Case Study: Cross-Cultural Preference of UI Language Components, Cultural Markers - Cross-Cultural Human-Computer Interaction and User Experience Design - page 113

Other 30.0%

By lines (left-to-right and
top-to-bottom) 70.0%

FIGURE 8.28 Reading direction in the Chinese sample.

By lines (left-to-right and
top-to-bottom) 25.0%

By columns (top-to-bottom and
left-to-right) 5.0%
By lines (right-to-left and
top-to-bottom) 5.0%
By columns (top-to-bottom and
right-to-left) 5.0%

Other 60.0%

FIGURE 8.29 Reading direction in the Czech sample.

of the total. The Chinese respondents seem thus more disciplined when searching
patterns, as they follow learned rules. It is important, however, that for the Chinese
respondents the image represented a set of known characters (although in nonsensical
sequences), whereas for the Czech sample they were mere shapes.

28) On a screen, if you saw the first image of a series only, where would you
expect to find the next one?
For this question, we used the image in Figure 8.30.

Chinese

Hypotheses.
• Users tend to read from top left towards the center of the screen.
• Left-to-right lines of text are easier to read than top-to-bottom and right-to-
left.
• There is a close similarity between sequential information structure in lan-
guage and horizontal structure in visual composition.