Localization of Storyboards for Cross-cultural User Studies

Storyboards are useful for presenting ideas visually to users helping them understand possible uses of technology allowing them to identify with use situations, especially when no prototypes are available to demonstrate. Storyboards are good for cross-cultural user studies, because they reduce the amount of text users with different native languages have to read. Storyboards are easy to implement in online surveys, which are convenient in gathering data from geographically dispersed groups of users. However, creating localized storyboards requires considering a number of culture related factors. Little research exists in Human-Computer Interaction about how to create localized storyboards for online UX surveys although the need for gathering global user feedback of technology products and services noticeable. We used two focus groups with Chinese participants to inform the design of localization of storyboards for an online survey. Results showed that localization was successful and some design implications were found of localizing storyboards.