Educating for transcultural design

Design broadly defined deals with mapping from what individuals in society want or need to means for satisfying these needs. Thus, an appropriate basis for product design deals with user-centered product and systems design for society in response to social, cultural, and technical context. A new generation of industrial and product designers needs to be educated who are able to understand and participate in the world's ongoing social, cultural, and economic transformation through achieving a balance of creative and technical knowledge and competencies. Many different disciplines have a role to play in developing products, processes, systems, and technologies, and industrial designers should be product integrators and bridge builders between disciplines and cultures. Throughout the design process, cultural knowledge has a large role to play in the ultimate success of products and systems across many dimensions. This paper presents educational strategies for cultural awareness, understanding, and adaptation as applied to the creation, innovation, and development of products and technologies. This paper describes the context of recent approaches to integrating design within universities and focuses on the development of the new Bachelor of Engineering program in the Department of Industrial Design at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.