Dear Don and list

There is a saying here in Québec that a good salesperson would sell
refrigerators to Eskimos (who, by the way, call themselves 'Innuits'
instead; the term 'eskimo' being prejudicial...). One of the many possible
interpretations of this saying is that any (Western type mass-produced)
product would fit in any context around the globe, regardless of local
specific conditions and requirements. This seems to be the interpretation
you hold in your draft, therefore one may say you are promoting good
salesmanship...

In this post, I intend to give a different interpretation to the same
saying above. In partial agreement with both Jinan and you, I am here
attempting to go even beyond your respective views and submit a more
comprehensive viewpoint on Culture and (Product) Design.

Contrary to your viewpoint and a little away from Jinan's, mine stresses
the opinion that it is neither alone the activity related to artifacts
functionalities, nor only the aesthetics carried and conveyed by those
artifacts that should matter most to designers. Quite beyond preferred
aesthetics and activities performed by Innuits, a refrigerator in the
northern pole region could be first and foremost, and all together a deadly
risk, an item with possible multiple advantages, as well as a potentially
cumbersome nuisance. To me, risk, advantages and disadvantages, are the
only three features that constitute University level expertise in Design.
And all three features concurrently pertain to artifacts, crafts or
mass-produced, and they cover both aesthetics and functional
preoccupations. Aesthetics are essentially cultural manifestations in/on
artifacts. Whereas functionalities constitute, only partially, a
socio-cultural factor, in addition to essential being chemical, physical,
and biological mechanisms.

My argument is here stated in a reverse order of your disagreement points
with Jinan's post.

1. In the original post of this thread, I understood the author, Jinan, is
talking about traditional indigenous crafts as they are affected by some
foreign (Western Europe) influence with tendency to homogenization the
world over. Jinan's focus is on aesthetics or, more precisely in his terms,
"

de-contextualized aesthetic sense". Whereas you, in a salesmanship suit,
your detailed development appears to be just like another sales pitch, only
focusing at the surface of things, the Western traditional saleable façade
of artifacts. The Innuits will buy your refrigerator, not necessarily
because it cools down the items it contains...You may even be surprised,
the refrigerator bought from you may even contain those items that do not
need being cooled down...Other cultural bends may dictate different uses
than those prescribed by designers.

My point here is that, neither of you did touch the core of the issue,
which is comparative daily use of traditional crafts products versus
mass-produced products. For us, design researchers, the essential issue
still in need of thoughtful enlightenment is neither about crafts per se
(their production and use would be the concern mainly of Ethnographers),
nor only about the aesthetics (visual aspects) of those crafts
(Aestheticians would handle that much better). The issue of our concern
should neither be only about the functional performances (Mechanics' and
other scinetists' concern), nor only about market territories (the concern
of marketers and their commissioners expecting the highest returns on their
monetary investments) of  'mass-produced products'. As design researchers,
we rather need comparative studies providing respective stakeholders with
evidence of the most useful artifacts in any given context. That is
material culture, in need of all the above mentioned types of knowledge and
more, in a transdisciplinary mode of 'production' of such evidence. This
kind of culture does matter for product design.

2. On the "ontologically reversed design education", Jinan clearly makes
his point, first, in the link he provided: *
http://designeducationasia.blogspot.com/*<http://designeducationasia.blogspot.com/>;
and further, in other links indicated within.

Jinan's concern is precisely current design education, in India (and
elsewhere) that does not deal with the ontology, or the core issue of our
(humans) relationships with artifacts that we use to 'perform' our living.
To him, this performance, currently hindered by the Western type of
education, revolves around the interaction between our senses and the
surrounding environment. Jinan's focus is on this sensual appraisal of the
environment, the "Experiential Paradigm" ("Non-Codified Knowledge") that,
according to him, has been and still is being numbed by three other
paradigms, successive in the following order: the "Memory Paradigm", the
"Textual Paradigm", and the "Illusional Paradigm" (Codified Knowledge") (
http://www.re-cognition.org/knowing/home.htm). The *reverse* trend that
Jinan advocates is that of promoting education the other way around, from
the "Illusional" back to the "Experiential".

You might have visited Jinan's links indicated above, and read the content
by yourself. Nonetheless you confess that you have no idea of all this
means, "probably because of serious deficiencies in
my education and self-acquired knowledge", i.e. your culture.

My point is the following: yes indeed, your place and context of
up-bringing, education, professional practice, and socialization, together
with the resultant mindset, all these cultural factors do not predispose
you to understand Jinan's cultural reality of concern. This is easily
'sensed' only by those who have lived under any kind of colonial rule,
and/or by those awakened to/by the effects of current globalized world
culture. By all means and from all viewpoints, culture has a lot to do with
(product) Design, as you view and practice this profession, and as well as
Jinan views and practices the same profession..

3. On one hand, Jinan affirms that "homogenized design education" is
currently "destroying cultural diversity" in India (and elsewhere).

On the other hand, you "disagree that we are losing critical cultural
diversity" by using Western type only "mass-produced products".

My point is that we, three, are here talking about culture but in cross
purposes. Jinan is talking about aesthetics, meaning sense appraisal and
'sensemaking' of the local context.  Throughout the entire development of
your draft, one perceives that for you, 'culture' is nothing else but mere
minor formal and idiosyncratic additions to core universal functionalities,
that are added (by designers) and found as desired (by users) on every
artifacts in all corners of the globe. You are talking about decoration, or
style, with no impact of these on product fonctionalities that, in your
perspective, are the main reason of products existence.

As I am drafting this post, I am distracted by this reportage aired a few
days ago by one of REUITERS' reporters:
http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/china%E2%80%99s-deserted-fake-disneyland.html

My point is that, today, no one knows as yet the exact amount and extend of
potential harmful and detrimental effects caused by 'homogenization' of
artifacts, neither at the individual level, nor at levels of regions and of
the entire planet. Exclusively, only financial benefits and losses are
tallied, and to some individuals only. To my present knowledge, no attempt
has ever made to study further the accounting of risks, advantages and
disadvantages of artifacts, such as Disney land in China and others.
Aesthetics and decoration, either of local "craft" productions or of
imports or impositions, these are only some of the many aspects that need
to be assessed as well, along the same accounting of positive and negative
effects. We are here talking about other issues than mere superficial
"cultural differences, existing in governing social interaction, the types
of foods that are eaten, and stylistic preferences."

Through Disney Land and the like now all over the world, through this
'modern' (over) consumptive culture, we, the human species, are indeed
loosing fast cultural diversity. And worse, we are not being objectively
critical of this catastrophe waiting to happen. Only few among us have,
since a 3-4 decades, instinctively sensed the threat (the Environment
Movement). But the majority among us are still indulging in
over-consumption of the same, and most of the time finite resources! And
yet, like in the case of other biological entities on this earth, diversity
and versatility of the human species, in its physical and mental features,
are both proven the only key mechanisms to survival. Designers, as prime
experts in material culture studies and procurement, should primarily focus
on this pressing issue: how to ensure diversity and versatility in material
culture.

4. You also disagree that "the lack of cultural differentiation in today's
products have much to do with design education".

Design education that Jinan is concerned with, India being his case study,
it is the education in colonies. He is talking about an immaterial
artifact, imposed in India during the colonial era, an imposition still
pursued in current so-called 'post-colonial' times. The imposed British
model of education that Jinan denounces, according to his experiential
opinion in India, has been and still is stifling local traditional
education, particularly in the cultural aspects related to Indian
aesthetics.

In your post, you are precisely talking about the type of design education
conceived and practiced in Western and westernized metropolis first, and
then spread in different other other corners on the earth. This is the
education you yourself have gone through and still observing, experiencing,
and professing in many ways, as a metropolitan, and not a colonized person.
No wonder then that you don't, and you can't notice any 'ontological'
difference in artifacts as conceived and used through 'your' educational
way, now dominant everywhere. For you, they all are the same all over the
world, from the same Western mindset (design education), the same
"progress"/"development" Western socio-economical ideology, the same
Western industrial production set up! And you are thus convinced they are
'good" thanks to their functionally 'satisficing' attributes, those you
perceived first under the influence of your own cultural bias. In your
baised opinion, local kind of products are not fit for use, they shouldn't
even exist any more...In your post, local craft production is relegated to
mere folkloric manifestations.

My first point is that, here again, we are faced with the recurrent debate
on what is or is not design and designing. Does this concept covers only
functionalities? Or only aesthetics, either in the 'ontological' sense
and/or in stylistic (decoration, folklore) sense? Only the Western
conception? Or else there are many kind of design, in addition to the
Western type?

The concept of design I adhere to is one encompassing all these
connotations above, plus any others that may be related to artifacts, all
kinds of artifacts. As I often suggest on this list, the object of concern
for all designers should, in my view, be the USE of artifacts: meaning the
nexus arising from the interaction of users, artifacts, and respective
physical and socio-cultural contexts. Drafting, drawing, or any other form
of rendering of various idiosyncratic aesthetics, forms and functions being
at a second level, but not at all meaning they are of lesser value!!

Design education focused only on rendering artifacts aesthetics, forms and
functions, can eventually lead to mild "cultural differentiation" (often
for marketing purposes only). If this is your understanding of the concept
of design, then to certain extend I can understand the reason of your
disagreement. But if you espouse my view that, at least at University
level, we should be more concern with USE of artifacts, i.e. with
elaborating prescriptions for safe and more advantageous use of artifacts,
I do hope you'll then agree that such type of design education would indeed
promote cultural differentiation. Indeed, in addition to being objects of
monetary exchange, to eventually being holders of aesthetics features, to
being containers of functional imperatives, artifacts are also and foremost
prone to cause multiple risks to users, to procure to some of these latter
certain advantages, and to eventually cause advantages to others. And I do
hope you'll agree with me that perception of a risk and assessment of
advantages and disadvantages, particularly in relation to artifacts in use,
both are highly personal and cultural aptitudes, different and evolving
from person to person, and from different world regions. The use process of
artifacts is both aesthetics, functional (mechanical, physical, chemical,
biological) and highly soci-cultural. Really, culture matters indeed.

Yes, culture has a lot to do with (product) design. Neither Design is equal
functionalities alone, nor aesthetics (intuition, cognition) alone, nor
socio-cultural (exchange and politics) alone. Viewed from a less reductive
stand, design is more a complex activity dealing with "deep complex
situations"*, situation of USE of artifacts.


Francois
Montreal

* DELORME, Robert (2010). Deep Complexity and the Social Sciences.
Experience, Modelling and Operationality. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK -
Northampton, MA, USA