The influence of the designers’ own culture on the design aspects of products [Framework]

The product design process in industrial design is not exclusively controlled by such known physical conditions as structural strength, material properties, or production constraints. Rather, it appears to be also influenced by unknown and hard-to-manage factors, such as the designers’ own culture and values, their sense of connectedness with the product being designed, their emotions, aesthetical preferences, and other non-physical aspects. This suggests that designed products are the manifestation of variables known and unknown, controllable or uncontrollable. This paper proposes a framework for examining the influence of the industrial designers’ own culture on their works of design which, in our belief, is a prerequisite to later understanding the relationships between cultures, designers, users and products. An extensive literature search has revealed that in general such non-physical qualities of products as pleasurability, experience and emotion in design, and soul of product and culture are often overlooked or totally ignored in favor of the physical aspects of designing a product like usability, ergonomics and functionality. The authors of this paper deem that culture is one of the most important aspects of our everyday lives and argue that the designers’ own cultural values play a primary role in influencing the design of the product. As far as can be determined, the examination of the impact of the designer’s own cultural dimensions of values over different aspects of product design has not yet been investigated in industrial design research. This paper also submits that the integration of culture into the design process can result in the evolution of the process as well as in tangible benefits to product users.