CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN PRODUCT DESIGN AND PRODUCT USABILITY

In today’s increasingly global market many companies and designers are facing collaboration with international actors and hence with cultural diversity. Products that initially are designed for local markets will be purchased and used in different parts of the world in a different economical and cultural context. As a consequence, there is an emerging interest in the impact of cultural dimensions on the interaction between people and products, both from a professional and an academic point of view. At the School of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands a series of pilot studies have been initiated to explore cross-cultural design in practice and education. In this paper both the content and the research methodology applied are significant.

Nowadays, companies realize the importance of flexible and adaptive design according to local markets. A company’s failure to acknowledged cultural differences often limits its product’s marketability. Therefore, a number of global companies already started to develop methods and projects to study cross-cultural aspects.

While research on cultural aspects traditionally has been the area of anthropology and sociology, the focus on the interaction with the material world has woken up the design disciplines to take part in these studies. As a specific area within cultural studies the interaction between people and products as a cultural phenomenon has hardly been described yet. Models of cultural dimensions such as the ones of Geert Hofstede and Edward T. Hall have been extensively applied in research in the field of cross-cultural teamwork and communications and also of web interface design. Existing cultural models, however, do not provide extensive information about how it can be applied in a meaningful way to product design.

For that reason, a series of pilot studies have been initiated to explore cross-cultural design in practice and education. Understanding the needs, tasks and environments of the people for whom products are designed is the key for cross-cultural product design. This is reflected in the research projects of the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. In the paper a number of these studies will be presented as examples.