"You are stationed in Ahmedabad for a short consulting stint, miles away from your home in New Delhi. Late one evening, your partner rushes up to you in your hotel, clearly in a state of panic, and cries out the following story:

I'm doomed. My parents have just called; they want me to go back to Delhi because there is a boy just arrived from America who wants an Indian bride, and they think we would be the perfect match! You know I love my boyfriend in Bombay. We've been together so long... but I just haven't been able to tell my parents about him. What am I going to do? My life is over!"

Is this a classic scene from Bollywood?
...Or an elaborate scenario for usability testing in India?

Actually, it's a bit of both. Apala Lahiri Chavan from Human Factors International, India, and Aaron Marcus from Aaron Marcus and Associates take us on a roaming tour of how Western standards of usability standing are built on a precarious platform of cultural assumptions.

Take think-alouds, the classic, first-order approach to getting inside the user's head. A typical Westerner might have no problem with a usability analyst metaphorically "peering over their shoulder" into the volcano of his mind; but in India and China, where class and caste are so embedded in the day-to-day social interactions of people, the mind is a much harder nut to crack.

Users will squint and sweat their way through yellow text on red backgrounds, and at the end report that, "the interface was very pretty."
They'll see a website crammed with meaningless links, pictures, and boxes, and say, "Wow, you must have spent a lot of time on this!"

So we need to think outside of the box. We need to remember to put users in an environment in which they are not afraid to express the best and the worst of their opinion. Sometimes this means bringing in the youngest, least experienced usability professional to conduct the interviews. Sometimes it means ditching the Likert scale in favour of "happy dolls" and "angry dolls" to rate a feature.

And sometimes, it means turning to Bollywood.