Microsoft product reaction cards: identifying cultural differences from Hispanic consumers’ feedback

Abstract

Current research on Hispanic consumers focuses on Hispanics as a market segment, not their user experience, usability preferences, or cultural differences. Two studies evaluated the effectiveness of three versions of the Microsoft Product Reaction Cards (MPRC) tool in Spanish when capturing user experience feedback from Hispanic consumers. The MPRC tool (Benedek and Miner, 2002) is typically used by usability and user experience researchers and practitioners to gauge perceived desirability of products or services. Study 1 examined whether there were any differences in the feedback elicited from Hispanic participants based on the type of Spanish translation of the MPRC tool they were provided (direct translation, translator-validated, and user-validated). Study 2 examined whether experts in the field of user experience, usability, and design (typical users of the MPRC tool for research purposes) perceived any differences in the results obtained from the three Spanish translations in terms of the usefulness and richness of the user feedback. Results from study 1 indicate that the participants in the direct-translation list and translator-validated list were not significantly more satisfied than the participants using the user-validated list. Furthermore, translation quality ratings were not significantly different per translation condition. Participants seemed resilient to translation quality perhaps due to their bilingualism. Results from study 2 indicated that experts did not rate the usefulness and richness of the results higher for the user-validated condition than for the other two conditions. Nonetheless, experts felt they could generate themes based on the results provided. These results suggest that a translator-validated translation is adequate and comparable to a user-validated translation in terms of translation quality and ability to yield useful results.