Culture Sensitive Design: A Guide to Culture in Practice

Description

Societies worldwide are increasingly interconnected through trade, migration, education and digitisation. This has resulted in a profound new complexity of cultural groups. Consequently, designers are confronted with the challenge of gaining a clear understanding of this cultural diversity. Culture is a complex phenomenon defined by an ongoing process of shifts in human interactions and experiences. In addition to the functional, technical and economic requirements, it is primarily culture that defines how any designed object and service will perform and prove itself: a process that largely takes place outside the domain and control of the designer. 'Culture Sensitive Design' provides an overview of theory as well as practical models and methods, aimed to motivate and inspire design students, practitioners and educators to get in touch with different cultural values, customs and symbols. This is in order to avoid mistakes that may be obstructive for certain groups of people; to enable cross-cultural cooperation; to learn more about the diverse and complex layers of culture that define who we are, how we think, how we imagine and how we create; and to open up the design space, thereby creating a tremendous source of new ideas. Richly illustrated with examples of real-life situations, the book provides everything necessary to generate optimal circumstances for the best design solutions to emerge.

Annemiek van Boeijen (Author) Annemiek van Boeijen graduated in 1990 as an industrial designer and after that she got involved in international development projects. She works full-time as Assistant Professor Industrial Design at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at the Delft University of Technology. In 2015, she defended her thesis 'Crossing Cultural Chasms - towards a culture-conscious approach to design'. Currently, her research is focused on the role of culture in design processes, with the goal of designing methods geared to support designers in cultivating a culture-conscious approach. She is initiator and co-editor of the 'Delft Design Guide'. Yvo Zijlstra (Author) Yvo Zijlstra is a graphic-, editorial- and digital media designer.