization of Graphical User Interfaces.
* Managing a Multiple-Language Document System.
* An Intelligent Lexical Management System for Multilingual Machine Translation.
* A Chinese Text Display Supported by an Algorithm for Chinese Segmentation.
* Breaking the Language Barrier with Graphics.
* Cultural Issues That Can Affect Training

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

With the world continuing to shrink into a "global village," software companies are working to make programs that transcend language and cultural borders. One such way is through international user interfaces where the software is prepared so that it can be easily localized in each country. This book focuses on user interfaces, exploring what they can do, and what they need to do to become commercially viable.

From the Back Cover

Leading authorities from around the world discuss the latest topics in international user-interface design.

With most major companies in the computer industry depending on exports for 50 percent or more of their sales, user-interface design teams face a major challenge in making their products both useful and accessible to the global marketplace. It is no longer enough to simply offer a product translated in ten to twenty different languages. Users also want a product that acknowledges their unique cultural characteristics and business practices.

In International User Interfaces, Elisa del Galdo and Jakob Nielsen head a team of acknowledged international authorities who confront some of the problems currently facing international user-interface developers, including:

• International Usability Engineering.
• Developing a Cultural Model.
• Arabization of Graphical User Interfaces.
• Managing a Multiple-Language Document System.
• An Intelligent Lexical Management System for Multilingual Machine Translation.
• A Chinese Text Display Supported by an Algorithm for Chinese Segmentation.
• Breaking the Language Barrier with Graphics.
• Cultural Issues That Can Affect Training

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (June 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471149659
• ISBN-13: 978-0471149651
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #552,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D. is a principal of Nielsen Norman Group. He is the founder of the "discount usability engineering" movement, which emphasizes fast and efficient methods for improving the quality of user interfaces. Nielsen was noted as "the world's leading expert on Web usability" by U.S. News and World Report and "the next best thing to a true time machine" by USA Today. Nielsen's Alertbox column on Web usability has been published on the Internet since 1995 and currently has about 200,000 readers. From 1994 to 1998, Nielsen was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer. His previous affiliations include Bell Communications Research, the Technical University of Denmark, and the IBM User Interface Institute. See his biography page at useit.com for additional biographical information.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A mish-mash of articles that's not very actionable., April 27, 2001

By 

Al Sargent (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: International User Interfaces (Paperback)

I had recently purchased the NielsenNorman group's International User Interfaces whitepaper, ..., was impressed with the whitepaper, and consequently had high hopes for this book. I was pretty disappointed. It's a mish-mash of articles, only a few of which were very actionable. One such article, in chapter 3, is pretty good in that it covers to what degree various cultures communicate explicitly versus non-explicitly. This fact alone is very useful to anyone doing usability testing or market research outside the US.

7 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars what any sw developer should know, July 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: International User Interfaces (Paperback)

We also recommend the book "SW Internationalization and Localization" by Uren, Howard, Perinotti.