IEEE GCCE 2025 Osaka - Comparing UI Layout on Usability and Performance

Ever wonder if people from different cultures naturally prefer different website layouts? This project is the formal follow-up to my earlier pilot study (“Influence of User Interface Layout on Usability: A Comparison Between Japanese and European Users”), and it is part of an ongoing series investigating exactly which UI design factors drive cultural preferences.

For this phase, I isolated layout as the core variable. We took actual government website content from Japan and Austria and built two prototype variations: a clean one-column layout and a denser three-column layout. To make it easy for human test subjects across different countries and time zones to participate seamlessly, I designed the usability test to be entirely self-administered.

With a sample size of 24 participants, the results actually challenged our initial assumptions. We found no significant difference in preference or performance between the one-column and three-column designs for either the Japanese or Austrian groups. While the questionnaire ratings for overall experience and novelty showed that cultural UI preferences do exist between the two groups, the data strongly suggests that layout structure alone isn’t the deciding factor. It was a great plot twist that helps narrow down exactly what makes a UI feel “localized.”

I had the honor of presenting this research at IEEE GCCE 2025, a sister conference of the International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE) in conjunction with the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, USA. Here, the presentation was recognized with the Presentation Award.