Improving human computer interaction by developing culture sensitive applications based on common sense knowledge文档.pdfVIP

1 Improving Human-Computer Interaction by Developing Culture-sensitive Applications based on Common Sense Knowledge Junia Coutinho Anacleto and Aparecido Fabiano Pinatti de Carvalho Advanced Interaction Lab / Computing Department / Federal University of São Carlos Brazil 1. Introduction Computing is becoming ever more present in people’s everyday life. Regarding this fact, researchers started to think of ways for improving Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) so that computer applications and devices provide users with a more natural interaction, considering the context which users are inserted into, as humans can do (Harper et al., 2008). Developing culture-sensitive interactive systems seems to be a possibility for reaching such goal. Bailey et al. (2001) already mentioned the importance of considering cultural issues in computer systems development. For them, culture is a system of shared meanings which forms a framework for solving problem and establishing behavior in everyday life that has to be considered in interactive system development. Since cultural knowledge is often implicit, designers often have trouble even realizing that their designs carry cultural dependencies implicitly. Moreover, it is not possible to design by hand for every combination of possible cultures, nor is it practical to exhaustively test for every possible user culture (Bailey et al., 2001). A support is necessary for making this possibility come true and information and communication technology can offe