Software Usability Challenges for Native Arab Users

This paper investigates the usability of Arabic Interfaces for native Arab speakers across different age groups. There is a lack of studies in the literature, which test the efficiency of current Arabic Interfaces and their adoption amongst Arab users. This research provides a detailed investigation of the factors that may affect the judgment of Arab users when using Arabic Interfaces. The research also strives to develop appropriate usability guidelines that can help designers to develop usable and attractive Arabic Interfaces. In this quantitative research, participants interacted with different Arabic Interfaces and then completed a questionnaire. The questionnaire used to collect perceptions and experiences of using Arabic Interfaces. Participants in this research were native Arab users of software interface in UAE. Findings show that most important usability factors is Ease of Understanding Factor, the second most important usability factors is Satisfaction then Ease of Navigation and finally Ease of Use factor. Moreover the research presented a set of recommendations to government, developers and industry to follow in order to enhance the use of Arabic language in software interface.