Culture & Co-design Experiments

An assignment with navigation was conducted. The assignment consisted of a co-design exercise taking place in Faelledparken in Østerbro, Copenhagen. The experiment was a card ideation co-design exercise where inhabitants walking in the park were asked to participate. A table and all the equipment required (cards, phone, notes and snacks) were placed in the park.

Participants were asked to select three face-down cards, one out of each of three piles (one of the image cards representing Østerbro, one Norhdavn, and one an activity/event). Then, the participants were asked to imagine how can the three cards be connected? . The goal of this experiment was to open up for further ideation and get participants to think abstractly and reflect on the two neighbourhoods through open discussion.

In more detail, the experiment took place entirely in Danish as a way to be more sensitive. Also, most of the card images we chose had a title or a legend written in Danish. Hence, the transcripts were written in Danish (later translated into English). Other group members mainly led the experiment as I cannot speak or understand any Danish. Hence, the experiment's preparation, conduct, and transcription were almost entirely realised in Danish, for Danish designers and participants. As a result, I felt not fully included in this phase of the project, and it made me question how culture can be addressed in the realisation of such an experiment? And what role does culture have in the making of such experiments? I wondered, what if I want to create the same experiment tomorrow for participants of Chinese or Spanish culture? Would the experiment need to be modified to enable better collaboration and understanding among actors?

Likewise, through their study, Faiola and Matei (1) question how the cultural cognitive style of web designers - as reflected in the web content they design - helps users who share the same cultural background to complete tasks more quickly? The study concludes that the conception of websites is influenced by cultural factors, which inevitably influence their use of them by users from different cultures. Websites are faster to use for users from the same culture as the designer, as cognitive styles are linked to culture. As the cultural habits of the participants and designers determine their perception, what about when designing co-design experiments?

Undeniably, this kind of co-design experiment is eminently sociable and is therefore imbued with culture (2). Hence, this paper aims to point out the importance of cultural research and knowledge in the making of co-design experiments: cultural research is needed for an experiment to be relevant and meaningful in its context for the participants. A " cultural resonance " and adaptation to cultural styles within an experiment would help overcome cultural barriers and facilitate appropriation of both participants and designers.

During studies, ethnographic fieldwork was often addressed, as providing insights into the habits of actors and their behaviour, and is defined as a valuable step in the research process. However, ethnographic fieldwork cannot substitute for cultural research. The User Participation & Social Innovation class helped to understand how co-design is not a rare design pattern nowadays in service design, but how cross-cultural co-design practice is a pretty rare topic. Indeed, I missed a focus and emphasis on cultural differences and cross-cultural research when reading some articles from this course. Two articles, in which this cultural question was not addressed, will be used in the following discussion:

Participatory design & democratising innovation from Björgvinsson, Ehn and Hillgren (3): The article describes the role of a design researcher, which is to plan and organise workshops and experiments to discern different participants’ practices and explore future possibilities. The designer’s goal is to conduct workshops that put all participants on an equal footing, encourage exchange and creation to open up to multiple possibilities and identify hidden needs. To do so, this paper aimed to involve stakeholders from diverse backgrounds and minorities in the design process, and build long-lasting relationships to understand participants and discern their "matter of concerns". But how did they manage to achieve this? Have they researched and considered cultural factors beforehand? Have the authors carried out interviews with a cross-cultural concern? This article does not provide those answers and could have benefited from being more explicit regarding the topic of culture.

Engaging actors in co-designing heterogeneous innovations, from Jørgensen, Lindegaard and Rosenqvist (4): This study is about user involvement in a hospital environment and focuses on how designers build relations and engage actors in designing despite translation challenges. It highlights the importance for designers to be sensitive in their work by understanding the user’s environment. However, it regretfully does not mention the topic of culture, realising that culture is a doorway to understanding. Furthermore, one specific statement of this paper is controversial "Finding and identifying the actors, understanding their engagements, preparing them for the design process and setting appropriate boundary objects into play, does question the neutral role of the organizer.". If, as explained, designer’s role is to understand the actors’ environment and define habitus to build relations, a designer is never neutral and must have the ability to adapt to specific actors.

Collaborative design activities are affected by the socio-cultural context of participants, as demonstrated in A cross-cultural study of co-design (5), and as such, co- design activities cannot be conducted in the same way in different contexts. For Carine Lallemand, a cross- cultural studies expert, the cultural context plays a considerable role in design projects as it impacts the felt experience of users (2). Consequently, the Hospital Case (4) article would have benefited from addressing the topic of cultural context, as the authors’ main interest was to attract the curiosity of participants to obtain more volunteers for interviews and build stronger relationships with them. Moreover, the Cultural context & Service Design paper (6) adds that cultural context influences the perceived value of innovation and, therefore, desirability.

A social innovation influences societal transition, and as societal transitions are by definition imbued with culture, every innovation has to be culturally sensitive. The Participatory design & democratising innovation paper (3) explains that one of a designer’s challenges is implementing active investigation approaches to build more democratically-oriented innovation environments. Nevertheless, the article could have gone further by demonstrating that a democratically-oriented innovation environment goes through the understanding of culture. Indeed, the acceptance of a service and design activities depends on the designer’s capability to observe and interpret cultures, as culture influences the way people behave (2).

In the Hospital Case study (4), preliminary knowledge creation is shown to be necessary. The study illustrates that "speaking the language" of the users is a need for designers, that they need to discover the hidden language by understanding the users’ environment. However, culture is not mentioned anywhere in this article. Of course, designers need to unveil users’ hidden language but not only. They also need to unveil the users’ hidden rules and customs; having an understanding of the environment alone is not enough to achieve this.

If the experiment is not culturally appropriately approached, the results will not be correct, nor will the transcript. Indeed, one example is that participants’ answers can be biased, and some tend to look for the right answer and behaviour instead of expressing themselves (2).

Through her thesis, Lallemand (2) explains that the study of human cognitive processes is crucial when designing user experiences with artefacts. Her postulate is based on the need to adapt the tools to the studied populations to take into account cultural differences. In the same way, the Cultural context & Service Design paper (6) demonstrates that cultural factors moderate user response, which echoes Faiola and Matei’s paper (1), where users respond faster to questions when using web content created by designers from their own culture.

To begin with, an in situ analysis of Danish participants would make it possible to understand the specific constraints of the country and to target the experiment to participants better. Understand participants’ relationship to time, space, religion, work and others. If culture had been a key focus of this experiment, the place and spacial organisation, the visual card choices, the instructions, the choice of questions, etc, all those culturally imbued criteria would be critical for designers to consider.

In a more detailed-oriented way, understanding cultural differences is understanding that the connotation of the same image or colour can be radically different from one country to another. For instance, in Chinese culture, the colour white represents death, and in South American culture, purple is associated with mourning.

Similarly, if numbers had to be used in this experiment, they should have been interpreted with great care. For example, the number four in Chinese culture is an unlucky number as it is associated with death - both words "four" and "death" are pronounced the same way. It is then possible to emit the hypothesis that among numbered cards, the card bearing the number four is likely not to be chosen by Chinese participants, which would bias the experiment somehow.

Furthermore, the pictures used on the cards would have to change depending on the target participants (for example, here, a danish meme of Østerbro has a high risk of not being understood by non-danish participants). The direction of the text on the cards might change (e.g. for Arab culture). Cultural factors also influence the visual appeal of objects; the ideals and standards to which one culture aspires may not be appreciated by other cultures.

In the same way, not taking languages into account in experiments can influence answers and results. In order to avoid biasing the results through difficulties of interpretation or cultural misunderstandings, it is advisable to conduct the experiment with a local designer (3). This is what was done for the experiment, to reveal the possible hidden meaning behind participants’ verbatim. Although considerations are still to be taken, knowing that the work of translation and transcription will take longer and that the other team members will not be able to understand the course of the interview and will not have the ability to add valuable content. That is what happened during this project; as for the transcripts, a simple translation of danish terms clearly cannot substitute for a more in-depth study of hidden cultural values, rules and needs.

Cultural considerations should be included in the work of the service designer, especially for co-design activities. As globalisation requires a greater knowledge of how cross-cultural differences influence and shape the creation and use of products and services. Today's experiences have to be relevant to differing cultures; that is why it is essential to incorporate cross-cultural considerations into service design.

By knowing the differences and elements specific to cultures, designers can measure the differences and similarities of user experiences. Designers must consider cross-cultural communication to better prepare workshops and experiments beforehand, have more clues on how to specifically lead them and perceive what participants might be expecting from the dialogue and environment.

When carrying out an experiment for different cultures, a superficial translation of it is not enough; it needs to have the right structure and consider the social and cultural context in which participants live. As seen in UPSI class, a designer is a facilitator and a translator; not only a translator of ideas but also culture. Indeed, the service designer’s skills are not only technical but truly human and social.

(1) Anthony Faiola, Sorin A. Matei, Cultural Cognitive Style and Web Design: beyond a Behavioral Inquiry into Computer-Mediated Communication, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Volume 11, Issue 1, 1 November 2005, Pages 375–394, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.tb00318.x

(2) Lallemand, Carine. (2015). Towards consolidated methods for the design and evaluation of user experience. 10.13140/RG.2.1.4839.0247.

(3) Björgvinsson, Erling & Ehn, Pelle & Hillgren, Per-Anders. (2010). Participatory design and "democratizing innovation". 41-50. 10.1145/1900441.1900448.

(4) Jørgensen, Ulrik & Lindegaard, Hanne & Rosenqvist, Tanja. (2011). Engaging actors in co-designing heterogeneous innovations. ICED 11 - 18th International Conference on Engineering Design - Impacting Society Through Engineering Design. 1. 453-464.

(5) Yuki Taoka, Kaho Kagohashi & Céline Mougenot (2021) A cross-cultural study of co-design: the impact of power distance on group dynamics in Japan, CoDesign, 17:1, 22-49, DOI: 10.1080/15710882.2018.1546321

(6) Santamaria, Laura, M. Carolina Escobar-Tello, Tracy Ross, and Erik Bohemia (2019). Cultural Context and Service Design: Developing Critical and Meaning-making Capacity. figshare. https://hdl.handle.net/2134/24920.