Cultural Values and Products

This book addresses the relationship between designers’ cultural values and product concepts. Industrial designers are expected to have a thorough understanding of user needs and to incorporate those understandings into the design of products so as to satisfy user needs; however, it is not a straightforward task for designers to translate their conditional understanding into a product. The gap between product and user can be even wider when latent user needs, such as cultural values, are calculated into the problem. Therefore the meanings and functions imbued in products by the designer may not be recognized by users, due to the differences in cultural preferences of designers and users from separate cultures. In spite of the fact that user satisfaction has been extensively supported in the design literature, it seems that such an approach allows only a passive role for designers, who actually act as cultural intermediaries; that is, the designers' role is merely presumed to catalyze the process and match user requirements to the end product. Thus, the impact of designers’ cultural preferences is considered as incidental, or at least overlooked