It's great to read this. It requires a lot of energy and generosity to
learn in public in this way so we can all learn together. Thanks!

I would add that you hit the nail on the head in highlighting
standardization across cultures; anthropologists -- at least the most
recent, critical ones -- are concerned with cultural formations in their
similarities and dynamics of change, rather than just their differences.
But this standardization has sometimes come through mass-production, trade,
and various kinds of cosmopolitan travel, learning, and aspirations. But
other times, it has been secured through various sorts of coercion.
Intellectual property regime standardization is one such case.

For example, Ivan da Costa Marques has written about Apple's role in
asserting a notion of intellectual property that favored their business
interests in Brazil in the 1970s, killing the nacent Brazilian industry in
making Mac-compatible machines. ("Cloning Computers: From Rights
of Possession to Rights of Creation" in *Science and Culture*:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09505430500110887) These sorts
of IP regimes that link creative vision to final product are what certain
kinds of designers rely on in many places to argue for their own importance
when profits are at stake.

IP regimes that favor the rights of the creator tend not to value the work
of actually developing manufacturing expertise or having control of the
infrastructural technology closer to and open to the actual users of the
technology. (Such rights to infrastructural appropriation remain vital
today, motivating open source activists in Peru to agitate against Windows
machines as long-term, multinational corporation controlled gateways
governmental archives (see Chan, "Coding Free Software, Coding Free
States", 2004).)

All this to say that ideas about design and its value itself can rely on
other kinds of non-neutral cultural standardization that, while making
certain economic positions of design more valuable, also are implicated in
much larger debates.


On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 9:58 AM, Don Norman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 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"
>



-- 
Lilly Irani
University of California, Irvine
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~lirani/