Culture
What’s culture?
Culture is a powerful, often subconscious set of social characteristics and knowledge of a group of people that shape both our individual and collective behavior. We can call this set of qualities cultural norms.
We are shaped by our culture (or our environment)
We are born into this world with just our genetic backpack, which shapes things like our personality and physical characteristics. Other than that, most people around the world are about 99% similar biologically; what’s different is the cultural environment people develop in. Over time, we become socialized within our culture. Socialization is the process where cultural patterns of behaviors, interactions, cognitive constructs, and understanding are shared with an individual and as a result further shape how we navigate the world. A good socialization process can mean the difference between someone who is cool with their society and a sociopath (someone driven crazy by society). The combination of our genetic nature versus the environment we are nurtured in has a strong influence on our behavior, and is a major topic in the field of psychology.
Big picture: culture shapes who we are as a person.
Group culture is defined through a top-down relationship
Group behavior in society is driven by culture as well. A collectivist (e.g. Japan) versus an individualist (e.g. France) culture will have different set of cultural norms. For example in Japan, a collectivist culture, there is a strong cultural norm to conform to the expectations of the group and adhere to established social rules and traditions. In France, an individualist culture, there is a greater emphasis on personal uniqueness and self-expression. People are encouraged to develop their own style, opinions, and talents and are more likely to question or challenge societal norms. Cultural norms are shared like ripples over water, spreading across society. What’s culturally appropriate today might not be the same tomorrow, culture changes, people change.
Jonathan Chapman summed it up nicely in Meaningful Stuff “Socially approved patterns shape the way we interact with the material world.” We are driven by an innate desire to be more accepted by our culture, so we stick to habits that make us accepted by that group. What this means is that culture exists as a top-down system, where approved cultural patterns can feed into our personal patterns.
Of course there are outliers, but generally this relationship holds across many societies.
Products and companies have culture to
As a designer it is sometimes our role to understand what someone or something’s culture is before we start messing with it. Otherwise, we might risk designing something that just isn’t a good cultural fit! When designing something into any system, we need to be mindful that culture needs to accept our product, or else people won’t. (going back to the top-down relationship) Cultural systems are resistant to change in order to maintain a sense of cultural balance.
So when it comes down to company or product culture, we can infer that each has their own set of cultural norms. As designers we can learn about these in a few ways: we can look for cultural artifacts (e.g posters on the wall of a conference room), company values (literal things the product or company prides itself on, many companies are transparent about these), and assumptions (the hidden bedrock that the company was founded upon). The latter sometimes requires the deepest investigation. Cultural assumptions can change but that takes time and big monumental change, such as a reorganization, or acquisition of a new company.
What this means for design
People are shaped by their culture. On a macro-systemic level we cannot change too much of it, but as we drill down into company/product culture, we can change quite a bit. Culture and society a big part in how we develop mental models for how things work, or how we form opinions of things. Pay close attention to the environment and culture that customers belong to, as those influence their behavior and mental models more than you might think. Design ethnography is dedicated specifically to this task. It’s important to remember that culture changes and is not static, but big cultural shifts often take time.
In short, understanding the culture of society and its cultural norms can shed light onto individual behavior and needs, which can drive how we design products or organizations.