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Designing “Culture” into Modern Product: A Case Study of Cultural Product

Design

Conference Paper · July 2007

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-73287-7_19 · Source: DBLP

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 Designing “Culture” into Modern Product
--A Case study of Cultural Product Design

*Rungtai Lin1, Ming-Xian Sun1, Ya-Ping Chang1, Yu-Ching Chan1

Yi-Chen Hsieh2, Yuan-Ching Huang2
1
Department of Crafts and Design, Professor, National Taiwan University of Arts
59, Section 1, Ta-Kung Road, Pan-Chiao City, 220, Taipei, Taiwan
2
Graduate School of Design, Chang Gung University, Tauyuan, Taiwan
1
[email protected], 2 [email protected]

Abstract. “Culture” plays an important role in the design field, and “cross
cultural design” will be a key design evaluation point in the future. Designing
“culture” into modern product will be a design trend in the global market.
Obviously, we need a better understand of cross-cultural communication not
only for the global market, but also for local design. While cross-cultural
factors become important issues for product design in the global economy, the
intersection of design and culture becomes a key issue making both local design
and the global market worthy of further in-depth study. The importance of
studying culture is shown repeatedly in several studies in all areas of
technology design. Therefore, this study focuses on the analysis of cultural
meaning, operational interface, and the scenario in which the cultural object is
used. This paper establishes a cultural product design model to provide
designers with a valuable reference for designing a successful cross-cultural
product.

Keywords: cross cultural design, cultural difference, Taiwan aboriginal culture.

1 Introduction

We now live in a small world with a global market. While the market heads toward
“globalization”, design tends toward “localization.” So we must “think globally” for
the market, but “act locally” for design. Designing local features into a product
appears to be more and more important in the global market where products are losing
their identity because of the similarity in their function and form [3]. Cultural features
then are considered to be a unique character to embed into a product both for the
enhancement of product identity in the global market and for the fulfillment of the
individual consumer’s experiences [10]. The increasing emphasis on localized
cultural development in Taiwan demonstrates an ambition to promote the Taiwanese
style in the global economic market as for example, the use of aboriginal music from
the Amis tribe at the 1996 Olympic Games which brought that form of music to the
global arena. Additionally, martial art movies from Bruce Lee to Jacky Chan to the
Oscar-winning movie director Ang Lee, have promoted recognition of the Taiwanese
culture at the international level [5,2].
The “Economic Miracle” of Taiwan was made possible by the hard work of
Taiwanese “industriousness and thrift”. In the OEM (Original Equipment
Manufacture) era, Taiwan’s manufacturers reduced costs to produce “cheap and fine”
products to be successful in the global market. After 1980, Taiwan enterprises began
to develop ODM (Original Design Manufacture) patterns to extend their advantages
in OEM manufacturing. Recently, product design in Taiwan has stepped into the
OBM (Original Brand Manufacture) era. In addition, cultural and creative industry
have already been incorporated into “Challenge 2008: National Development Grand
Plan”, demonstrating the government’s eagerness to transform Taiwan’s economic
development by “Branding Taiwan” using “Taiwan Design” based on Taiwanese
culture and aboriginal culture [10].
In the global market - local design era, connections between culture and design have
become increasingly close. For design, cultural value-adding creates the core of
product value. It’s the same for culture; design is the motivation for pushing cultural
development forward [4]. Therefore, based on the “Taiwan experience”, this article
intended to propose a cultural product design model and examples illustrating how to
transfer “Taiwan culture” to design elements, and design these cultural features into
modern products to reinforce their design value. Results presented herein create an
interface to look at the way Taiwan designers communicate across cultures, as well as
the interwoven experience of design and culture in the design process.

2 Taiwan Aboriginal Culture

Taiwan is a multi-cultural blend of traditional Chinese with significant East Asian

influences including Japanese and such Western influences as American, Spanish and
Dutch. Over time, Taiwan gradually developed its own distinct culture, mostly from a
variation of Chinese culture coming from southern China. Of course, the Taiwanese
aboriginals also have a distinct culture. The Taiwan Aborigines are the original
inhabitants of Taiwan, residing there long before the Chinese immigrants came from
Mainland China to Taiwan during the Ching Dynasty from mid-17th century. They
originally derive from the Austronesian Language Family. According to
anthropological studies of physical features, customs, thoughts, language, and verbal
narrative history, they are identified with twelve tribes: Atayal, Saisiat, Bunun, Tsou,
Thao, Paiwan, Rukai, Amis, Puyuma, Tao, Kavalan, and Truku [1,7,8,9].
Among these 12 tribes, there are different customs and material cultures from one
tribe to the other, particularly in different geographical environments. For instance,
the culture of tribes located near the ocean reflects their fishing based living, while
mountain tribe culture develops from a dependence on hunting [18,19]. However, in
general, traditional tribes have self-sufficient societies which are dependent on
agriculture, fishing, hunting and animal husbandry. It is very important to study
Taiwan Aboriginal totem art in order to understand their culture because of their lack
of a written language [9,13,14,16]. The totems appeared on textiles and sculptures and
can illustrate the culture itself. With their beautiful and ancestral visual arts and crafts,
Taiwan aboriginal cultures should have great potential for enhancing product design
value thus increasing recognition in the global market. By enhancing the original
meaning and images of Taiwan Aboriginal cultures and taking advantage of new
production technology, designers in Taiwan are trying to transform aboriginal cultural
features into modern products and fulfill the needs of the contemporary consumer
market.

3 A Cultural Product Design Model

Cultural product design is a process of rethinking or reviewing cultural features and

then to redefining the process in order to design a new product to fit into society and
satisfy consumers with via culture and esthetic. Using Cultural features to add extra
value to a product can not only benefit economic growth but also promote unique
local culture in the global market [6,15]. Therefore, how to transfer cultural features
into a cultural product becomes a critical issue. A cultural product design model
which facilitates understanding of cultural product design is proposed as shown in
Figure 1 [11].
In Figure 1, the cultural product design model consists of three main parts: conceptual
model, research method, and design process. The conceptual model focuses on how to
extract cultural features from cultural objects and then transfer these features to a
design model to design cultural products. The research method consists of three steps:
identification, translation and implementation, to extract cultural features from
original cultural objects (identification), transfer them to design information and
design elements (translation), and finally design a cultural product (implementation).

Fig. 1. Cultural product design model

Based on the cultural product design model, the cultural product was designed using
scenario and story-telling approaches. In a practical design process, four steps are
used to design a cultural product, namely, investigation (set a scenario), interaction
(tell a story), development (write a script), and implementation (design a product) as
shown in Figure 2.

Fig. 2. The cultural product design process

(1) Investigation/set a scenario: the first step is to find the key cultural features from
the original cultural object and to set a scenario to fit the three levels: outer ‘tangible’
level, mid ‘behavioral’ level, inner ‘intangible’ level. Based on the cultural features,
the scenario should consider the overall environment such as economic issues, social
culture, and technology application. This step tends to analyze the cultural features in
order to determine the key cultural features to for representing the product.
(2) Interaction/tell a story: based on the previous scenario, this step focuses on a user-
based observation to explore the social cultural environment in order to define a
product with cultural meaning and style derived from the original cultural object.
Therefore, some interactions should be explored in this step including interaction
between culture and technology, dialogue between users and designers, and
understanding the user’s need and cultural environment. According to the interaction,
a user-centered approach was used to describe the user need and the features of the
product by a story-telling.
(3) Development/write a script: this step is the concept development and design
realization. The purpose of this step is to develop idea sketch in text and pictograph
form through the access of scenario and story. During this process, modification of
the scenario and story might occur in order to transform the cultural meaning into a
logically correct cultural product. This process provides a way to confirm or clarify
the reason why a consumer needs the product and how to design the product to fulfill
the users’ need.
(4) Implement/design a product: this step deals with identified cultural features and
the context of cultural products. At this stage, all cultural features should be listed in a
matrix table which will help designers check the cultural features in the design
process. In addition, the designer needs to evaluate the product features, product
meaning, and the appropriateness of the product. The designer may make changes to
the prototype based on the results from the evaluation, and implement the prototype
and conduct further evaluations.

4 Design Case study of Scenario and Story-telling Approach

Taking Tao culture as an example, the Tao people are a Taiwan aboriginal people
who are native to the tiny outlying Orchid Island. The Tao people are traditionally
good at making canoes. The Pin-Ban boat shown in Figure 2 is a symbol of their tribe.
The Tao people live by fishing and usually bring the holy dagger with them while
fishing. Figure 3 shows the final cultural product designed from the Tao’s Pinban boat
and holy dagger. The scenario is that Tao people ride in their Pin-Ban boat and bring
their holy dagger to protect them and sail to the ocean for fishing. Based on the
scenario, the Pin-Ban boat was transformed into a modern bag and the holy dagger
into a knife-like modern alarm. In modern society, one can imagine a pretty woman
holding the modern bag and bringing the modern alarm to protect her while walking
down the street as matching the previous scenario of Tao people fishing with their
Pin-Ban boat and holy dagger [11].

Fig. 3. The cultural product from Pin-Ban boat and holy dagger
Based on the cultural product design model, figure 4 showed how to transfer the
original object -- ‘Pottery-pot’ from Paiwan tribe to design a modern bag. Different
cultures use textile containers designed for their own storage and transportation needs.
Unlike bags or containers made from rigid materials such as clay or glass, textile
containers offer flexibility of use by adapting to whatever item they are carrying.
Figure 5 shows how to use the Taiwan aboriginal garment as the original cultural
objects to design modern bags. In addition, figure 6 demonstrated the cultural features
extracted from Taiwan aboriginal garment culture and transformed into modern bag
design.

Fig. 4. The modern bag deigning from the pottery pot

Fig. 5. The process of designing modern bags from cultural objects

 Fig. 6. Various bags from the Taiwan aboriginal garment culture

5 Conclusion

In recent years, if you have seen BENQ, ASUS, DUCK, or other design teams on the
prize list of international design contests and wondered if there were Taiwanese
designer behind them, you would have been correct. Recently, Design teams from
Taiwan have become regular winners of international design contests. The capability
of Taiwan’s industrial design is coming to the fore in of the global design arena
through international design contests. Therefore, based on “Taiwan culture”, the
purpose of this article is to show how “Branding Taiwan” into “Taiwan Design” can
reinforce design value upwards. For “Branding Taiwan”, we must think about how to
use the Taiwan culture. For the “Taiwan Design”, we need to design “Taiwan cultural
features” into modern products.
The aboriginal garment culture provides a good example of applying cultural features
to design while still retaining a meaningful cultural value. This paper demonstrated
the cultural features of aboriginal garment culture and how to transform those features
into a new cultural product design which can fit into the contemporary market.
Cultural products, hence, can extend the heritage and traditional values of Taiwan
Aboriginal Culture to the consumer and increase the sense of spiritual essence in
human life. Perhaps the best way to extend Taiwan Aboriginal Culture is to promote it
in consumers’ daily lives through impressions made by the use of products such as
garments, crafts, decorations, utensils, furniture, ornaments, and packages whose
designs are based on that culture.
 Acknowledgments. I gratefully acknowledge the support for this research provided
by the National Science Council under Grant No. NSC-94-2422-H-144-001, NSC-94-
2422-H-144-003 and NSC 95-2422-H-144 -003. The author wishes to thank the
various students and colleagues who have contributed to this study over the years,
specially, Dr. J. G. Kreifeldt and Mr. T.U. Wu.

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