Hey Don and other commenters,

I think we can identify several different cases to discuss which might help
us simplify the argument.

1. High level product design issues which do not change by location. As Don
suggested, a car here is a car there.

2. Product design issues which do change by location but for seemingly no
reason. As Adam suggested, light switches are different all over the world
and we don't really know why.

3. Locally driven product designs. Rice cookers exist in Japan, Korea, the
USA and many other places. They all cook rice, but they all have different
design features and all have different focus. Japanese cookers are designed
to cook Japanese rice, be small and inconspicuous and to be on most of the
time. American rice cookers (as far as I know) are often designed for long
grain rice and often have more other features, such as the ability to cook
other foods.

These are both rice cookers, but they are different. The difference is not
just style, it includes designed functionality, expected user activity and
their role among other items in the house. These differences are because
the designs are set out to solve different problems. The difference in the
problems, I would argue, is due to a cultural difference.

I think I agree that design is rarely directly culturally influenced. In
most cases where culture has influence on design it is minimal and often
indirect. Due to Japanese peoples consumption of a certain kind of rice,
their tools and processes for making and consuming rice are subtly
different than those in other places. This is not a deep set cultural
difference and may be due to any number of other constraints, but at some
point we must consider results of those properties of society to be
cultural differences. Traditionally Japanese eat short grain rice with
almost every meal, and live in concise houses – this is culturally defining
or culturally defined.

4. Items which do not (or did not) exist in more than one place due to
local particularities. As someone who has lived in a number of countries,
when I travel and am compelled to bring presents to people in other
countries, I bring little things which are subtly different or unusual.
Often these are small products for household use, cleaning or cooking. In
Korea you can buy sponges which come as a long stick and are expected to be
cut with scissors to the size the user needs. This is a subtle difference
but its not style it is about activity and the expected activities of the
culture.

To Jinan's original point, I think over time, more places will use fewer
different kinds of sponges. The best ones will prevail and our activities
will adjust to be suitable for the products we have access to. For now
however, Korea has a kind of sponge, which may be hard to find anywhere
else.

I think we should not look for fundamental differences, which Don suggests
there are none of. Fundamental differences may be those which are too big
to be influenced by culture or design in the short term. I agree that
design should be activity based but activities are different in different
places due to cultural difference. The ways those differences influence
designs are differences we can attribute to culture.

Mark Whiting
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phone: +1 (352) 234-4591
About.Me/MarkWhiting <http://about.me/markwhiting>