Design Discourse on Culture and Society

Just as the term design has been going through change, growth and expansion of meaning, and interpretation in practice and education – the same can be said for design research. The traditional boundaries of design are dissolving and connections are being established with other fields at an exponential rate. Based on the proceedings from the IASDR 2017 Conference, Re:Research is an edited collection that showcases a curated selection of 83 papers – just over half of the works presented at the conference. With topics ranging from the introduction of design in the primary education sector to designing information for Artificial Intelligence systems, this book collection demonstrates the diverse perspectives of design and design research. Divided into seven thematic volumes, this collection maps out where the field of design research is now.

Cultura: A Communication Toolkit for Designers to Gain Empathic Insights Across Cultural Boundaries

    - Chen Hao, Annemiek van Boeijen, Pieter Jan Stappers

Designing successful products and services that people like requires an understanding of the context and the aspirations of those people. Over the past decade, a range of methods has been developed to help designers gain such empathy. These have worked well when designer and target user share a cultural context. However, designers often find it difficult to empathize with the user insights of individuals from a culture beyond their first-hand experience. To help designers step beyond this limitation, those user insights need to be placed in a larger understanding of the cultural context. In this paper, we present Cultura: a toolkit that uses nine cultural aspects based on cultural models, informing designers about user insights in a broader cultural context. The toolkit was evaluated in design sessions with four design teams. The findings indicate that Cultura provides inspiration and motivation for designers to gain empathic insights into users beyond their own cultural boundaries and to make effective designs for people.

Graphic Designers as Cultural Innovators: Case Studies of Henry Steiner and Kan Tai Keung

•       Tian Yao, Ilpo Koskinen

It is common to see graphic design copies of foreign models or other Chinese designers. These designers are apathetic toward the work and neglect its ongoing challenges, including the need for constant innovation. In contrast, there...read more...