How Culture Influences Design?
Samanth Kasa, UX Researcher at Hureo UX Research Company
Introduction:
Culture is a way of life, whereas design implies planning to develop products for ease of living. Culture and design can’t be separated and are moving collectively from ancient human civilizations to the current world. Over the past several decades, there has been a growing interest in how culture is shaping the design research and the making of things. Culture includes a shared set of values, which comprises human behaviour, material culture and social conditions which encourages the designers to build products with sensitivity to people’s lived experience.
Key words: — Product design, Culture, Marketing, HCI, Human behaviour, Cross culture.
In this article, we will discuss how the culture influences the design of both intangible (software) and tangible (physical) products in the prospect of Indian culture.
Cultural factors that influence design:
- Languages: Language plays a significant role in the design process, language is key to reach masses you wish for. In a country like India with almost 22 official languages, it is very important for one to understand the diversity and the influence of the language. There are various apps like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Tiktok, PhonPe etc.who are providing their features to be available in multiple languages and they have touched the masses also.
2. Localization:Understanding the local terminology is very crucial in the design process. Apps like Healthifyme came up to provide a calorie count of Indian food items, they have observed that most of the other existing calories count apps on the market are lacking Indian food items. So, they started using the local terms like “Roti/chapati” instead of “bread”, and“Idli” instead of “Rice cakes” on their app. They have a complete calorie count of all Indian foods from North Indian to South Indian cuisine. This kind of localization assists the users to quickly access and get their needs on the app.
3. Knowing the social conditions: Understanding people’s conditions and requirements are also very important in the design process. Paytm, a payment app in India has found that many of the sellers are uneducated and can’t understand the payment process, also unable to trust the confirmation manifested by the consumer. They came with a brilliant idea of voice confirmation of the payment through Paytm Soundbox. This encouraged many sellers from various backgrounds such as old age people, housewives, small vendors who run stores across India to trust the payment method. These design ideas will fill the trust deficiency between the users and the app.
4. Knowing the sensitivity: In countries like India people are very sensitive and particular with their communities. Understanding this culture sensitivity, matrimonial platforms like Shaadi.com and community matrimony sites no only have separate categories (Regional, Religion, Caste) in their sites and but also separate community matrimonial sites for the users
5. Knowing practices: Knowing people’s practices and customs is quite essential in designing products. For example, McDonald’s, which is one of the world’s largest fast-food chains, has more than 400+ outlets running in India. McDonald’s famous for its hamburgers across several countries doesn’t serve beef or pork products in the Indian Mcdonald’s, this is because in India as Hindus don’t eat beef and they consider eating them as a grave sin similarly Muslims don’t eat pork. So, respecting the people sentiments the McDonald’s India mentions in their website (mcdonaldsinindia.com), that not only is there no beef, there are no pork or their byproducts in any of thier restaurants in India.
From the above examples we can see how the culture impacts the design process and brings new products into the market.
Conclusion:
As design continues to grow, it must benefit from the cultural trends to bridge the developing trends in the business. It is only when design meets the culture, it reaches the point of understanding human behaviour in full potential in the world of design.
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