Intercultural Design
Intercultural Design
-
3.2.2026 - 21.3.2026 / Week 1 - Week 7
Dave Christian Moniaga / 0385630
Interactive Design / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Intercultural Design
Table of Contents
- Lectures
- Instructions
- Project
- Reflection
Lectures
Week 1: Culture & Design
Culture & design are inseparable, its important to understand both.
In a visual information culture, visuals are powerful persuasive medium
to provide information about the world.
|
| Fig 1.1 The importance of visuals |
Visuals are everything that can be seen, and everything produced by humans that can be seen. Individuals represent visuals based on their personal experience and way of life.
|
| Fig 1.2 visual meaning of tattoos from different cultures |
Sailors symbolize tattoos as a journey, Japanese symbolize it as societal status & devotion.
|
| Fig 1.3 Design significance using Nature Republic's logo |
An example when using the design system is ladybug as a symbol. In western culture it's a symbol of luck, in Japan it's bad luck. The product becomes a ladybug lucky charm.
|
| Fig 1.4 Design system using ladybug |
Cultural sensitivity goes beyond aesthetic, it also encompasses functionality, usability, and user experience.
Week 2: Impact vs. Decoration
Student's projects often look good but don't do anything.
"If you remove the visuals, what's left? if the answer is nothing, your
design has failed."
Decorative design are designs that starts with aesthetics and solves assumed problems rather than
lived ones. Designs that ignore climate and culture.
|
| Fig 2.1 An example of decorative design, the Saloma Bridge |
The Saloma Bridge
- Pros: It's a symbolic landmark, public admiration, and copyrighted as art.
- Cons: it's only a viewing platform, exists in a car-centric area, pedestrians have to navigate harsh roads to see it.
Impact-driven design, starts with the problem that the people have and
respond to lived experience. Impact also isn't about scale, impact can be
small local, temporary, and behavioral.
When talking about solving problems, empathy has value over polish.
|
| Fig 2.2 The assesment criteria when designing |
Empathy mapping is used to understand our audience. It is considered a psychography, Studying the psychological site of a group.
|
| Fig 2.3 Empathy Mapping |
For example,
- WHO: Workers that have their office in the city.
- DO: Drive /take public transportation to the city.
- SEE: Not a lot of parking space / It is far from the train station.
- SAY: Driving is tiring, takes a long time, etc..
- DO: Depressed, burdened for having to pay toll and gas.
- HEAR: Secondhand experience.
- THINK & FEEL:
- Pains: Need a substantial amount to go to the city.
- Gains: Better connectivity, better wayfinding.
Can be noted that not each question needs to be answered in regards to
the topic.
Instructions
In this project, we are tasked to team up with students from various
batches and majors to create a final design revolving the theme of
"Designing Urban Futures". Each intercultural teams
would need to investigate urban mobility experiences within a city through
research, observation, and design experimentation.
As we are allowed create our team, I grouped up with people from several
different semesters:
|
| Fig 3.1 Group members list |
Proposal
In our proposal stage, we discussed several potential ideas for our
project. Each of the members made a list of ideas and we chose based on
which ones sound the most practical, appropriate, and realistic to do our
research on.
In the end we chose to focus our ideas on public transportation, with
elements taken from the other ideas too.
 
|
| Fig 4.1 List of selected ideas for proposal |
From the selection, we also discussed a combination of ideas that will make up the three options that we will use for our proposal. We ended up choosing these sets of ideas:
|
| Fig 4.2 The three chosen proposal ideas |
For the proposal itself, me and Ming Yi volunteered to become the
presenter for the video while the others work on the slides and collection
of supporting information and references for our proposal.
We then reviewed the slides and information at hand, summarizing the points and created the video presentation using Microsoft Teams. This was done as its easy to access and comes with a presentation option with the addition of a video camera.
Fig 4.3 Task 1 Project Proposal Presentation Video - MP4
Data Collection
For the second part of this project, we are now moving on to the data
collection phase. We had set up a time for all of the team members to come
and do a field observation around the area, specifically Bukit Bintang MRT
station and nearby areas.
All of us stick together and took pictures during this observation as we
discussed potential issues that we noticed. Here are a collection of
pictures that I personally took during our small trip.
|
| Fig 5.1 Pictures taken by myself during our field observation |
Some of us, including myself, also volunteered to take extra pictures in
other areas other than KL, such as Sunway area, to further support our
overall arguments as suggested by the lecturer.
From the feedback, we were encourage to have an extra method of data
collection. Due to our time constraints, we chose to do interviews
instead. Below is the list of questions we need to ask the interviewees.
|
| Fig 5.2 Interview questions list |
I also interviewed someone I knew that came from China about her
experience in dealing with the public transportation in Malaysia. Most of
the interviewee had the same complaints about lack of signage, wayfinding,
and language issues.
This time, I was appointed to create and design the PPT for this task.
Combining both methods of data collection, we created the presentation
slides from there.
Fig 5.3 Task 2 Data Collection Presentation Slides - PDF
Final Project
Continuing from our Task 2, our final project will require us to finally
focus on delivering the final design direction & execution. Based on
our data collection task, our lecturer believes that choosing our first
proposal, "Visual Wayfinding Design for Transport", was a more
suitable choice.
We listed down several design ideas that we could illustrate that fits our
proposal. Such as floor guidance pathways, clearer maps, and a redesign on
wayfinding signage.
Here were some of the finalized designs as made by Xiang Ling, our group's
leader.
|
| Fig 6.1 Design illustrations and mock-ups made by Xiang Ling |
Nearing the end of our submission, we took the time to come together to record our final project's presentation. As I was chosen to do the presentation, I prepared earlier by reviewing our condensed information and presentation that was made by other members.
Here is our final presentation video and the slides, with the Google Drive folder of our project:
Fig 6.2 Final Project Presentation Video - MP4
Fig 6.3 Final Presentation Slides - PDF
Comments
Post a Comment