Abstract

This paper compares the perspicacity, appropriateness and preference of web browser icons from leading software providers with those of a culture-specific design. The history and future direction of web browsers is outlined, together with the implications for the future growth of Chinese internet users. China, with its rapidly expanding young netizens has now overtaken the USA in terms of the number of internet users (253 million) and we predict it will reach saturation (≈70% internet penetration rate) by 2012.<p> If correct, this will have a dramatic effect on the use of English as the ‘Lingua Franca’ of the Internet. This online study was conducted in Taiwan and involved 103 participants (mean age 21 years), who were given three sets of web browser icons to review, namely Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0, Macintosh Safari 3.0, and culturally specific icons created using the Culture-Centred Design methodology. The findings of the study show that all three sets have generally high recognition rates, but that some icon functions (e.g. Go/Visit and Favourite) in all three sets have poor recognition rates and are considered inappropriate. Furthermore, some significant differences were found when we analysed the level of user experience amongst several icons.</p>