There are several concepts of “culture”. According to the cultural anthropologist Edward T. Hall, culture co-occurs with communication. Culture is a “silent language” or “hidden dimension” which steers people unconsciously (cf. [8] ). Difficulties in communication with members of other cultures arise from that. If one is not conscious of one’s own motives, which are culturally influenced, one cannot understand the motives and actions of others (cf. [5] ). The position that is taken in this paper is that culture is a set of facts (structural conditions) representing an orientation system established by collective programming of the mind (cf. [9] ) within a group of individuals. Cultural models describe the cultural distance, i.e. the differences between cultures and allow the comparison of them with each other (cf. [10] ). One of the best-known cultural models is the iceberg model of culture (cf. [11] ). Only 10% of the attributes of a culture are visible and conscious. The rest is invisible and unconscious and hence, difficult to investigate. Cultural models help to overcome this methodological gap using cultural standards and dimensions to look beneath the water surface, i.e. to probe the unconscious areas of culture. The organizational psychologist Alexander Thomas established the concept of “cultural standards”, which expresses the normal, typical and valid attributes for the majority of the members of a certain culture regarding the respective kinds of perception, thought, judgment and action (cf. [12] ): 112). Cultural standards serve as an orientation system for the members of a group and regulate action. The individual grows into its culture by assuming and internalizing these cultural standards. This process encompasses learning basic human abilities in the social arena, control of one’s own behavior and emotions, the satisfaction of basic needs, worldview, verbal and nonverbal communication and expectations of others as well as the understanding of one’s role and scales for judgment. Another key concept for describing a cultural system is that of “cultural dimension”, which can serve as a basis for the identification of cultural standards (cf. [13] : 38). According to Hofstede, cultural dimensions are quantitative models to describe the behavior of the members of different cultures allowing the analysis and comparison of the characteristics of different groups quantitatively (cf. [9] ) because the cultural imprint of cultural groups can be measured using quantitative questionnaires (cf. [14] ). This should also be done for all other cultural dimensions. They represent an aspect of a culture, which is measurable in relation to other cultures. Hence, cultural dimensions can be used to classify kinds of behavior between cultures. Cultural dimensions are indicators showing tendencies in the interaction and communication behavior of members of cultures.

There are similar concepts taking cultural aspects in HCI design into account. At least the following concepts exist:

Ÿ Intercultural HCI design [3] [15] [16] [17] .

Ÿ Cross-cultural HCI design [18] [19] .

Ÿ Culture-oriented HCI design [1] .

Ÿ Culture-centered HCI design [20] .

Their connotations are different, which predisposes the concepts to be applied differently in diverse contexts. Intercultural HCI design means the process of HCI design in the cultural context (cf. [21] ). Intercultural HCI design describes the user and culture oriented design of interactive systems and products taking the cultural context of the user into account with respect to the respective tasks and product usage (cf. [1] [22] ). This approach has grown in academic literature from 1990 to 2000 and emerged from the processes of globalization, internationalization and localization of products. Localization (L10N) means the adaptation of the system to certain cultural circumstances for a certain local market, for example the adaptation of the look and feel of the user interface or the internal data structures to the cultural needs of the user (cf. [23] ). Internationalization (I18N) of a product means that the product will be prepared for its usage in the desired (in the best case for all) countries (cf. [24] ). The internationalization of a software product delivers a basic structure on which a later cultural customization (localization) can be carried out. Globalization (G11N) encompasses all activities with regard to the marketing of a (software) product outside a national market (including I18N and L10N software). The objective is to run successful marketing in one or several regional markets by taking into account the technical, economic and legal conditions there [25] . Marcus requested additionally that cross-cultural HCI design should account for dimensions of cultures relating them to user interface characteristics (cf. [18] ). Several researchers established the culture-centered HCI design process on research on cross-cultural interface design (cf. [1] [20] [26] ) and thereby applying iterative analysis to take the target users and their cultural needs into account. Therefore, the topic of intercultural HCI analysis is particularly interesting from the information sciences point of view since this can yield new knowledge, new requirements and goals for the design of information processing systems involving software engineering, software ergonomics and usability engineering.

“Intercultural research in Information Systems is a relatively new research area that has gained increasing importance over the last few years [...]” ( [27] : 17). Using the key words “cross-cultural HCI” when searching the ACM digital library reveals an exponential rise of publications in this area since 2000 (cf. Figure 1).

There are several papers in the literature review concerning the usage of information systems in their cultural context. Two of the first important books regarding internationalization of HMI are “Designing User Interfaces for International Use” [28] and “International User Interfaces” [29] . Another very good in-

troduction to the study of cross-cultural of HCI is [30] reviewing the research methodology, the technology transfer and the diffusion of innovation to shed light on the cross-cultural study of human-computer interaction. Another overview of culture and its effects on HCI is given in [31] . There is also activity investigating the trends in intercultural HCI (cf. [32] ). A review of culture in information systems research to postulate a shift to a theory of information technology culture conflict is presented in [33] . The relationship between culture and computers can be illuminated by a re-view of the concept of culture and implications for intercultural collaborative online learning [34] . An overview of a decade of journal publications about culture and HCI can be found in [35] .

From this, several “hypes” can be identified in this area. The first one happened in the early 1990ies. The next one was around 2000 and since about 2010 research in intercultural HCI design has steadily increased. In these “hypes” the number of publications is high indicating high research interest and effort:

Ÿ Before 1990: almost no publications available relating “culture” and “HCI”.

Ÿ 1990-1999: pioneers [11] [29] [36] [37] .

Ÿ 2000-2004: basic systematic work [1] [3] [18] [38] [39] [40] [41] .

Ÿ 2005-2010: evaluating the new field and the systematic work [20] [42] [43] [44] [45] .

Ÿ Since 2010: strongly driving research in this field [17] [46] [47] [48] [49] .

Another kind of categorization of the field represents the TLCC model which was derived from the analysis of the history of examining the cultural aspects in HCI design and contains four levels of depth and thereby takes cultural aspects in HCI design into account [50] . This model shows the historical growth of internationalization and localization steps in HCI design represented by its four levels: technical affairs (T), language (L), culture (C) and cognition (C). At the lowest level, certainly adequate programming languages, representation forms and character sets (Unicode), etc. must be used (cf. [51] ). Technical aspects have to be adapted so that the products can be used in every country (for example, power supply). Adapting software to Unicode is an example of a precondition to process Asian languages at the language level. Adaptation at cultural level concerns country-specific aspects including format, currency, colors, modality, me- nu structure, content of the menu, help, number of messages, length of texts, number of hints, degree of entertainment or ratio of information to entertainment. At the highest level, cognitive styles that describe types of human thinking such as problem solving or making conclusions can be taken into account (cf. [52] [53] ). These processes strongly effect not only the functionality and the user interface of the product (i.e., monitor, keyboard, soft and hard keys, control buttons, speech dialogs, within a graphical (GUI) or speech (SUI) user interface, etc.) but also interactive behavior. In cross-cultural HCI design cultural and cognitive aspects must be taken into account in addition to technical and linguistic aspects of localization, in any case. However, in industry, the usage of internationalization concepts beyond the technological and language level has only recently been initiated (cf. e.g., [54] [55] ). Thereby, it has been suggested how to cross-culturally implement information systems [56] . Today, in industry at least technical and linguistic aspects are taken into account in designing products for other cultures. In contrast, the academic approach is predominately concerned with cultural and cognitive aspects.

Intercultural variables describe the differences in HCI design regarding the preferences of the users of different cultures [22] . “Intercultural” variables represent knowledge that can be obtained only by observing at least two cultures and their differences, i.e. doing intercultural research (cf. [57] ) to obtain relevant knowledge for internationalization of software and system platforms (cf. Table 1).

Hence, “intercultural variables” are referred to in cases where the intercultural research character for obtaining the values of the variables is meant and “cultural variables” are denoted, when mainly the usage of the values of the variables themselves (concerning a specific culture) is important. However, they can also be called simply “cultural” variables, because the values of those variables re- present knowledge for a specific culture (relevant for system and software localization). There are “direct” and “indirect” cultural variables affecting HCI parameters either directly (e.g., interaction, information presentation or language) or indirectly (e.g., via maintenance, documentation or technical surroundings). Direct cultural variables are the most important, because they have direct and essential influence on the design of HCI. Direct variables can be divided into

“visible” variables concerning surface levels and “hidden” variables affecting interaction levels, together mirroring the concept of the iceberg metaphor [22] . Both kinds of variables have strong influences on the design and determination of the usability and acceptance of the system. Visible intercultural variables concern presentation (colors, time and date format, icons, font size, window size, form, layout, widget position like the position of navigation bar) and language (font, direction of writing, naming) level of a product (appearing above “water surface” in the iceberg metaphor). They can be recognized very easily because they are directly accessible and less determined by cultural context. Non-visible or “hidden” intercultural variables (below the “water surface”) affect dialog design (menu structure and complexity, changing of dialog form, layout, widget positions, information presentation speed, frequency of changing dialogs, screen transitions) and interaction design (navigation concept, system structure, interaction path, interaction speed, usage of navigation bar, etc.) which have strong correlations to the cultural context. These variables concern the interaction and dialog level of a product and need high research priority (e.g. using special tools as suggested by [58] ). Cultural variables can be used to develop an approach for the design of intercultural human-machine systems using the “method of culture-oriented design” (MCD) according to [22] : 108 as presented in Figure 2.

The MCD integrates factors from established concepts of culture-oriented design into existing concepts of HMI design. Thereby, knowledge about cultural differences is integrated into existing methods. To include intercultural aspects in human-machine interaction, a simplified version of this method will be applied in this work

To make cultural dimensions available for user interface design, [18] developed characteristic factors for user interfaces and gives examples that can have an effect on user interface design. The user interface characteristics “metaphor”, “mental model”, “navigation”, “interaction” and “presentation” are connected to the five cultural dimensions of Hofstede. However, Marcus used a purely deductive approach to obtain these connections. Many possible recommendations for web design have been derived by [59] mainly from Hofstede’s knowledge without empirical foundation of all connections. Therefore, this formulated model still needs empirical validation (even if, meanwhile, there is some empirical work from Marcus himself, cf. [26] ). For instance, according to [18] and [60] , Chinese people (and hence users) are rather relationship and family oriented based on traditional powerful social hierarchical structures. In contrast, German users are described as event oriented regarding acts, tools, work, jobs and competition. Some tendencies regarding cultural differences can be used for the intercultural user interface design and further reflections and research. Table 2 shows a sum- mary of general recommendations for intercultural user interface design based on [22] .

Based on the work of [9] [61] [62] and own studies [17] [58] [63] [64] [65] [66] , the author introduced the concept of HCI dimensions to support the determination of the relationship between culture and HCI [17] . HCI dimensions (HCIDs) describe the “style of information processing” and the “interactional characteristics” of the user with the system. HCIDs are derived from the basic physical dimensions of space and time as well as from their sub-dimensions frequency, speed, duration, density and order) (cf. Table 3).

HCIDs represent the characteristics of HCI by describing the HCI style of the user, i.e. the path of information processing and the interaction style exhibited

by the user based on the concepts of “information” and “interaction” according to HCI dialogs that are characterized by transmitting pieces of information during user system interaction (cf. [67] ).

Frequency, density, order and structure are concerned particularly during information processing; frequency and speed are concerned during interaction behavior. HCI dimensions can be regarded as the main factors relevant for HCI design, because they denote the basic classes for variables useful in HCI design. The view of space, time and mental aspects is strongly culture dependent (cf. [8] ). HCI is, therefore, also culture dependent, because HCI dialogs, interaction, information presentation and with that HCI generally are strongly linked with time (interaction, communication) and space (layout, structure) as well as with mental aspects (relations, thoughts) (cf. [3] [68] [69] ). At least one potential indicator as a measurement variable is necessary to constitute the specifics of an HCI dimension. Table 4 shows examples of indicators for some HCI dimensions.

For example, the indicator “number of information units per space unit” belongs to the HCI dimension “information density” and can be expressed by the number of words displayed on the screen. The HCI dimension “interaction frequency” contains the variable “number of interactions per time unit” represent- ed by the number of mouse clicks per second.

The usability of a system strongly depends on how the user can cope with the system. This knowledge can be obtained “simply” by ob-serving and asking the user during his interactions with the system. In this case the user articulates his desires and hence his needs regarding the usability of the system. This is trivial and easy, but unfortunately, this method is applied far too little in industrial HCI design even today. This is critical because, if that knowledge is missing in the final product, it will not be wanted by the user: the customer (user) cannot use it because important features are missing or it takes too long to do a certain task using this system because of wrong design.

The preconditions for intercultural usability engineering are knowledge about the cultural differences in HCI and its considerations in product design and product realization (cf. [3] [63] [69] ). In addition to the common misunderstandings between developers and users, which lead to different product design, there are also misunderstandings because of cultural conditions. There is not only a different comprehension of the requirements of the product but also culturally dependent perspectives and views of them (cf. [70] ). Hence, the developer needs much intercultural knowledge to understand a user from another culture. Furthermore, he needs competency regarding intercultural communication to enable the exchange of information with the user and to know exactly which product the user is likely to have (cf. [71] [72] ). With this in mind, [21] presented an empirical study for the development of a framework for the elicitation of cultural influence in product usage to take into account culture and context in HCI design. [73] investigated the impact of culture and gender on web sites. [74] studied the influence of culture in global software engineering by thinking in terms of cultural models. [75] did an empirical study concerning the organizational, cultural and technological use in a developing country.

“Intercultural” usability engineering is a method for designing products of good usability for users from different cultures [3] . The term “intercultural usability engineering” is commonly used by German usability engineers [16] . “Intercultural” in this context refers to the special methods that are necessary to do usability engineering for different cultures [57] . Bad or lacking intercultural usability engineering within the development process of the product increases the development and maintenance costs through requests for change. Detailed analysis of product requirements can save up to 80% of maintenance and implementation costs of such requests for change [76] . Therefore, intercultural HCI design must already begin with the analysis of requirements before starting the design in order to avoid a reduction of the fit between user and product if products of one culture are used in another (cf. [77] [78] [79] ). At the collection of culture specific user requirements and culture specific assessment of the concepts used, it must be determined how far approved methods of usability engineering are suitable. The existing cultural models should be taken into account in the process of product design in the context of intercultural usability engineering. First, the product developers must be sensitized to the difficulties of cultural influences on product development and product use. Then cultural factors influencing HCI must be provided to the developers and integrated into the product. Finally, the procedures, which serve to capture the knowledge acquired in concrete product design, must be institutionalized.

After the pioneer research of [79] , several researchers have invested a great deal of effort to determine the best methods and settings to test the usability and user experience in cultural contexts. There is research to study cross cultural think-aloud usability testing to make some suggestions for an experimental paradigm [42] . Moreover, usability constructs are investigated by doing a cross- cultural study of how users and developers experience their use of information systems [80] . The differences in usability testing in three countries as well as the interaction design and usability from an Indian perspective was described by [81] . In addition, the influence of cultural background on non-verbal communication in a usability testing situation was investigated [82] and [83] interpreted cross-cultural usability evaluation based on a case study of a hypermedia system for rare species management in Namibia. The situating media in the transfer of rural knowledge in Africa to enfranchise indigenous rural people is research by [84] . Most of these results of the mentioned research were discussed at a workshop in the frame of the conference “Interact 2011” [46] . The results of the workshop on the international comprehension of usability the application of usability methods were published by [85] . Finally, there is the trend to work on methods to take cross-cultural differences into account in design in general [86] .

The number of studies supporting the importance of taking cultural aspects into account in user interface design has been growing steadily since about 2000 (e.g., [87] [88] ). However, there is relatively little literature and there are few guidelines for intercultural dialog and design for interaction (cf. [88] [27] ) and very few especially for driver navigation systems (e.g., [90] ). Most studies concern the presentation of information on web pages (e.g., [91] - [98] ). Even though there are already the first pragmatic guidelines for intercultural web design [59] or intercultural HCI design [1] , there are none for intercultural user interface design in specific domains such as driver navigation systems that could be used easily and effectively by HCI designers in this area. This is also supported by the overview of [99] as well as [100] presenting many activities and models for intercultural website design. There are little insights regarding interactive design, as the overview of [45] regarding intercultural information design shows? even if, for a short time, there have also been studies examining stand-alone systems and applications other than web applications (e.g., [27] [89] [101] [102] ).

The cultural influences on the values of visible cultural variables of HCI is proven empirically in the literature on internationalization and partly implemented in products (cf. [28] [103] ) regarding surface level (presentation of information, speech and general design of machine) and functional level (machine functions, service and technical documentation) of localization. Most of these studies concentrate on “visible” cultural variables such as colors (NASA standard for colors (cf. [104] [105] ), icons (use of pictorial or abstract icons, cf. [22] : 135), date and time, phone numbers and address formats, spelling, typography, reading and writing directions, sorting methods (cf. [106] : 23-24), extension of texts, text processing, number of characters (cf. [107] : 77) and multimedia [108] . Also the cultural prescription and user perception of information architecture for a culture centered website was contrasted by [109] by doing a case study on Muslim online users. It was asked by [110] why social media can cross seas but not nationalisms while doing a cross-cultural comparative study of user interface in social media. The proverb “talk is silver, silence is golden” in some cultural context was confirmed by [111] via a cross cultural study on the usage of pauses in speech. A cross-cultural evaluation of the facial expressions of avatars designed by Western designers was performed by [112] . In contrast, [113] concentrated on cross-cultural differences and information systems developer values. In addition, [114] investigated culture and its effects on human interaction design with emphasis on cross-cultural perspectives between Korea and Japan. Hence, in the area of intercultural HCI design there is much research regarding the design of cross-cultural web pages and research of international product design (cf. international workshops of internationalization of products and systems (IWIPS)) as well as many guidelines regarding the visible areas of graphic user interfaces for the internationalization and localization of software.

In contrast, some cultural variables have not been thoroughly investigated so far. Study of the literature does not reveal much about research on hidden intercultural variables at the interactional level. Cultural influence on HCI at the interactional level, for example with respect to navigation, system structure and mental models or varying functionality has not yet been investigated in detail to develop optimal products for the specific culture. In addition, there is still little literature about the connection between visible cultural aspects and hidden intercultural variables for HCI design. The investigation of cultural differences in the information seeking process by [115] also supported the path to guidelines that available on building IT architecture [116] . Regarding different kinds of thinking, [117] proposed that the thought patterns of East Asians and Westerners differ greatly (holistic vs. analytic). Holistically minded people have a tendency to perceive a scene globally; they are more field-dependent. Analytically minded people are more field-independent because they have a tendency to perceive an object separately from the scene and tend to assign objects to categories. The relationship between cognitive styles and webpage perception is analyzed by [118] . Thereby, they studied and presented the culturally different behavior of eye movement. The different viewing patterns of Chinese, Korean and American people suggest that webpage designers should be aware of the cognitive differences existing among holistically minded people and analytically minded people, and that web pages should be designed to match the users’ cognitive styles in order to enhance usability. Holistically minded people (e.g., Chinese people) scan the entire page non-linearly. Hence, the design of content should show the whole context of the website and the harmony between the foreground and background as well as the relationship among all the content areas. In contrast, the webpage design should be as clear and simple as possible for analytically minded people (e.g., German people). They tend to employ a sequential reading pattern among areas and to read from the center to the periphery of the page. Hence, the arrangement of all content areas must be considered carefully. Category titles and navigation items should be named as clearly as possible since analytically minded people tend to pay more attention to these items and gain an overall picture of the website from them. [118] also intended to define the relationship between cognitive styles and webpage layout design. This indicates once more that most intercultural studies concentrate on examining web pages. Besides, [49] also investigated cultural dimensions for user experience doing a cross-country and cross-product analysis of users’ cultural characteristics. A cross-cultural study on how users and developers experience their use of information systems revealed differences in mobile Internet usage between users from Japan (e.g., high email traffic) and Korea (e.g., many downloads) depending on different value structures in Japan and Korea imprinted by culture [119] . Cultural differences in the understanding of metaphors applied in user interfaces were examined by [120] . Since the real world changes from culture to culture, the metaphors referring to the real world that are used in HCI must also be considered for the localization of user interfaces. Examination has shown that test subjects from different cultures understand metaphors differently and their expectations, which they combine with the metaphors, are also different. Moreover, an explorative study with French and Turkish users on an e-learning site by [121] improved the cross-cultural understanding of the dual structure of metaphorical icons. Hidden cultural variables in HCI design such as information speed, information frequency, and interaction speed and interaction frequency have been touched by [17] (cf. Section 3.3).

However, all these variables can still be regarded as an open field for research in intercultural HCI design because there is just so little empirical evidence for the results in this area. In this respect, much effort must still be invested to investigate and consider hidden cultural variables in intercultural HCI design.

The cultural model (iceberg metaphor) as developed by [11] is relevant for international user interface design. The relationship of user interface characteristics to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions was elaborated by [122] . In contrast to [123] , who generated a relationship model in cultural usability testing, [124] postulated a three-perspective model of culture, information systems and their development and use. Other authors based their approach on cultural models to study the relationship between culture and HCI. The influences of culture in global software engineering were analyzed by [74] via thinking in terms of cultural models. Based on the results of [17] , the author formulated reflections on a preliminary model of culturally influenced human computer interaction to cover cultural contexts in HCI design which encompass the relationships between cultural and HCI dimensions. According to the results of an empirical study done by the author (cf. [44] ), some of the correlations between the cultural dimensions and the HCI dimensions as well as their values were determined (cf. [17] ) leading to the concept of HCI style scores, which can be computed for the designated cultural group from the Hofstede’s indices. The HCI style score expresses the average degree of information density and frequency as well as interaction frequency and speed the members in the designated cultural group expect according to the model developed by the author. For instance, the lower the normalized HCI style score (ranging from 0 to 100) the lower the expected amount of information and the lower the interaction frequency. The resulting HCI style scores permit the establishment of clusters of countries that have similar HCI scores. According to these cultural clusters identified in the HCI style score continuum it can be expected that these country clusters exhibit a similar HCI style because of their similar cultural characterization defined by power distance index (PDI), individualism index (IDV), masculinity (MAS), uncertainty avoidance index (UAI) and long term orientation (LTO) (cf. Table 5).

These taxonomic results partially resemble the findings of [125] on “Saxonic”, “Teutonic”, “Gallic” and “Nipponic” styles. However, to generalize the postulated correlations many more studies with other cultural groups are required. To achieve this both the values of the cultural dimensions (using VSM) and the values of the HCI dimensions (such as pieces of presented information per minute, cf. [17] ) must be determined for every desired culture. This can be done for indigenous groups as well by exploiting the same use cases and test settings in the arbitrary cultural groups of interest. A test tool developed by the author can be used to support this [58] . However, until there are no other values for the cultural dimensions than Hofstede’s at the national level, those must be used to test the model. In addition, to further confirm findings, factor analysis can be

applied to statistically calculate the corresponding loadings to the HCI style by clustering Hofstede’s indices according to their HCI style score. The findings should refine the currently assumed rules that describe the relationship between cultural imprint and HCI style of a group (with at least 20 members). The explanatory value of this descriptive model still must be worked out.

In addition to this model, there are several other approaches towards a theory of culturally influenced human computer interaction. An explanatory theory for using management information systems in the Chinese business culture was developed by [126] . Moreover, [127] applied activity theory as a framework for accommodating cultural factors in HCI studies. Integrating activity theory into a usage-centered design approach is the method of [128] to cover environmental contexts, whereas [129] worked towards a HCI theory of cultural cognition. This systematic usage-centered design approach was extended by [130] o also cover cultural contexts by subjoining a cultural model as a new component. A theory of socio-technical interactions was outlined to explain culture by [131] integrating theory, research and application to understand culture. Using activity theory to tackle cultural contexts is very prominent (cf. [52] [128] [132] ). ADA and CMU theory was compared in order to derive a theory for cultural usability [133] . However, until now, there is no final theory that would explain all relevant factors necessary to derive design recommendations for culture-centered HCI design. This still remains a task for the future.

International standards for HCI and usability have been emerged and commented [134] . The user-centered HCI design process is defined in ISO 9241-210 and the emerging ISO 9241-220. ISO 9241-171 can be used to integrate cultural aspects to cover intercultural HCI design processes. In addition, the working team “quality standards” of the German UXPA (user experience professionals association) carved out a usability engineering process that can be extended by the necessary roles, tasks, methods, documents and work products, which are necessary to take cultural aspects into account and to fit them into any cultural contexts. A company culture audit was serves to improve development team’s collaboration, communication and cooperation [135] . The intercultural interaction analysis tool (IIA tool) was developed to determine the cultural differences in HCI at interaction level [58] .

The trend in research on culture and HCI is to verify preliminary models and theories by doing extensive empirical studies in various cultural contexts. Furthermore, the relationship between culture and HCI design must subsequently be elaborated upon in detail. The focus of investigating cultural differences will shift from the national level to a regional level and even to any other situation to cover all cultural contexts. Thereby, methods, models and theories will be adapted and improved upon in the near future by taking the results from many empirical studies into account to derive and optimize processes for intercultural HCI design and intercultural usability engineering and thereby establish international norms and develop tools that finally augment the international standards of research covering arbitrary cultural contexts in HCI.