Hi Fiona,

Great project! Thanks for the link. I will forward it to colleagues who might be interested. 

I would say that jeans are a product, with clothing being a higher level category and cloth itself being 'raw matter'. But anyways, I am curious why do you (Do you?) think of the meaning that is enacted through the use of clothing as being encoded in a binary format?

BR. Lily


On 17.12.2011, at 17.47, Fiona Jane Candy wrote:

> hello Lily and all
> 
> So interesting to hear you speak of threads to describe the networks of ideas and understandings that 'weave' culture. I see that weaving too. And after all, textiles are one of the earliest forms of communication - their sensorial binary weaving codes are 'data' that is worn or used close to the body where the feeling of the material- its sensory social ideology- is absorbed by the body and then transmitted in to action during 'performances' of the everyday, for instance when eating, walking, sleeping, working, running, dancing. 
> 
> Following up on this discussion thread about cultural difference and product design, I would like to draw the list's attention to the Global Denim Project at University College London:
> 
> http://www.ucl.ac.uk/global-denim-project/
> 
> You will find here a collection of ethnographic projects that consider why one textile could be worn by people alll over the world. It would be so easy to make assumptions about globalisation and cultural homogenisation - but what the many  projects reveal is the different ways in which denim, a communicative medium that is worn on the body- is understood in different parts of the world- ranging from different age groups, different parts of the UK, to Brazil, India, Vienna, Berlin,Hungary - its a massive collaborative project.
> 
> (You can also see reference to one of my projects there from 2004 called "Personal Uniform")
> 
> I propose that more than any other material or made object (is this what we call a product?), cloth - as clothing -- allows us to be, or forms us to be simultaneously subject and object. And its binary code data is interpreted differently (and similarly) by the bodies that wear it.....
> 
> Happy Christmas all
> 
> Fiona
> www.a-brand.co.uk
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Diaz-Kommonen Lily [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 16 December 2011 20:01
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Does Culture Matter for Product Design?
> 
> Hello Don
> 
> From my perspective your post has an erroneous conception of activity as something that exists independent of the context in which it occurs.
> 
> Activities are patterns that are woven together with the threads of culture that can be local or global. In either sense, these threads are composed of (color, texture, width, etc.) discursive practices that emerge within communities and are supported in place--anchored if you will--through a diversity of social configurations. Artifacts, such as cars, musical instruments, educational methods, mediate between the subject and object of the activity.
> 
> I would not refer to driving a car as an activity. To me the activity would be Transportation, Navigation and the car being the tool or instrument that is used in getting from point A to point B. The result of the activity is arriving at your destination point, a place.
> 
> 
> The mass produced objects that you mention were at some point in the chain the result of design activity. It could be said that now that the template exists and that they are just churned out the production line, they are no longer 'objects of design'. Rather they are mass produced objects. Still, since it is part of the human lifecycle, the artifact in a way has a life. And even the most lowly mass produced artifact can be re-configured, re-interpreted, in a way re-designed in a local context.
> 
> Look for example the multiple local interpretations of the bus and tell me if the ride in these vehicles would be the same. :-)
> 
> http://flickriver.com/groups/1390561@N22/pool/interesting/
> 
> Is storing food in the refrigerator an activity? Maybe it is more a task that is part of the activity of cooking? Its hard to say where is the enclosure point...
> 
> Ok. So you can say that this is just a matter or "style". What is style? A pattern? Nothing more.
> 
> But then you miss the point because that is the point, that is the pattern. The question is not that there is a pattern but why this pattern and not another one.
> 
> Culture is not simply a matter of interaction, food and language. Culture bites deep.
> 
> For example, Finns always mention how one of the things they miss when they are away from home is the dark bread. I often have wondered "How does it feel?" To miss the dark bread… Is it that you remember the smell? Where do you feel the absence? In the stomach? Does it tingle? In the mouth? Do you salivate when you think about it? Hmmm….
> 
> 
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Lily Díaz
> 
> 
> On 15.12.2011, at 0.11, Lilly Irani wrote:
> 
>> Jinan and Don -
>> 
>> Thanks for starting this interesting discussion.
>> 
>> I'll be thinking about a fuller answer over the next few days, but I would
>> push you, Don, on the universality of activities. While some activities
>> might be portable, done in many parts of the world, some are not. The
>> activity of schooling your children in English has a very different meaning
>> in India, where English is seen as a global language crucial to the class
>> aspirations of many, than it does in Arkansas where to teach children
>> English is almost absurd to note. (What other language would you educate
>> them in?) Designing a system for supporting English language education in
>> India, you might link English to professional vocabularies, you might teach
>> students that there's a difference between American English, British
>> English, and Indian English that they need to watch out for when
>> encountering professionals of different cultures, you might design the tool
>> so it has interface translation in many local Indian languages since
>> English. You might talk about the legacies of Indian languages on English
>> to generate a sense of bidirectionality rather than imperialism in cultural
>> change. You might imagine that a tool for supporting English learning in
>> Arkansas might not even mark that it is English, but instead call itself
>> "Language skills." You might say that this is reducible to an activity
>> specification of English as a second language and English as a first
>> language, but that's not it either. An immigrant learning English in
>> Arkansas has wholly different needs and associations with English than a
>> Kannada speaker learning it in India (though calling English a second
>> language in India is also off-the-mark since English is everywhere and
>> interwoven with Indian languages in daily talk).
>> 
>> I think them musical instrument point works because it is a small object
>> that people can use in open ended ways, even when working at the level of
>> mastery. It is also fairly individualized. You can tinker with an
>> instrument without disrupting the social order. We don't think of musical
>> instruments as keys to being able to earn a livelihood or something taught
>> under coercion (though I'm sure they can be). But other activities might be
>> more explicitly social order disrupting, related to uneven global economic
>> relations, or have high-stakes and highly varying cultural significances in
>> different parts of the world.
>> 
>> There's a couple of abstractable points out of this exploration:
>> 
>> While the activity may look the same form some vantage points, it might
>> look different from other vantage points.
>> To a cognitive scientist, language learning might look like a set of
>> symbolic and environmental processes largely the same everywhere, or even
>> the building up on deep structure. To an immigrant, it might be a key to
>> livelihood and a distancing from one's home. Etc. These different
>> significances can also change the practice of the activity in ways that
>> matter for design. How far the designer wants to go down the rabbit hole of
>> being specific in their design is largely a choice of scoping and
>> roadmapping the hoped-for product lifespan over time.
>> 
>> Activities become portable across contexts because people/users make them
>> so by adopting. (The conditions of this adoption could be aspiration,
>> experimentation, coercion, etc.) To the extent that a Japanese rice cooker
>> makes sense to someone in Bangalore, it may not be because the activity is
>> universal but because they've chosen to adopt the activity of making short
>> grain rice. But a Bangalorean making short grain rice on a Zojirushi rice
>> cooker is less a statement of the universality of rice cooking and more a
>> statement of their eating preferences and also their often-intentional
>> affiliation with cosmopolitan global consumer practices.
>> 
>> I hope that helps! My own perspective is having lived in India for about 11
>> months doing my dissertation research on the cultural meanings and
>> practices of doing design (an activity!) in India, after having myself
>> worked as a designer professionally in the US for four years. I don't want
>> to speak for any Indians, but it is just the most recent context where
>> these issues where salient for me. My analytical perspective on this
>> question is strongly shaped by anthropology and postcolonial studies.
>> 
>> I'm sure others have very different takes too!
>> ~lilly
>> 
>> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 11:58 AM, Don Norman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> 
>>> Recently, Jinan posted a query on this discussion list about the role
>>> of design and culture. To be specific, he stated:
>>> ----
>>> My name is Jinan from India and my  research is around the impact of
>>> design education in destroying cultural diversity. If any one is doing
>>> some work i this area I would like to connect. This is a study of 20
>>> long years working with rural/ tribal artisan communities, children
>>> and design students etc. The study focuses on how a homogenized and
>>> ontologically reversed design education impact the learner.
>>> -----
>>> 
>>> I have long pondered the role of culture in product design. Jinan's
>>> request triggered me to write up my thoughts, which I paste below.
>>> Yes, this is a long essay because, after I get feedback from you, I
>>> will revise and submit it as my column on the internet design
>>> magazine, core77.com.
>>> 
>>> Although I disagree with Jinan's premises, I hope that this
>>> disagreement can be viewed as a positive critique and difference in
>>> approach and philosophy. That is, it is my intention that any
>>> disagreements are informative and constructive. This is how we all
>>> earn. I have long believed that I learn far more from people who
>>> disagree with me than from people who agree.
>>> 
>>> What do I disagree with in his question? First, I disagree that the
>>> lack of cultural differentiation in today's products have much to do
>>> with design education. Second, I disagree that we are losing critical
>>> cultural diversity. Third, probably because of serious deficiencies in
>>> my education and self-acquired knowledge, I have no idea what the
>>> phrase "ontologically reversed design education" could possibly mean.
>>> And fourth I believe that what Jinan is really talking about is crafts
>>> whereas what I talk about is mass-produced products.
>>> 
>>> Here is my essay. I welcome constructive criticism.
>>> 
>>> Don
>>> ---------------------------------------------
>>> 
>>> Note: my essay has, as Figure 1, a photograph from the bedding section
>>> of a department store. Alas, in this primitive, text-based list-serve
>>> technology we use, I cannot include the photograph. But the
>>> description above will be sufficient to understand the purpose of the
>>> photo.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Does culture matter for product design? On the face, this seems like a
>>> silly question. Of course culture matters. Just go to any good
>>> bookstore, whether a real, physical one or your favorite internet one,
>>> and look at all the books on cultural differences, teaching the
>>> traveller how to behave differently in the different cultures of the
>>> world, explaining the differences, and illustrating them. Why would I
>>> even ask the question?
>>> 
>>> In what city – or country – was the photograph in Figure 1 taken? It
>>> could be anywhere. I have a collection of photos taken around the
>>> world of appliance stores, restaurants, and street scenes. I sometimes
>>> use them in my lectures, asking the audience to state where the
>>> picture was taken. People respond with great confidence, but they are
>>> invariably wrong. Why? I can find store displays similar to that shown
>>> in  Figure 1 in Asia, Europe, or the United States. The English words
>>> in the background are misleading because English words are displayed
>>> throughout the world. My street scenes often display multiple
>>> languages. One scene, taken in Hong Kong, has less Chinese characters
>>> than pictures I have taken in San Francisco, New York, and London and
>>> people frequently guess it to be from Europe. So where did I take the
>>> photograph shown as Figure 1? A department store in Seoul, South
>>> Korea.
>>> 
>>> Once upon a time, when I visited other countries, I would head to the
>>> department stores so I could experience the wide cultural variations
>>> in such things as cooking ware, cutlery, and tools for crafts and
>>> gardening. The differences in knives, hoes, kitchen utensils and
>>> appliances. Today, I seldom do this anymore because all the stores
>>> look the same. Rice cookers and woks may have originated in Japan and
>>> China, but today they can be found in kitchen appliance stores all
>>> over the world. Italian, German and American appliances are for sale
>>> in Asia. Asian appliances are for sale in Italy, Germany, and America.
>>> The country of design and manufacture no longer matters much. A
>>> television set looks the same whether made in China, Japan, Korea, or
>>> Europe. The same for automobiles, cellphones, cameras, and computers.
>>> 
>>> When I go to design schools across the world, I find that their
>>> curricula and methods are very similar across the world. I find more
>>> differences in the curricula of schools within the United States than
>>> between Hong Kong, the Netherlands, and Italy.
>>> 
>>> Crafts are different than products. Crafts reflect centuries or
>>> millennia of customs and behavior. There are many books, stores, and
>>> museum dedicated to displaying and cataloging the vast cultural
>>> differences in crafts. But the subtitle of the marvelous book by
>>> Ranjan and Ranjan, of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad,
>>> India, "Crafts of India: Handmade in India," indicates the difference:
>>> Handmade. Modern products are mass-produced, intended for use by
>>> millions of people around the world. When we move from handmade crafts
>>> to mass-produced products, cultural differences vanish.
>>> 
>>> A few decades ago, I believed that cultural differences were
>>> fundamental. Moreover, they were exciting and interesting. Today, I
>>> believe that cultural differences are still just as fundamental and
>>> exciting but they primarily exist in governing social interaction, the
>>> types of foods that are eaten, and stylistic preferences. Modern
>>> products are designed to support particular activities, so that it is
>>> the activity itself that controls how they should be designed and
>>> used. Many activities are independent of culture.
>>> 
>>> Thus, the automobile, the rice cooker, the mobile cellphone, whether
>>> smart or dumb, the camera, dishes and eating utensils, cooking ware,
>>> refrigerators, dishwashers, and washing machines are all basically the
>>> same across the world because the activities are much the same. The
>>> same applies to office work.
>>> 
>>> Yes, there are differences, but mostly determined by factors other
>>> than culture. Koreans eat kimchi, highly spiced, and fermented
>>> vegetables. Traditionally, Kimchi was made at home and stored for many
>>> months, so they needed Kimchi refrigerators that could keep different
>>> batches at different temperatures. But the Kimchi refrigerator is
>>> fundamentally a standard refrigerator with drawers instead of doors
>>> and I have seen it being used in other cultures by non-Koreans who
>>> like the flexibility it affords them. Moreover, today, many Koreans
>>> simply buy Kimchi at their supermarkets, so the Kimchi refrigerator is
>>> either no longer being purchased or used instead as a flexible drawer
>>> refrigerator. In Wikipedia’s description of the kimchi refrigerator it
>>> states “They are also great for storing wine, vegetables, fruits,
>>> meat, fish and other foods because these refrigerators are designed to
>>> offer a constant-temperature environment so that you can store foods
>>> fresh much longer than ordinary refrigerators. They can also be used
>>> as freezers” (as of Dec. 14, 2011). It is the activity that drives the
>>> product, not the culture.
>>> 
>>> There are other regional differences. Some countries eat with
>>> chopsticks, others with other cutlery. Korean chopsticks are metal
>>> with a matching metal spoon (used for soup and rice). Other Asian
>>> countries use wood, ivory, or plastic – not metal. Some cultures
>>> prefer more ornamentation thank others, so that, for example, many
>>> Asian products have decorative scrolls and artwork on their face. When
>>> the same product is sold elsewhere in the world, it is often identical
>>> except for the removal of the ornamentation. Style differences? Yes.
>>> Fundamental differences? No.
>>> 
>>> People drive very differently in different parts of the world, from
>>> safety conscious, law-abiding drivers in the United States, Japan, and
>>> parts of Europe, to the free-wheeling driving style of other
>>> countries, where the death and injury rates soar. But the design and
>>> control of the cars themselves is still done the same way, whether the
>>> car is used in Delhi or Milan, London or Tokyo.
>>> 
>>> Yes, the culture of teen-age Japanese girls is very different from the
>>> culture of mature businessmen (salary workers) in Japan, so they
>>> demand different cellphones, but these same –phones will also work in
>>> other countries for teen-age girls and business people.
>>> 
>>> I conclude that when design supports activities rather than people
>>> designs will be culture-free, except for minor stylistic, surface
>>> differences.
>>> 
>>> Modern products are driven by activities. Today, products are sold all
>>> over the world. Designers talk a lot about Human-Centered Design where
>>> it is important to design for the needs of the person. Well, this
>>> doesn’t work when the goal is millions of people all across the world.
>>> Computers and software, phones and applications, automobiles, kitchen
>>> appliances, and household ware are intended for consumption by
>>> millions. Human-Centered Design can longer apply: what does it mean to
>>> discover the precise needs of millions of people? Instead, I have
>>> argued for Activity-Centered Design, where the activity dictates the
>>> design (Norman, 2006).
>>> 
>>> When the design is appropriate for the activity people accept it,
>>> regardless of culture. See musical instruments as a good example. Many
>>> are difficult to learn, such as the violin that requires an awkward,
>>> injury-sensitive posture and hand configuration. Consider the awkward
>>> fingering of musical instruments across the world. People learn these
>>> with incredible skill, not because they fit the body, but because the
>>> designs seem quite appropriate to the activity.
>>> 
>>> Should we worry about the loss of cultural differentiation? I still
>>> see huge variations in culture in the way people interact with one
>>> another, in the foods that they eat, and even in the ay the food is
>>> eaten. I relish the differences, but I also relish the similarities.
>>> 
>>> Does culture matter for product design? Not really: activities matter.
>>> 
>>> References:
>>> 
>>> Norman, D. A. (2006). Logic versus usage: the case for
>>> activity-centered design. Interactions, 13(6), 45-ff.
>>> 
>>> http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/logic_versus_usage_the_case_for_activity-centered_design.html
>>> 
>>> Ranjan, M. P., & Ranjan, A. (Eds.). (2007). Crafts of India: Handmade
>>> in India. New Delhi: Council of Handicraft Development Corporations :
>>> Office of the Development Commissioner Handicrafts, Ministry of
>>> Textiles.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Lilly Irani
>> University of California, Irvine
>> http://www.ics.uci.edu/~lirani/
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Dr. Lily Diaz
> Professor of Systems of Representation
> and Digital Cultural Heritage
> Head of Research
> Department of Media
> Aalto University, School of Art & Design
> Finland
> + 358 9 47030 338
> + 358 9 470 555 (FAX)
> <[log in to unmask]>

----------------------------------------------------
Dr. Lily Diaz
Professor of Systems of Representation
and Digital Cultural Heritage
Head of Research
Department of Media
Aalto University, School of Art & Design
Finland
+ 358 9 47030 338
+ 358 9 470 555 (FAX)
<[log in to unmask]>