Hello Terry

I did not think that our discussions had referenced the term 'culture'  in ways that are 'for' or 'against' or positive or negative, high or low,  in the ways I think you are implying. I certainly haven't been thinking of the little finger on the teacup qualitative interpretation of culture. Are you talking about being human? It seems to be at the core of human behaviour to differentiate - to be the same as some but also different from 'others'. It channels our energy in ways that can be understood and experienced as effective. It is our drive to make sense of living.

I have tried to relay culture as the 'cloth' we weave in the process of living.  Neither 'good' or 'bad'. My feeling is that the creation of culture/s simply cannot be avoided ...it is an inevitable product of living and of interacting. Designers provide much of the equipment - knowingly or otherwise for the 'bricolage' or the ongoing improvisation that weaves the cloth. Although, as I tried to relate in my story of the Malawian weavers, the cloth can become too basic for purpose, and the culture can become torn, or frayed, with no colours or patterns, no story to tell ... and then an ensuing cultural hiatus may take a long time to right itself.... 

How about:

"Culture is everything we don't need to do to live, but need to do to feel alive..." 

(I think this may be a quote but I don't have the citation)

Fiona
________________________________________
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Terence Love [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 20 December 2011 06:20
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Reflections on the Discussion of Culture and Product Design

Dear Don, Lilly and Jinan,

Thank you and all the other contributors to these threads on the role of
'culture' in design activity.

The discussion seems to assume that 'culture', 'cultural diversity',
'cultural identity' and other things cultural are positive, 'good' or at
least benign in their effects.

I suggest it is more helpful for designers to assume the opposite:
'culture-related factors' are typically problematic for designers. If the
difficulties caused by culture-related factors are not addressed, they
create, in human terms, poor design outcomes.  I suggest, that the nature of
cultural factors  and ideas means that  significant cause of design problems
and poor quality design outcomes is the reification both of culture and
cultural diversity. The opposite of what Jinan suggests and other simply.

Anything to do  with culture is essentially exclusionary. Cultural factors
always act against any design activities intended to improve social
inclusion - except for providing biased distribution of resources and
benefits to culturally-privileged groups.

The intention of the development of all cultural practices, habits,
routines, identities, knowledge, is to provide advantage of one group over
another. The idea of 'culture'  is a tool to legitimate saying 'we are us,
they are them and "we" will do better compared to them as a result of
establishing this cultural practice or getting agreement about this
culturally-defined set of behaviours'.

In the larger scale, rephrasing Napoleon, 'Culture is what stops the poor
killing the rich and taking the wealth off them'.

On a smaller scale are cultural indicators such as listening to 'cultured'
music, 'hanging out the little finger when drinking tea' and 'reversing the
fork when eating' that separate different groups in a single society to
shape in an exclusionary fashion the understanding that one group should
'naturally' have resources and the other group must strive and work hard and
if lucky obtain access to those resources. This provides incentives for
those in the culturally-privileged group that benefit to provide resources
to encourage others in the take up and reification of 'cultural ideas' -
that by feedback primarily benefit the culturally-privileged group. Cultural
identity provides the reasons for wars to be fought.

Cultural factors also provide the reasoning for why it should be that the
fighting must be done by those who will not  get the benefit  of the
outcomes.

Similar culturally-based effects adversely dominate interactions from the
smallest scale between members of families, friends and colleagues, through
organisations and neighbourhoods, to global institutions and national
interactions.

For those designing interventions and socio-technical designs for outcomes,
it is obvious that cultural factors are predominately negative and present
problems.

The negative consequences of cultural factors are obvious in almost all
aspects of the designing and redesigning business and other organisaitonal
structures and  information systems. It is especially obvious in design
activities related to designing interventions to support underprivileged
groups. Perhaps unexpectedly, the negative effects of cultural factors are
obvious in designing crime prevention strategies such as for reducing
burglaries: burglary and theft are driven by cultural factors relating to
'displays of wealth', pressures of advertising,  and encouragement of
ownership in spite of lack of financial means.

Standing back a little, it becomes easy to see that the same adverse effects
of culture are found in all design realms. Product design when viewed more
comprehensively  is a form of socio-technical design and subject to the same
analyses and theoretical structures. The link can be seen in the increasing
enthusiasm by designers and design researchers for the inclusion of issues
related to 'useability', 'sustainability', 'ethics', collaborative design
activities' and the like that begin to increasingly include aspects of
socio-technical design.

With this, however, comes the understanding as discovered in socio-technical
design and the various forms of social design, that it is important to start
from an understanding of the problems caused by culture and the associated
cultural factors.

In other words, this suggests one of the first questions a designer should
ask (and a core element of any design  brief) is 'How are cultural factors
going to cause problems in this design and reduce the quality of design
outcomes?' There are straightforward checklist-like design methods to
address this where the situation is 'simple'. Typically, with the
application of socio-technical design perspective, comes the understanding
that design situations are usually more complex (i.e. have more feedback
loops) than perceived via the design approaches taught in many design
schools. Collating and understanding the more complex effects of cultural
factors then requires more sophisticated design methods than usually taught.

This alternative perspective on culture seems to align with Don's and
Lilly's comments and is implicit with some of Jean S earlier comments on a
parallel thread.

Best wishes,
Terry
____________________
Dr. Terence Love, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI

Senior Lecturer,  Design
Researcher, Social Program Evaluation Research Unit
Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia
Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask]

Senior Lecturer, Design
Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia

Director, Design Out Crime Research Centre
Honorary Fellow, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
____________________




-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Don
Norman
Sent: Tuesday, 20 December 2011 1:58 AM
To: Dr Terence Love
Subject: Reflections on the Discussion of Culture and Product Design

First, I thank everyone who responded to the several threads on the topic of
Design and Culture. The replies have been constructive and educational. In
many cases, it is clear that much thought and time went into the individual
replies. For this I am very grateful.

For those readers who complained about the quality and value of this list,
consider this a dramatic counterexample. This discussion is an example of
the best that these kinds of groups can provide. Several differing views,
but discussed in a way to enhance understanding.

-----------
I read most of the contributions as critical of the major point of my essay.
I was not surprised because the conclusion I had reached is indeed a
controversial one. Moreover, it was not what I had expected when I started
my studies. But the critical essays made me rethink my conclusion. As a
result, I have a more nuanced view. My original essay was wrong.

(My refined view appears later in this note. I know that many of you will
believe that i still do not understand, that it is still wrong.
I, myself, am still rethinking it.)


I was impressed by the cogency and persuasiveness of the counter arguments.
We debated the nature of society, the role of mass production, the
debilitating impact of modern, technological industrialization and its
conquest of the world. We covered differing views of design, of culture, and
even of activity theory. Although I disagreed with some points, including
some of the characterizations of my own beliefs, I found that even when I
disagreed, I was still learning from the disagreement. Where my own views
were misrepresented, I thought that this was due to inelegant, imprecise, or
incomplete descriptions on my part.

Thus, I like to think I have a deep understanding of activity theory, having
spent time with many of the originators, in the United States, in
Scandinavia, and in Moscow, but this was not clear in my writing.
Moreover, activity theory, like so many other frameworks, comes in many
different variants, and the variant I primarily follow is my own.
No wonder people I thought I was misrepresenting Luria or Vygotsky or
Engestrom or .... name your favorite theorist. I wasn't misrepresenting them
but I was building on their work in my own direction. (I have published many
of these ideas, but incorporated within my books and other articles, never
as a clear statement of "Activity Theory.") Moreover, my argument that an
"Activity-Centered Design" philosophy is superior to a "Human-Centered
Design" one is orthogonal to the specifications of any particular Activity
Theory. (I have published this argument in the HCI magazine "Interactions.")

Although I am still reading and digesting the discussion, I thought it would
be useful to summarize the changes in my ideas that resulted from the
discussion. These thoughts will continue to change as I ponder the various
messages.

First, here is a rephrasing of what I said in the original essay:

---
The essay was focused upon mass-produced products. For these, I asked:
Is culture important?

I started of by saying "Of course. It never occurred to me otherwise."
But I then asked, "Does culture impact mainstream, mass-produced products?"
and my answer was "Not very much. Perhaps not at all."

I also addressed design education: "Does culture impact the way product
design is taught in the major design schools across the world?" My answer
was the same: "Very little, if at all." In my original essay I gave
examples.


A simplified review of the lessons I learned is this:

I may be correct in my assessment of both products and education, but that
doesn't mean this is proper. Mass produced products may be similar across
the world, but only because of then arrow, profit-driven view of
industrialists. Education may be the same across the world because many
designer professors are trained in the same few universities across the
world, so they all belong to what one might call an "establishment" of
people, all of whom have converged upon the same design philosophies. This
is especially true at the PhD level, given the limited number of
institutions offering PhDs in design.

The design research community is especially annoyed at my conclusions, for
this community has been heavily influenced by anthropology, so culture is in
its lifeblood. The study and understanding of cultural differences is of
critical importance. If modern products fail to recognize these differences,
then we need to change the products.

Finally, people's activities are highly determined by the culture in which
they live, so that even if they all use similar products, they create very
different experiences out of them. We should be focusing upon what people do
with the products available to them, not on the products themselves. This
focus will also direct to design products that are better attuned to their
real needs.


I conclude that my essay might have been correct, but I derived the wrong
conclusion from this. It was correct insofar as it reflected the practices
of large, multinational companies who mass-produce consumer goods of all
sorts across the world. Call this the homogenization of culture through the
lens of profit-driven, cost-conscious manufacturing companies in Asia, North
America, and Europe. Life is far simpler for the companies if they can
simply manufacture a single product and role it out across the world, bowing
to cultural demands only in minor ways, such as language (what is called
"localization" in the product industries), packaging, and possibly
marketing.

Is this proper? No. It isn't. It diminishes the richness of life, the
importance of historical roots, ritual and custom.

In some cases people can work around the issues by using the very same
product in very different ways, the better to fit their cultural needs. But
workarounds are never optimal. The demands of efficient manufacturing tend
to enforce a form of hegemony upon the peoples of the world.

--------
Jinan started this discussion by asking about the "impact of design
education in destroying cultural diversity." He argued, "The biggest threat
of modernity is homogenization of the human cultures." And he stated, "The
basic issue that I am addressing is the homogenization of all cultures due
to architects and designers creating artifacts and habitats with
decontextualized aesthetic sense."

I started off by disagreeing with this evaluation of the role of design. I
argued, essentially, that the lack of cultural diversity in mass-produced
products was a side effect of the growing industrialization of the world.

As a result of the discussion, I have now changed my mind. I agree with
Jinan. In fact, I would go further: he focused upon a "decontextualized
aesthetic sense." Why restrict oneself to aesthetics? Culture is more than
aesthetics. It is beliefs, actions, and activities.

So, yes, I still believe I am correct in my argument that modernization has
desensitized the world of product design. But I was wrong in thinking this
was natural and reasonable.

I am not entirely won over, however. I believe that there is much good that
has resulted from the standardization of practices across the world. The
industrialized nations all have similar views of legal obligations and of
what is proper and improper in business. As a result, we now have far more
industrial trade across the world than ever before. The same forces that led
to increased interchange and understanding among many nations of the world
has also led us to the path of rough standards of conduct, behavior, living
styles, and even dress and foods to eat. There is now an international
culture, common to many people.

Of course there are still many valuable differences among the peoples of the
world. And yes, there is still exploitation, inequality, greed and
corruption, but I think that one could argue that there is less than ever
before in history. (See Steve Pinker's latest book "The better Angels of Our
nature," in which he convincingly demonstrates that crime, terror, murder,
warfare, and torture have all decreased over the millennia so that today is
the best period in history. Best does not mean we cannot do better.

=====

One of my major concerns, addressed in many of my writings, has been the
cultural gap between academics, design researchers, and even design
consultancies and the practices of industry. The profit motive drives most
decisions in industry, which does not have time to engage in the type of
deep, thoughtful academic discussions we have on this list.

How can the learnings of this and other discussions be translated into an
actionable form for industry? Remember, their concern over profit is not
misguided: without profit, the company will fail, which does nobody good.

We need to figure out how to develop sustainable enterprises that also help
sustain the rich diversity of communities across the world.

What is my answer? I am still thinking, still learning.

Again, I thank everyone for the depth and insights of the conversation.

Don


Don Norman
Nielsen Norman Group
KAIST (Daejeon, S. Korea), IDEO Fellow
[log in to unmask]  www.jnd.org http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/
Latest book: "Living with Complexity"