RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN USABILITY AND SUBJECTIVE PREFERENCE: CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY BETWEEN KOREA AND JAPAN

The paper sets the goal as understanding relationship between usability and subjective preference with the cross- cultural comparison between korea and Japan. Total 42 Korean and japanese housewives participated in the experiment where subjects evaluated their subjective preferences on 16 different variations of computer-simulated microwave ovens. In additions, subjects also performed usability testing over 9 different microwave ovens with 6 different tasks given to users. Subjective preferences and usability were analyzed by Conjoint analysis to identify relative importance of features. The results showed that, in case of Korean subjects, subjective preference has positive relationship with usability (i.e. aesthetically good product also showed better performance in usability testing).However, Japanese subjects showed the tendency that subjectively preferred products are not necessarily evaluated good in usability testing (i.e. god aesthetic is one thing and high usability is another). this difference leads the speculation that culture plays a role in balancing the relationship between aesthetic and functionality.