Learning from five Cross-Cultural Design programmes

I have been running Cross-Cultural Design programmes, and teaching students from a variety of Korean design universities within the Design Department of Goldsmiths University over the past five years. The Cross-Cultural Design programmes that I

planned and ran had different themes related to different cultures. Undergraduate students and participants undertook design projects in which they explored how various cultural boundaries were interconnected.

From this experience, I found that students approached different cultures through design and they developed new types of Cross-Cultural Design outcomes. Through planning the summer school programmes, making briefs and running the programmes, I have come to the strong realisation that Cross-Cultural Design research and cultural interaction process modelling are vital for the future development of the Korean design field.

Therefore, this part of the thesis looks into the previous programmes in order to create one comprehensive Cross-Cultural Design learning model. The Cross-Cultural Design programmes presented were developed since 2010 through an on-going collaborative ‘Cross-Cultural Design’ research programme between Pi Studio (Prospecting and Innovation Design Research Studio) at Goldsmiths, University of London and Kyung Hee University, Korea. As with all of the programme briefs, the teaching team (i.e. lecturers at Goldsmiths) have tried to focus on a clear and meaningful topic, identified as requiring critical exploration through design.

An intensive design short course, in both the summer and winter schools, became the main type of educational endeavour of this project. The purposes of the

Cross-Cultural Design programmes carried out as a part of this thesis are as follows;

The basic programme outline was designed following Dewey’s learning cycle, as discussed in the previous chapter; Situation, Action, Tool, Thinking, and Application.

In this paper, five different Cross-Cultural Design programmes are discussed. The practical design programmes presented were carried out as a series of three week short courses, as summer schools over five years. The programmes presented also took a reflective learning cycle, which meant that based on the main outline, subsequent programmes were adjusted after a review of the current one. The table given below is the summary of the five Cross-Cultural Design programmes.

Figure 6-3 The purposes of the Cross-Cultural Design programmes

Design Process

• To examine how students understand the cross cultural design education programme and respond to it.

Design Outcomes

• To investigate what types of design outcomes are developed through the cross cultural design education programme.

Design Practice

• To invetigate how students graft different cultures onto various area of design practice.

Design Tool

• To systematise the cross cultural education methodology and develop cross cultural design tools.

Design Marketability

• To approach practicality and marketability.

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

Programme 1 2 3 4 5

Title ^Borders, Boundaries and Thresholds

Inside Out,

Outside In Ritual & Routine Cross-Cultural Design of Korea

and Britain Bon Voyage

Date 18. 01. 2010 -

Participants 30 BA Design

students 20 BA Design

students 24 BA Design

students 26 BA Design

students 32 Design students Design

Outcomes 5 projects 3 projects 4 projects 8 projects 11 projects

Exhibition - - - Designers

Block TENT London

Purpose To test the Cross-Cultural Design programme, analyse the design outcomes, and develop Cross-Cultural Design tools

To verify the practicality and marketability of the Cross-Cultural Design outcomes

Particular

Defining

Cross-Cultural Design Expanding the understanding

·Support from Korean government

·Focusing on the particular culture of Korea to promote its design

Learning

·Need of Reflection tool to help students to self-evaluate their design

·Need of diversifying and subdividing the Action tool

Table 6-1 Summary of five Cross-Cultural Design programmes

Stage 1 of the programme, ‘Borders, Boundaries, and Thresholds’, and ‘Inside Out, Outside In’, focused on introducing Cross-Cultural Design to students, widening their understanding of culture and awakening them to the potential and opportunities presented by the concept. During the initial stage, the ideas for the very first

Cross-Cultural Design tools, ‘Motive and Action’, were developed, providing a basis for the creation of Stage 2. This was a particularly meaningful stage, as it was an intensified programme, a test ground to apply the Cross-Cultural Design tools for the first time.

It identified the need for audience feedback for design evaluation and opened a new focus on practicality and marketability.

Then, based on the learning from Stages 1 and 2, public exhibitions were introduced into the Stage 3 programmes using selected design outcomes from the programmes.

The aim of the projects were for students to understand the significance of the interaction of cultures in design. Through participants actively observing and partaking in these, the practical projects would help to establish a new learning methodology.

Through these three stages of practical projects we were able to observe how the participants responded to the workshops and training. We were also able to observe up close how participants grafted and completed their designs. The outline of the five programmes are summarised as below in Figure 6-4. The winter school level was a post-BA and pre-MA.

Short courses (3-4 weeks) Intensive courses (5 months)

Outside In Ritual &

Routine Cross-Cultural Design Bon Voyage

Parallel structure Serial and recursive structure

Education

Launching and setting up Launching and setting up

Organising programme and brief Organising programme and brief

Cross-Cultural Design programme and studio sessions Cross-Cultural Design programme and studio sessions

Tool

Organising team

Understanding the programme Sharing methods in developing ideas Situati

Application Application Design process

Student presentation and Final outcomes

Figure 6-4 Cross-Cultural Design programmes summary

Students were asked for an alternative way of presentation to showcase their design outcomes. The presentation of programmes 1, 2 and 3 was the focus of the clear step by step description of cultural understanding and the design development, with detailed information like materials. Programme 4, which was more of a professional design programme, involved guiding students to make the presentation more

efficient, concentrating on concept development and the very essence of the final design outcome. For programme 5, students were asked to make a short and clear statement capturing the identity of the design and make a story line to explain it.