Cross cultural Design Research— Research and study of objects
CHOSEN OBJECT : Table
PROJECT BRIEF
This project was carried out to understand how common people visualize and articulate table. The start of the project was by understanding different kinds of table that people use in their everyday life. Also trying to understand if people actually use these different kinds of table for a single function or as multi- functional.
Definition — Table is a piece of furniture which has a flat surface top with one or more legs made of materials such as wood, plastic, glass, metal. Tables are used for eating, working, writing, playing. They provide storage spaces for books, magazines, stationary. Some tables can be moved from one place to another.
WHY THE CHOSEN OBJECT?
I had chosen table as my object because it has been such a necessity everywhere in every space to everyone. Table being a basic object in used for different purposes. Being an interior designer I personally having an interest towards furniture design and have been exploring designs of various furniture and this was something I always wanted to know more about.
RESEARCH
The research was carried out through card — sorting technique, where a deck of 60 cards (pictures of different kinds of table) was chosen to carry out the activity. This exercise was done with 6 people who of the age group 18yrs — 25yrs and I got various unexpected insights from the exercise. The people were asked to segregate the cards into 3 categories which are very typical, typical and atypical.
ANALYSIS
After the card sorting activity, an excel sheet was prepared with the above mentioned 3 categories giving it points where, 1 stands for very typical, 0 stands for typical and -1 stands for atypical.
After the excel sheet a typicality map was prepared.
DESIGN ACTIVITY
For the design activity we were given movie scenes according to our topic chosen and with respect to the scene we had to redesign our object according to the typically chosen from the average typicality map as to fit in the scene perfectly, with the help of photoshop.
I had chosen Typical as a theme to re- design the object
END NOTE
The card sorting exercise and the product semantics research method which I did was very exciting and informative and I could collect various insights from 6 different people from different backgrounds. It was very interesting to know that different people have very different opinions about a single object and each one interpret it very differently. It was really fun to explore various kinds of designs and learn them.
I hope you liked my project. Your feedback are most welcome, so please do share your thoughts.
You can contact me on shalinign.vasist@gmail.com
Thank you!
