Three dimensions of lace: Reading the meaning of a traditional product from different perspectives

This paper examines the artifact of lace in three different contexts in Turkish culture: It is the product of a craftsman ship tradition; it is the object of lace making activity;  it is the signifier of the home concept. The aim of the  study is to approach to this artifact with a culturally rich  background, from different perspectives and provide an  insight to understand the daily social life. Focusing on  the ’meaning’ of products and artifacts, it is studied how  a product of material culture can transport different  meanings and be constantly transformed within the interpretation of its makers/designers and users/non-users.

 Design and semantics of form and movement DeSForM 2013

CONSIDERATION OF MATERIAL BEHAVIOUR IN THE CREATIVE DESIGN PROCESS: A PERSPECTIVE FROM STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING

The purpose of this paper is to examine how material choices are made in practice by structural engineers and by implication how material behaviour is understood. The research uses documents from recently completed design projects. By extracting specific design ideas and decisions from project documentation and categorizing them based on the type of material knowledge, (either theoretical or technological), and the process by which the decision was made, (either intuitively or using a specific design tool to verify), the authors wish to illustrate the role of material in the creative design process undertaken by structural engineers. The results reveal a complex interconnection between material represented as matter (as defined in the theories of structures and strength of materials), and the particular nature of individual materials as understood through technological knowledge.

ICDC2012 Glasgow

Designers Coping with Culture in an Educational Setting

This paper presents the results of a qualitative study about how design students cope with
culture in the i-do (international design opportunity) series of international design
workshops in Hong Kong. We wanted to learn three things. (1) To what extent do the
design students from different nations share common cultural values? (2) what difficulties
do design students encounter in this type of workshops, and what techniques and strategies
do they use to cope with (cultural) barriers? and (3) what opportunities (personal benefits)
do they identify to attend this type of workshop? The results and conclusions are based on
experiences of i-do students (69 in total) derived from questionnaires, semi-structured
interviews and literature.
The study shows that students easily recognize barriers that can be explained by differences
in cultural values, and that they come up with a variety of solutions. They need extra time
to understand each other’s frame of reference and rethink the design approach, rules and
norms for cooperation, the frame of reference they use to understand their intended users
and the meaning their designs may evoke. They also need extra time for personal learning
to adapt to their team members. We conclude that the discussion among students on the
manifestation of the design is underexposed and that there are many opportunities for
educators to provide them the tools and techniques that support them to cope with culture.
Students see international design workshops as an investment in their careers.

DRS 2012 Bangkok

The Aesthetics in Design and Cultural Studies

While industrial designers have traditionally advocated aesthetics in their work, with
evocative forms and materials, recent advances in design philosophy about “user
experience” suggest a deeper analysis. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore beauty
as an experiential aesthetic value, dependent upon user-product interactions. The goal is to
offer designers a valuable tool: a systematic, extensible model for describing beauty for
design, with powerful insights drawn from other disciplines, including psychology,
philosophy, computer science, and architecture.
This paper strives to understand the concept of beauty as a value of human-product
grounded in daily experience. Beauty is typically associated with aesthetics and nature, but
can the experience of an industrial product, like a computer mouse or a CD player or a
faucet, be characterized as beautiful? What does beauty mean for the high tech component?
Beauty becomes a vital issue as electronic, multifunctional products rapidly shape our
environment of human experience. They subsequently influence how people live, work, and
play—in short, personal lifestyles. To understand how to connect analog aesthetics with
consumer design products, we first consider the nature of experience, which may depend
upon the dynamic relation of three elements: attention, attraction, and beauty. We then
examine philosophical interpretations of aesthetic experience, using Ferdinand de
Saussure’s Semiotics, Gelernter’s Machine Beauty, Dewey’s Lifestyle Design and Gropius’
Spiritual/Cultural Harmony. Using familiar objects like the Hadid’s Future Faucet Design,
and Starck’s optical mouse, we bridge theory with application and identify four kinds of
beauty in action: Semiotics, Machine Beauty, Lifestyle Design and Spiritual/Cultural
Harmony. Thus, we learn that beauty, as it pertains to industrial design, transcends mere
surface ornament to become an emergent value of human-product that operates in
experience through human attention and emotional attraction.

DRS 2012 Bangkok

Shaping a Case in Cultural Product Design for City Marketing: Product storytelling for the former Tainan State Magistrate

Promoting tourism by attracting the interest of people to the local culture,
particularly through consuming experiences of cultural products, is a
current trend in urban competitiveness. Cultural products are popular
instruments representing local culture. They translate messages, narrate
memories and historical events, and establish an emotional connection with
people. The present paper explores the possibility of using cultural products
as a city marketing strategy for the former Tainan State Magistrate
Residence, which can be integrated with other cultural zones to represent
Tainan City. The Tainan City government registered it as a city-level
historical heritage site and completed its restoration and reuse plan in 2000.
However, no practical marketing strategy has been formulated to promote
the site and to raise cultural awareness among both locals and tourists. The
present study adopts an empirical case generated from an outing course: a
one-day cultural learning tour involving 61 student participants in the
former Tainan State Magistrate Residence. Many rich identifiable cultural
features were derived from the experience of the participants, which were
transformed into unique and irreplaceable cultural product ideations. The
findings of the case study provide a clear understanding of the dynamic
relationship among cultural products, city heritage, and city marketing,
which strengthens the potential of cultural storytelling through the design of
cultural products for city image promotion and urban regeneration. They
provide practical designers, urban planners, and policy makers a view of
the importance of cultural communication media through products.

DRS 2012 Bangkok

Culture, Workplace and Design: The office code unveiled

The global business world has shed a bright light on cultural differences and generated
extensive examination of values and behaviors around the world. Yet despite obvious
differences in the design and utilization of office environments, little attention has been
given to the implications of culture on space design.
Multinational companies, unaware of the cultural ramifications of culture-specific design,
often transplant workplace layouts from their home locations to other countries around the
world, with little thought to local culture, climate and employees’ needs and expectations.
The results can be workplaces that are unappealing, dysfunctional and stressful.
What are the key trends in workplace behaviors and design in different countries and
cultures, and can companies leverage this knowledge to design effective work
environments? How can workplaces be glocal: reflecting the best of both the global
organization and local culture? Can space help reconcile cultural differences?
To address these issues, the Office Code project investigated the factors that influence the
design of workplaces in different countries and cultures. An international team of business
leaders, work process experts, and researchers in eleven countries in Asia, Europe, and
North America worked to understand typical workspaces and work cultures in those
countries, and the implications of culture for workspace design.
The goal of the study was not simply to establish an understanding of cultural similarities
and differences, but to provide actionable principles that help create culturally appropriate
workplaces. This paper describes how we translated cultural insights about work
behaviors, values and use of space into workplace design principles. The resulting
framework provides the basis for understanding and creating culturally attuned work
environments in a global business world.

DRS 2012 Bangkok