CULTURE SPECIFIC OR GLOBAL DESIGN IN OPEN ONLINE DESIGN EDUCATION

DS 83: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education (E&PDE16), Design Education: Collaboration and Cross-Disciplinarity, Aalborg, Denmark, 8th-9th September 2016

Year: 2016
Editor: Erik Bohemia, Ahmed Kovacevic, Lyndon Buck, Christian Tollestrup, Kaare Eriksen, Nis Ovesen
Author: Van Boeijan, Annemiek
Series: E&PDE
Institution: Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Section: Emotions
Page(s): 336-341
ISBN: 978-1-904670-62-9

Abstract

This paper explores cultural variety between the design results of an open online design course
attended by people from all over the world. It describes global and culture specific elements within the
participant’s design projects. First, the concepts of global design (products that are easily adoptable)
and culture specific design (products adapted to a local culture) are defined. Next, an analysis of the
participant’s final designs and the results from a questionnaire shows that not many culture specific
aspects were found. About 60 % of the participants considered their designs as global ones. However,
some cultural variety could be identified regarding the participants’ contextual research results and
their design challenge formulations. The paper concludes with a discussion of the influence of global
design education, and a plea for culture conscious design education.

Keywords: Culture, design education, globalisation, online learning, socio-cultural.

Download