A case study to identify heuristics for designing webpage for non-native speakers
Venudas Jaya, Sree Vrinda (2025)
2025
Master's Programme in Science and Engineering
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2025-05-20
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202505195800
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202505195800
Tiivistelmä
World has seen an unprecedented increase in migration, as more and more individuals are moving to new countries in search of better opportunities and life. Language however continues to be one of the greatest barrier for these migrants when it comes to integrating in the host society. Especially for migrants who are not digitally literate accessing digital services such as government websites, job portals, healthcare systems is challenging if these services are not in their preferred language. Most online websites are tailored for native speakers or digitally proficient users, thus rendering it difficult for non-native speakers to navigate and understand essential information. This thesis aims to address this gap by developing design heuristics that help to find usability issues in websites not available in user’s preferred language.
The study begins by understanding the relation between language and culture, highlighting the difficulties faced by migrants when using digital platforms in an unfamiliar language. Additionally key concepts such as usability, accessibility and universal design are studied in order to incorporate the learnings to propose design heuristics. A structured methodology proposed by Quiñones and C. Rusu (2019) was followed to develop these heuristics. The proposed heuristics are validated by conducting heuristic evaluation on Duunitori, a Finnish job search website, with two set of evaluators - control group and experimental group. The control group used Nielsen’s heuristics to evaluate the website and experimental group used the new heuristics for evaluation. The findings from both groups were compared and studied to validate the effectiveness of new heuristics.
The findings showed that the new heuristics are effective in identifying usability issues specific to the context of non-native users. Moreover, the heuristics were perceived as useful and practical by the evaluators. However they highlighted the need for more clarity and completeness of the heuristics, which can be achieved by further refining of the heuristics with examples and conducting more iterations. The results emphasizes the need to consider the requirements of non-native users while designing digital services. The study provides a foundation on which these heuristics can be further refined by including usability testing and evaluating different types of website in future research.
The study begins by understanding the relation between language and culture, highlighting the difficulties faced by migrants when using digital platforms in an unfamiliar language. Additionally key concepts such as usability, accessibility and universal design are studied in order to incorporate the learnings to propose design heuristics. A structured methodology proposed by Quiñones and C. Rusu (2019) was followed to develop these heuristics. The proposed heuristics are validated by conducting heuristic evaluation on Duunitori, a Finnish job search website, with two set of evaluators - control group and experimental group. The control group used Nielsen’s heuristics to evaluate the website and experimental group used the new heuristics for evaluation. The findings from both groups were compared and studied to validate the effectiveness of new heuristics.
The findings showed that the new heuristics are effective in identifying usability issues specific to the context of non-native users. Moreover, the heuristics were perceived as useful and practical by the evaluators. However they highlighted the need for more clarity and completeness of the heuristics, which can be achieved by further refining of the heuristics with examples and conducting more iterations. The results emphasizes the need to consider the requirements of non-native users while designing digital services. The study provides a foundation on which these heuristics can be further refined by including usability testing and evaluating different types of website in future research.