Cultural Marker Identification for Web Application Design Targeted for Malaysian Multicultural Users

Abstract

The rapid growth of technology result in two contradictory phenomenon, the global world becomes smaller while the internet users increase drastically. This diversity of users becomes the main attention toward the study of human computer interaction due to the influential of users’ background toward the usability of web application whereby combination of color strongly determine user’s preference and engagement level. Hence, determination of color based cultural marker is crucial to the interface design process in order to fulfill the need of diverse users. Most of the empirical study so far has been carried in western contextual. As a result, suggested marker are not applicable in eastern perspective, particularly Malaysia which consist of multicultural society. This article provides content analysis of the website application targeted to multicultural audience to determine the prominent color based cultural markers. More importantly, identifications of the markers could assist the interface designers towards creating web based application that reflected the multicultural audience preferences.