Cross-Cultural Design

The development of technology not only has sped up our interpersonal communication, but has also brought about mixed emotions. The reason why LINE mobile communication software (mobile application) is welcomed is because it has all kinds of lively stickers. These stickers convey delicate emotions that are difficult to convey through texts to message recipients, enriching the contexts of interpersonal communications. However, since designers started to design their own images, negative semantic behaviors have also been created. This has led to message recipients feeling psychologically uncomfortable. With regard to this and based on five stickers with negative semantic meanings among personal creations in Taiwan, we specifically carried out our study through three cultural design properties – external, functional, and psychological. We hope that through Value-added designs, the decent model of technological application can be completed. Hopefully, the positive semantic meanings of the word “Shii” (喜) in traditional paper cutting and its extensions including “happiness”, “sadness”, “anger” and “without joy” can correct the behaviors of these stickers. Furthermore, in doing so, modern elements could be infused into arts, and tech fashion could be manifested.

In recent years the term design has been overexploited in popular magazines, newspapers and on television. Schools and universities have increased the courses on offer which now include very different design disciplines, from social design to systemic design. The latter, in particular, is the ability to outline and plan the flow of matter and energy from one system to another, within metabolization processes which reduce the ecological footprint and generate a remarkable economic flow. Today designers are asked to strategically design a scenario that doesn’t focus only on product innovation as an end in itself, but involves developing broader issues which require the input and expertise of other fields of learning. These issues necessarily include non-traditional economic and industrial models (i.e. Circular Economy, Blue Economy and Bioeconomy). This paper aims to create bridges between the world of construction engineering and design practices based on non-linear industrial models. It stimulates a discussion about systemic design challenges in relation with the concrete structures, evidencing some challenges, open questions and possible new directions.

Animation in China, stretching across a century, has been through many vicissitudes. In view of the current development of Chinese animation industry, animators imitate the styles of America and Japan excessively, which contain a large number of western elements from character modeling to story building. It has showed a serious lack of confidence, and entered into an erroneous zone with a general over-reliance on imitation. The literature review of this research consists of the comparison of the animated films from different cultures and eras and discuss the related research models. This research is based on animation study model with the method of attribute evaluation, the questionnaire survey and MDS, and will make a large-scale comparative study of domestically and abroad-produced animated films, with the special focus on technical level, semantic level and effectiveness level to deeply investigate the connotation based on the differences between Chinese and Western cultures. To re-produce folk and re-shape traditional art, creators show prominent Chinese unique oriental charm in value, customs, aesthetic concepts, and so on. To raise feasible countermeasures on how to enhance core competitiveness of animated films, it is urgent to grasp the opportunity to regain confidence of Chinese animation.

This study proposed a research framework to study the communication of turning poetry into painting by using 21 paintings with their poetic titles. A total of 57 graduate students participated in the study. Subjects were asked to evaluate the fitness of paintings with their poetic title based on the six functions of communication theory. The results showed that the approach can be applied for evaluating the painting effectively and provide artists with an idea how to concentrate their efforts at the creation stage, and it is easy to communication with audience. In addition, the research framework seems to be a better way to explore the understanding of turning poetry into painting, which is clearly worthy for further research.

Many designer using traditional cultural elements in mobile application interaction design, this design concept enhance user’s cognitive and emotion. Users will be inspired by an inner cultural identity when using App, and they will feel delighted about the operation. So integrate the traditional cultural elements into the interactive system is necessary, however, how to design the cultural element can conform to the user’s mental model, and have a positive impact on the user experience, that is the direction of the paper.This paper is focused on the impact of integration of the traditional cultural elements into the interactive system on the user experiences. Research is divided into two parts, part 1 for the extraction of characteristics of traditional cultural elements, the part 2 for cultural elements into the different model (Design Model, User Model, and System Model) of the effects on the user experience.

The scope of design continues to expand and designers have been increasingly dealing with issues arising from systems. DesignX as inquiry into the approaches how to design for complex, sociotechnical system started in 2014, and emerging practices have been inspired ever since. However, it is observed that DesignX focuses on “How” issues without sufficiently addressing the fundamental question “What is a system?” Divergent from DesignX’s dominant focus, Richard Buchanan proposed a schema of systems. With references to Buchanan’s earlier work on the strategies of inquiry and the nature of interaction, a holistic framework of systems was synthesized. Using this framework, the author further analyzed the case of “Design for Healthcare in the Community,” which was an explorative step of a DesignX project. In this paper, the author attempted to reflect on the developing trajectory of DesignX dialogue by employing Buchanan’s ongoing work on systems as a reference framework. It is argued that Buchanan’s framework of systems provides a valuable theoretical tool to enrich the DesignX dialogue and practice.

This paper offers a reflection on design research and its forms and methods of cultural interventions, with the aim of contextualising it into the frame of complexity. The paper seeks to restate culture as a necessary element in the construction of a qualitative analytic that informs design discipline, in a contemporary moment where the strategic insights and discoveries valuable to innovation are more and more associated with artificial intelligence in its variety of forms, and cumbersome data processes. In the first part, we discuss the definitions of transculturality, context, and story, within the frame of design and complexity and, specifically, in the methods and tools we use to conduct design research, both in the way of developing the research process and conducting original design inquiries in the field.In the second part, we discuss culture practices in design research, presenting four experiments that we have been conducting in a transcultural context, and framing which use of culture is necessary to the production of research insights. The examples are discussed as ethnographic exercises in which transculturality is a process of subjective negotiation, when relative and progressive framing defines the context, and where stories include pluralism and allow diversity of interpretations. Because we aim to transform these cases of cultural exploration into structured research methods, we will discuss how ultimately they help to inform if and how the design that we do might be genuinely necessary.

This study examines how the perception of information layout of webpages is influenced by users’ thinking style, namely, Zhong-Yong (Median) thinking. The waterfall flow and the fixed grid layout were used to present woman’s clothing information in an online store context. Participants rated the classical aesthetics, expressive aesthetics and attractiveness of the webpages after they browsed the webpage under different goals (i.e., leisure viewing vs. target search). Both layout and the mode of use affected the classical aesthetics and attractiveness ratings for low Zhong-Yong but less so for high Zhong-Yong thinking individuals. These findings were interpreted by Zhong-Yong’s influence on users’ controlled vs. guided information search behavior during web browsing. Implications for the roles of culture and individual differences on the design of webpage information layout were also discussed.

To promote personal body-mind-soul (BMS) wellness is very basic in life around the world. Via theoretical and practical concepts of cultural ergonomics (CE), designers develop products and services in the culture creativity industry (CCI) to transform and bring users not only cultural contexts, but interactive experiences. This paper then places focuses on transforming concepts of a Taiwanese twin cup into a BMS buddy activity design created from the literature review about CCI, applied CE, LOHAS and BMS industry. For developing the users’ interactive experiences, CE includes excellent theories which are also methodological approaches that carry interaction- and experience-based benefits to people. The research case is about the transformation from linnak which is a typical cultural object in the Taiwanese Paiwan tribe into a series of buddy partner activities conducted at 2015 Asian Pacific Playback Theatre Conference. At the end, the research results will show the conference participants’ feedback and cultural meaning of working together and sharing valuable experiences with each other in groups from the researcher’s design. Most importantly, the results will confirm the scholarly theories, follow methodological approaches, and present practical values in the future social design activities.

In recent years, traditional cultural material has been creativity applied to increase the value of artistic designs and expand aesthetic economies worldwide. Cultural creative designs involve extracting and transforming cultural elements and symbols to create new aesthetic meanings in artworks. This study extracts the intangible cultural elements of the Chinese fable, The Dream of the Butterfly, through analyzing its literary meanings to provide inspirational concepts for cultural creative designs. The experience in The Dream of the Butterfly was a turning point in the life of Chuang Tzu. In response to increasing stresses of modern living, soothing emotional designs have become trendy. The light-hearted writing style of Chuang Tzu and the erratic portrayal of the butterfly are ideal inspiration for creative designs. This study aggregates practices based on theories of cultural creative designs and organizes various interpretations of The Dream of the Butterfly through the Chuang Tzu aesthetic theory and by scholars worldwide. The fable was interpreted on three interpretative levels (namely the dreamlike state, the integration between the thing and the self, and the sympathetic circulation of mind and matter) to analyze existing artworks inspired by the fable. Thus, spiritual reflections in the process of creative transformation have been clarified, and a reference for transforming the philosophy of The Dream of the Butterfly into creative designs has been established.

This paper explores the design of subway space advertising forms from the perspective of service design. Firstly this paper analyzes the concept of service design. On this basis the necessity of applying the design method to design subway advertising forms are analyzed. Secondly, through the analysis of the subway space and population factors, find where and when we should use the method of service design to design subway space advertising forms, and the application of service design methods in the field is explored. At last, combined with the case of a specific subway advertisement design, summed up the innovation points and follow-up research direction.With the development of smart city and the arrival of service-oriented society, subway system, as a vehicle responsible for urban residents travel will further extend and develop in smart city construction and will be closely related to people’s daily life. Subway advertisement, as a significant part of subway, has a great influence on passengers’ travel experience. Most existing subway spaces adopt traditional advertisement as their media form, whose thoughts embodied in the design little meet passengers’ real demands. Therefore, the lack of originality leads to passengers’ less satisfaction. On the basis of the service-oriented thoughts and ideas, this paper explores new ways and thoughts for subway advertisement design and strives to tightly combine design and service together by breaking through traditional thoughts. Furthermore, this paper tries to create maximal benefits and the best solution based on limited resources.

Based on the theories of user experience and mental model, the paper takes two representative E-banks of China for case study. Method of questionnaire is used to determine research object and contents, observation is used to obtain mental model of users and actual model of E-banks, and path search is applied to verify the relationship between mental model and actual model. An innovative research of E-banks’ login, transfer and remittance by usability test has been done to analyze participants’ task completion time, task completion rate, heat map, scan path and other indicators affecting user experience, in which case the assumption that consistency of use flow can improve user experience of service-oriented websites is validated.

The rising issue of world population ageing has brought about increasing concern for the well-being and healthcare needs of older adults. With the unfortunate current state of professional elderly healthcare, the duty of caring for their needs often falls to family members. With current trends pointing towards a shift to a more independent lifestyle for older adults, it becomes increasingly important that technologies are developed to assist their daily living. This paper describes issues involving the everyday task of bathing in tandem with the advent of the walk-in bathtub concept. Unfortunately, due to severe design flaws, conventional market offerings of walk-in bathtubs tend to cause more harm than good, prompting a need for an overhaul of the design concept. Hence, this paper outlines the conceptualization and design methodology of the iMagic-BOX portable walk-in bathtub, a series of mobile, walk-in bathing and shower units designed to assist older adults to be able to independently and comfortably bathe on their own. The goal of this paper is to showcase the individual design elements of these specialized walk-in bathtub units in hopes of inspiring other inventors to appreciate the role of gerontechnology in improving the lives of older adults worldwide.

Seamless experience has becoming a major focus in industrial design, including transportation design. It can be argued that to create this kind of “seamless” feeling calls for consideration from three levels: product, system and service, as product being the carrier, system being the logic lying beneath while service being the process of co-creation with users. It is also proposed that the integration of personal and public transportation become crucial in creating a seamless experience with the process of urbanization and complexity of transportation system. Then, the different nature of personal and public transportation is analyzed and four possible design models, or design methods, are proposed. Furthermore, a design case is illustrated as an initial design attempt in application. It is shown that the integration process involves complicated design elements and calls for deep collaboration.

This article reports on a cross-cultural design workshop held at Fuzhou, China, 25–30 December 2015. The workshop was intended to provide a platform that would bring together artists in stone craving, academic researchers, and managers from stone craving industries, in order to focus exclusively on the teaching of creativity in stone craving for the future. Sessions were devoted to works exhibition, cross-disciplinary courses and cross-cultural design workshops. This study focuses on the cross-cultural workshop which included the desirability of creativity throughout the curriculum, and particularly focuses on coaching, learning, and practicing. The purposes of the workshop emphasized interactive learning and addressed the interactions of practicing. Results are presented herein to establish a platform for examining the way artists communicate across culture as well as the interwoven experience of stone craving and culture in the creation process.

In online fashion retail platform, the customer service has played an essential role during the shopping process. In this study we focus on the service design of fashion matching experience in online shopping platform in different service scenarios, which has become one of the key issues of the fashion matching service. Based on the previous research on the matching service during the shopping process, we took the Chinese consumer as an example and focused our research on the fashion matching when the customers make purchase decision. In this paper, a new matching platform was designed based on fashion items and adopted the methods of verbal report and Likert scale to analysis the customer’s shopping experience. The experiments results indicate that with the item-based matching platform, the experience of customer online shopping is promoted to some extent, and customers can enjoy the entertainment and practicality of the interactive matching service. Moreover, this item-based service can be used by designers to provide matching references.

The purpose of empathic design is to motivate the empathy of designers to better understand the potential needs of users (including the proprietors). The example of Youth Originality Design Camp of Liouduei in 2011 was used in this research to examine the design procedures of the innovative products for interdisciplinary empathic design of the local industries and to analyze the process of interdisciplinary empathic design conducted by grouped specialists in various fields and the students, design behavior of students from different departments and the influence on design after students experience the local cultures and industries. Thirty-six students participating in the contest were investigated in four phases. According to the findings of the research, recognition from 64(%) to 90% of the students was obtained after allowing them to experience the Liouduei culture and the students, learning from the proprietors on the first stage, benefited from empathic design in learning of the local culture. In phase two, students considered that they stayed at the proprietors’ homes for the night, which provided an opportunity for them to have an in-depth understanding of the proprietors’ problems. On the third stage, recognition of 87% of the students was acquired after an in-depth interview between the students and proprietors. In the last phase, 84 to 85% of the students identified with brainstorming and prototype production. The results of the research indicate the procedures for innovative interdisciplinary empathic design help the students enhance their empathy basically, and benefit them to better understand the needs of the proprietors and motivate them to form creative ideas; however, there is still a long way to achieve commercialization.

With the development of the Internet, the challenge of transition also comes to museums. In this paper, the authors investigate the online and offline situation of museums. Focused on the user pain points found in our investigation, we build the participatory museum service system with the service design tools, such as stakeholder maps, system map, blueprint and so on. Visitors can have more opportunity to interact and communicate with museums. This paper tries to offer some suggestions for improvement of museum service design.

In recent years, the protection method the traditional craftsmanship of intangible cultural heritage gradually receives more attention, with the purpose for the protection of intangible cultural heritage and community construction. This study takes Yongchun lacquered basket in Fujian as an example, aiming to analyze the development difficulty of the local traditional handicraft industry, explore the mechanism to promote the traditional handcraft industry by service design, measure the success of the sustainable development with service design as guide, so as to conclude the enlightenment of sustainable development of traditional craftsmanship. Service design is a user-centered design method, to help build innovative service or improve existing products or services, with the aim to make the product or service provided useful, usable and more efficient. Service design, as a discipline, should not be isolated, but be combined with service development, management, operation and marketing together. First of all, the historical development and the production process of Yongchun lacquer basket as intangible cultural heritage should be analyzed, with the field investigation for its present situation. Second, INPD (Integrated New Product Development) can be used with service design as orientation to analyze the opportunity gap of the traditional handcraft industry of Yongchun lacquered baskets through Society, Economic, Technology (SET) and Value Opportunity Analysis (VOA) is used to explore and evaluate the attribute of new product opportunities. Finally, INPD with service design as orientation is taken as our process framework of intangible cultural heritage protection.

There is growing interest in designing culturally identifiable products for cross cultural consumers. However, literature rarely pays attention to the conflicting needs of these products in terms of cross-cultural usability and their unique cultural identity. This paper presents a design model addressing this problem through a process of meaning construction. By identifying the culture’s shared and unique meaning, designers are able to map the target meaning onto the product attributes - the form, content and interaction - thus presenting culturally identifiable and cross-culturally acceptable products to culturally heterogeneous consumers. A case study of designing a meaningful cross-cultural interactive music box with the Kam ethnic minority culture is presented focussing on the detailed process of meaning construction, and implementation and evaluation. Feedback in the field showed that the shared meaning built in the boxes helped outsiders to understand the interaction. The unique meaning helped to attract the attention from participants outside Kam culture, and improved the cultural identity. The results also showed that participants from different culture preferred different product features, for example the story content attract participants outside Chinese culture, while Chinese participants preferred playful interaction on the sound.

Material could elicit meaningful user experiences in and beyond its utilitarian assessment. For designers, they are required to qualify the material not only for what it is, but also for what it expresses to, what it elicits from, and what it guide people to do. To find out the answer, designers need to guide the development of materials by experiential goals. In this paper, we will first introduce material experience as our theory foundation and explain the importance of meaning contribution for materials. In the design phase, we are following an innovative design practice with natural materials to create experience. The method we apply is Material Driven Design (MDD) which could facilitate designing for material experiences. In the end, we will analyze how materials experience be generated through innovative design practices.

University campus is a place where bicycles are used a lot and there are many people choosing bicycle as their vehicle, with the increase of users, the vast volume of bicycles also brings high pressure on the entire campus bicycle service system and causes many problems, the existing service system could no longer meet users’ demands. This thesis targets the university bicycle service system as the research target, adopts the service design theory as the fundamental support, takes contact as the entry point, integrates service design method to develop research, and establishes service system process chain network (PCN) model to supplement and improve research results.Firstly, determine the main users of service system, so as to research its demands from both qualitative and quantitative levels, qualitative level is to use Personas to extract the characteristics of main users, use the method of stakeholder to excavate other users with relevant interests with the main users, integrate the key character map method to determine the interactive relationship between the main users and other users, and extract user demands. Quantitative level is to, based on the research result on qualitative level, further determine the main demands of main users through the questionnaire survey and data statistic analysis on the demand level of main users. The demands of main users shall be concluded based on the comprehensive summarization of the two levels above.Secondly, systematically use the interview method, situational approach and role playing method to analyze the process of main users in using the existing service system and excavate the contact. So as to conclude the problems in existing system from both qualitative and quantitative levels, qualitative level is to summarize the corresponding problems of each contact through field investigation and from contact perspective. Quantitative level is based on qualitative level, it determines the relatively prominent problems in the existing service system through questionnaire investigation and data statistic analysis on the level of prominent questions, and provides foundation for subsequent improvement and model establishment.Finally, integrate the demands of main users and improvement of problems in exiting service system, use the process chain network (PCN) tool method to position the contact in the process chain, establish the process chain network (PCN) in university bicycle service system, further determine the interactive relationship between main users and service providers in contact.

This paper explores a new approach to the design and development of the future intelligent vehicle from the aspect of service innovation, by which the mobility service and intelligent vehicle could be integrated within the same context and objective. For this purpose, contexts, stages, stakeholders, and the types of data are used as the key elements to generate the service opportunity points. A four-dimension space constructed with these elements is adopted as an effective tool, which is helpful for considering the diversity and interactivity of the elements. Thus, 136 opportunity points are produced and used as the factors to define the vehicles. A theory from the Center of Automotive Research (CAR) is referenced to build the travelling model map. It describes nine travelling modes distributed in flexible/distance coordinates, and each of the modes is represented by an intelligent vehicle. The travelling model map is divided into nine sections by a three-by-three matrix, and the opportunity points are plotted into the corresponding section. In this way, a connection is established between opportunity points and the intelligent vehicles. Based on this theory, seven intelligent vehicles are endowed with respective characteristics and defined by services with similar properties. Finally, by studying the user journey of each service-defined intelligent vehicles (SDIVs) and analyzing the use case through the touchpoints/vehicles matrix, the features of SDIVs are furthered detailed and reflected by the interface design.

Public symbols are essential components of signage in public transit stations or terminals. Comprehensibility of public symbols directly influences the performance of wayfinding. This study investigated 107 participants with 25 public symbols to understand the effects of travel characteristics and symbol features on comprehension of public symbols. Statistical analysis results showed that travel frequency and meaningfulness of public symbols are significantly associated with comprehension scores. Designing public symbols should be balanced between regulation and localization. Public symbols those are conveying the most meaningful information for wayfinding in transit hubs require further investigation.

Interior design can be executed in various stages, during which designers (the sender) deliver their ideas to client s (the receiver) via communication channels (the medium) in the form of language, words, images, and drawings. The question is whether the sender and receiver have a mutual understanding and interpretation of the message or not determines if the design is able to satisfy the client’s needs. In order to understand the different backgrounds of receivers (professionals and non-professionals), it is important to note if they have different spatial perceptions when interpreting the same spatial image and if they use different spatial vocabulary to describe how they feel. Images and vocabulary are used as research materials. With spatial images and vocabulary as research instruments, professionals (designers with more than five years of work experience) and non-professionals (college freshmen) are asked to complete questionnaires to analyze the different spatial vocabulary used by professionals and non-professionals for the same spatial image as well as the two groups of participants’ different interpretations towards spatial vocabulary based of their written descriptions. Research findings show that: (1) spatial vocabularies that describe an interior space need to be able to clearly identify the characters, ambience, and style of the space; (2) if a space has obvious differences in style, color, and material, vocabularies become more consistent; (3) the abundance and complexity of furniture play an important role; for example, less furniture or simple furnishings tend to be interpreted as simple or basic.

Aging and aged societies have gained widespread attention across the world in recent years. In Taiwan, senior citizens will soon account for over 14% of the population, officially designating Taiwan as an “aged society”. Consequently, aspects of senior care such as senior housing and residential facilities are becoming issues of note. This study applied theory developed by Norman (2004) to the Chang Gung Health And Culture Village (hereafter referred to as the Village). We examined this case study of the first senior residence in Taiwan using Norman’s three levels of emotional design: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. We conducted case analysis, experimental design, and semi-structured interviews to explore and validate research results. Initial observations revealed the following underlying problems: poor pedestrian orientation resulting in pedestrians frequently getting lost; a sense of rational efficiency in the overall design; and signage that is difficult to recognize and remember. The present paper evaluates the visual effects of signage in the Village and then makes recommendations for improvement. These include the addition of curves and floral patterns to the signage system so as to cause higher levels of synesthesia. We also discovered that (1) the elderly do not have difficulty appreciating the beauty of western design; (2) figures, patterns, and numbers with additional verbal explanations can increase the likelihood of seniors receiving and remembering the messages of signage. These research findings contribute to improved signage design for the Village and other senior residences in Taiwan, as well as those in other countries influenced by Chinese culture.

In the age of globalization, different ethnic cultures spread in the migratory flows, and coexist with local cultures, sometimes producing cultural conflicts which are looming with the increasing numbers of migrants that call for the intercultural dialogue. Food for its communicational and cultural attributes can be regard as a point-cut that intercultural dialogue can be fostered basing on the cultural seminaries and differences. The overseas Chinese community in Milan has reached a considerable population, and the migrants have adapted to the local economy while maintaining forms of social separation that is regarded as a cultural enclave.This paper takes the Chinese migrant food business as the breakthrough since it is one of the most common migratory activities in Milan, and Italian people relatively wider accept Chinese food. This paper adopts two digital methods, OpenStreetMaps (OSM) and Web crawler, to capture the context of Chinese migrant food business in Milan and to explore Italian customers’ viewpoints about it. The result shows the need of improving Chinese migrants’ public image and enriching Italian hosts’ knowledge of migrants. The paper proposes four design goals: information sharing; participatory knowledge production; co-create value; and scale out from individuals to communities. The investigation can benefit to intercultural dialogue, and it provides a reference to improving the cross-cultural communication towards to sustainable pluralistic society.

Recently, cross-geographical cooperation with multi-stakeholders is frequently involved in design exploration process. Problems and limitations have also cropped up following this trend, such as temporal and geographical boundaries, transportation of different formats, project management effectiveness, and the time-consuming multinational communication. To response such new challenges, a set of services for digital collaborative work arise at the moment. However, design strategies or paradigms for facilitating cross-geographical design collaboration context are still not clear. To make the user experience more smooth and friendly, designers also have some confusion to clarify a more efficient service approach. This study aims to give a strategic guidance for collaborative service design. With the methodology of case study, research results can be drawn through five stages: (1) Literature review on elements and mechanism of user experience, collaborative service and CSCW. (2) Inquire and insights for collaboration work features under the real design context. (3) User experience integrity (accessibility, tolerance and restriction) clarifying through case study on typical collaborative service products (i.e. Teambition, BIM and ZOOM). As the research findings, a dynamic strategy model combined with three key attributes (Relationship construction, interaction capacity, and experience extension) is put forward. The specific case of Sino-Italian Digital Platform is introduced to present a contextual design paradigm to response the strategy mentioned above. Such hypotheses and findings of this study as recommendations explore a tentative approach for designers who are interested in innovating service systems. This study also provides practice supports and theoretical extension for both service design and user experience.

The use of information technology in multimedia is becoming common and accessible to users. Artistically literate citizens apply a variety of artistic media, symbols and metaphors to independently create and perform work that expresses their own ideas and communicates their life experience. The arts are the media which provide powerful and essential means of communication. Thinking about art as a process of social interaction, how the artist’s performances are conceived, developed, delivered and received, and how the viewer is attracted, accurately understanding the artwork, and affected by the artwork need to be studied. Therefore, the purpose of this study is intended to derive and validate the cognitive factors that affect artworks, and to propose a communication matrix for evaluating artworks. The results suggested that the communication matrix approach will be validated in more testing and evaluating of artworks in further study.

This empirical study compared the user experience of WeChat—the most popular mobile application and social networking platform in China, and Facebook—one of the most popular social networking sites in the world through the lenses of NPS and user motivation among Chinese people living overseas. An online survey with 423 responses measured user engagement, user experience, and user motivation of both applications. 10 follow-up interviews were conducted based on the survey responses. This study also explored the Net Promoter Score (NPS) for both WeChat and Facebook among the same group of Chinese users, and concluded that WeChat has a more positive word-of-mouth than Facebook in this particular group of users. This study found positive correlations between NPS and user engagement and user experience. The authors hope to further understand user experience in social and cultural context.

This paper investigates the role of cultural amateur clubs of residents’ community in the traditional neighborhood, and focuses on involving design in community activities to explore the new opportunities and possibilities of community regeneration. With the development of urbanization in China, traditional communities’ environment has changed a lot. The mixture of new and old buildings not only broke the traditional residential environment integrity, but also changed the neighborhood relationship in communities. Under the macro-context of social background, understanding the existing problems and situation that residents who live in the modern communities may face when participating in daily cultural activities in the public space, has great practical significance in improving interpersonal relationship’s situation, further promoting the development of the social harmonious. Using the Living Lab participatory design method and ethnographic study, we visited and interviewed the residents who live in Qinglong Hutong, Dongcheng District, Beijing, China. First of all, we describe the background, purpose and methods of this research, and then study the current situation of how the residents in Qinglong Community participate in the daily cultural activities. By identifying the persona, sampling investigating and researching on the residents, we create the model on social interaction and network establishment of the amateur cultural activities in the community. The final outcomes of this paper include participatory workshops on Beijing Opera, the applet based on the WeChat, and initiative on cultural regeneration during the Beijing Design Week. The model and sustainable mechanism developed in this paper will be used to support the further community regeneration project.

Elderly people are likely to suffer from different chronic diseases which need to be treated for long time. By now, medication is still one of the most widely accepted and adopted ways of treatments but how to promote the medication adherence for elderly is a global challenge. Statistics show that generally only 50% of the patients are adherent to prescriptions. In China, with the increase amount of elderly population, medication adherence is becoming an important issue in healthcare industry. This paper described a study to find out the medication adherence situation for elderly patients in China based on questionnaire and interview. The key findings both in cognitive and behavioral aspects are presented, and a design strategy with service design to promote medication adherence in China is proposed.

This paper presents a recent design activism initiative named Open Your Space in Chinese urban context. The project aims to help the urban community acquire a better sense of sustainability, comfortability, and accessibility to public space. It draws on the relationship between design factors and socially motivated ideas as well as to explore and practice how design activism shapes the public realm to maximize shared value and catalysis in the built environment. The practice investigates the definitions of public space across disciplines and tools, tactics and consequences of reclaiming. Open Your Space project focuses on moving beyond design activism as a curiosity, to make a conscious effort to work toward a social and culture stance, to develop solutions through incremental steps. Design activism as main factor of DesignX approach is needed in social change, is a response to cultural conditions, policymaking, economic practices, social engagement and environmental challenges.

Some problems may exist in traditional architecture design process, such as lack of coherence between different phrases, design scenarios cannot satisfy practical needs, and design methods not in a systematic structure. While the design thinking and some methods of service system could address these issues effectively. Firstly, this paper would introduce the service system design approach; Secondly, give analysis of “these issues” from the perspective of architecture design; And then as a usable approach, the application of service system design in these issues would be elaborated; Finally, the new design approaches also brought about new aspects to architecture design and its procedure, such some new virtual flows, and new evaluation criteria for architecture design.

Governments worldwide have recognized and made e-government implementation as their top priority for a better service delivery to their citizens. Besides emphasizing the use of emergent technology, culture considerations in the e-government portal design and development has been claimed as critical strategy to promote greater citizen engagement, participation and empowerment. This paper aims to explore the presence of cultural values in e-government portals design and its impact. The selection of e-government portals is based on the 2016 Waseda-IAC International e-Government ranking which emphasize on citizen centric. The cultural values examined in this paper focuses on Power Distance cultural dimension from Hofstede’s model. Web content analysis method was employed to explore the Power Distance cultural presence in the selected e-government portals. In addition, statistical analysis was performed to examine possible relationship between Hofstede’s Power Distance Index and citizen centric e-government development. The cultural markers for the web content analysis focuses on visual design elements suggested in the web design guidelines on Power Distance culture. The results of this study show that the e-government portal design conform to Hofstede’s Power Distance cultural dimension. In addition, statistical analysis shows a significant positive relationship between Power Distance cultural presence and Hofstede’s Power Distance Index, and a negative relationship between Power Distance cultural presence and Waseda e-Government Ranking. Findings from this study provide better understanding of Power Distance cultural presence in the e-government website design as well as supporting the notion that Power Distance cultural dimension is correlated to citizen centric e-government development.

Community gardens connect to many organizations in order to receive and offer resources and services. The complex sociotechnical systems in which community gardens inhabit bring both opportunities and challenges for designers who endeavor to support them. In this study, we investigated three community gardens to explore the organizational connections that support them. Our aim is to articulate an expanded understanding of a community garden as an end-user that includes a diverse connection of stakeholders. By revealing the multiple connections they make, our results show that the community gardens in our study have established three paths to connections with diverse organizations. The reasons for these connections include community inclusion, assistance, peer-support and administration. In these connections, the roles community gardens play are also distinct. In addition, a community garden’s role is fluid rather than fixed. Based on these findings, we propose design implications to support community gardens beyond the gardens themselves and three scenarios to illustrate opportunities for design. We thus suggest researchers to broaden the existing limited focus on gardeners and their practices in gardens. Our work reveals a new space that design and HCI could support to promote urban agriculture and civic engagement. By providing practical design scenarios as illustrations to support community garden that are actively embedded in complex sociotechnical systems, this work responds to the theme of the session DesignX: Acting to Complexity which calls for designers to “play an active role in implementation, and develop solutions through small, incremental steps.”

This study attempts to explore the female life history embedded in the sewing machines. This study examines the experience of women in Taiwan of different periods to use sewing machines through the historical studies and qualitative research, which can be used as historical supplement of women users and relevant products that have long been neglected in design, but also reflect numerous mysteries in modern design through their experience.

This article explores the design thinking of a design team that forges social innovation for a rural community through the in-depth case study of the Togo village in Southern Taiwan. The research method is based on the analysis of interviews, field observation notes and documents. In this article, I first review the shift of design thinking focus, the search for innovation in rural areas and Brown’s perspective of design thinking. Then, from the perspective of Scharmer’s Theory U, I describe the transformative process of Togo in terms of four levels of design thinking and change. Their design thinking involves a personal and collective inquiry from the outer world to the inner world, tapping into the source of their purposes and crystallizing their vision in the prototype. The study reveals the importance of exploring inwardly the source of purpose and the highest potential instead of focusing on the surface of the problems, proposing strategies or methods to foster creative solutions.

Interactive public art focus on the topic, participatory, interactive, experiential appeal, the introduction of urban public space to create a viable feasibility study, it has become an important issue for public art researchers. In this paper, theoretical analysis and case studies are combined in order to find the contemporary urban public space to create a dynamic law, special requirements and methods. Thinking about the integration of “urban public space design” and “interactive public art” in the future. To explore the performance of interactive public art. For the city residents to provide a more experiential, participatory, dynamic spatial form, to enrich the vitality of urban public space to create innovative ideas.

To enhance interactions between learners, instructors, and content for MOOC courses, this study purposes a new video lecturing interface that embeds synchronized discussions and notes anchored to the video timeline. The design concept was evaluated with 4 MOOC instructors, 8 teaching assistants, and 7 learners using a prototype. Most participants agreed that the design would enhance learner-content, learner-learner, and learner-instructor interactions, and may further improve learning performance, satisfactions, and may decrease dropout rate. However, the form of presenting discussions and possibly unrelated content may distract learners, and the design requires further improvement.

Knowledge sharing is an effective and efficient way for students to obtain knowledge in universities. Students share knowledge with their colleagues to improve the learning performance and at the same time to strengthen their social networks. Knowledge sharing of international students may be different from local students due to various reasons.Previous studies indicated many factors which had influences on knowledge sharing for international students in other countries, for example, language barriers, cultural differences, lack of feedback, sharing channels, personal obstacles and etc. These factors included two types, internal reasons, and external reasons. Internal reasons referred to the characteristics of students. External reasons referred to the environment.Chinese culture has its uniqueness from other cultures, for example, Chinese culture respect collectivism. International students in China might be influenced by the Chinese culture when they share knowledge. This study aims to investigate the factors influencing knowledge sharing of international students at Chinese University.After a literature review, an interview and a scenario-based experiment were conducted at Beihang University in this study. In the interview, nine international students were invited to participate. The results of the interview indicated the motivators and hinders of knowledge sharing of international students in the Chinese university. The motivators focus on enhancing social networking skills. The hinders included language barriers and cultural differences. In the experiment, participants were first asked to read a knowledge-sharing scenario and then asked to fill a questionnaire based on the scenario. The questionnaire was designed to test the motivators and hinders of knowledge sharing. Twenty-one participants were invited to the experiment. The results indicated that international students were willing to share knowledge with other students for two main reasons, which were strengthening their knowledge quality and making friends. For the hinders, language barriers and cultural difference are still the main reasons which have negative effects on knowledge sharing of international students.

The motion capture system Intel RealSense enables fine-motoric gesture recognition and its small form factor allows for pre-integration into notebooks and tablets, substituting conventional cameras. This setup enables new methods of therapy in the form of serious games which are engaging, low-cost and easy to set up. By developing and evaluating a serious game prototype for rehabilitation employing Intel RealSense (called “Breakout”) based on commercial game framework, immersive gaming experience is promoted. The domain of critical interaction design issues including operational range perception, spatial mapping, difficulty design and forms of interaction is highlighted and feasible solutions proposed. The findings indicate a potential to an enhancement of serious games for health, albeit further examinations are required.

This study aims to explore the current instructional design and teaching effectiveness of blended learning in the Chinese higher education system from both the student and instructor’s perspective. The instructional design and teaching effectiveness of five SPOCs (Small Private Online Courses) offered in the 2016–2017 Spring Semester by Tsinghua University were investigated. Methods employed to collect data included handing out the Chinese adapted SEEQ questionnaires to students and interviewing 1 teacher and 4 teaching assistants. Results revealed that (1) for all courses, the final grades consisted of online participation and performance, face-to-face learning and performance, assignment and examination. However, different courses weighted each part differently: examination scores were weighted more heavily for science courses than arts or history courses. (2) Courses with shorter offline discussions sessions resulted in higher participation in online discussions; students were more satisfied when instructors actively participated in discussions. (3) In general, students experienced high satisfaction in learning value, instructor enthusiasm and organization and breadth of coverage.

Promoting education for college students based on entrepreneurship is not only the objective requirement of the development of higher institutes themselves, but also the urgent demand of China’s economic and social development. At present, however, it is necessary to redesign the curriculum system and update the way of teaching due to the problems of unpractical educational theories and backward educational contents in higher institutes. In this thesis, studies are made using questionnaires based on information processing theory and model of the combination of work and learning. 344 effective questionnaires are collected. Besides, by comparison with the successful cases of Stanford, three major factors limiting the development of education based on entrepreneurship in Chinese higher institutes are discovered, namely, lack of practice for social practice, great learning and academic pressure of students and unpractical teaching contents. Therefore, trans-level learning model is put forward and is divided into three levels of theory, practice and innovation, so that students can receive information from various perspectives. Through targeted education on employment and entrepreneurship, as well as target-based learning plans, students’ awareness of employment and entrepreneurship are adopted so that the information acquired can be integrated to improve students’ core competitiveness.

This work focuses on the role of design for novel edutainment robots for children. The theme is addressed by adopting a holistic approach, aimed at framing the complexity of a phenomenon that is changing the children educational and play habits. The main aspects of this phenomenon were further investigated through a preliminary study carried out in Beijing, China. The study consisted in a questionnaire and forms about children’s habits submitted to parents, and in hands-on activities supported by probes for children. The results of the questionnaire provided information that help to get a better understanding of the relation between education and play in children’s life that can be used as basis for developing new design scenarios. The activities with children, instead, allowed to collect inspirational data and to identify design principles that could be adopted as drivers in the development of novel robotic products for children.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of human narrator (vis-à-vis an artificially-created cartoon narrator) in designing instruction videos to teach older adults to use gerontechnology applications. Additionally, we assess whether there is a difference if the human narrator is a child, a young adult, or an older adult. A sample of 124 older adults was collected to test the research hypotheses. Our findings suggest that in general instruction videos with human narrators are preferred by the older adults over the one without (i.e., cartoon character). More interestingly, the older adults prefer child as the human narrator (to young adult and older adult), as reflected in the highest perceived effectiveness and social presence of the video garnered among all the video versions. These insights have important implications on teaching and promoting older adults’ use of gerontechnology applications via instruction videos. We conclude this paper with a discussion on the research implications, limitations and future research.

Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is a new online education form. MOOC aims to provide the advance systematic educations to the public and share the access to the best high educations to Internet users. Although the MOOC platform contained many video lessons of high-quality courses from famous universities around the world, the assessment of students’ learning, including testing methods, grading methods and feedback to student, was unsatisfactory according to XuetangX, an xMOOC websites leading by Tsinghua University in China. Setting effective and satisfactory assessment methods to test and grade students’ learning performance in MOOC has significant values for all stakeholders including instructors, students and the MOOC platform. An interview study was conducted to understanding the current situation of assessments and the opinions towards different types of assessment methods from both instructors and students. We interviewed five teachers, eight course assistants of different categories of MOOCs in XuetangX, and six students from different MOOC platforms. Some conclusions and suggestions about the assessment on students’ learning performance in different categories of MOOCs were drawn in the study. The findings in the study can be referred as guidelines for instructors to design great assessment methods in different MOOCs.

Background: A myth persists that seniors do not use the Internet, are ambivalent toward information and communication technologies (ICT’s), and that a technological divide exists between older and younger generations. Aims: To explore the role of ICT’s in the lives of seniors, in particular, those outliers who are thriving and fully engaged in the use of these technologies. Method(s): This study employed a quasi-ethnographic methodology. In-depth semi-structured interviews were held with research participants in an effort to capture their context-dependent lived experience and deeply explore the role of these technologies in their lives. Results: Four themes emerged from the analysis of the data: social connectivity; face-to-face contact remains; positive addiction; and back to the future. Conclusion: This research is an exploratory study and provides a glimpse into the level to which some older adults are engaged with ICT’s, in particular social media such as Facebook and videoconferencing technologies such as Facetime. The research findings are contrary to the persistent myth that seniors do not use these technologies.

This paper describes our use of the LINE social media software system to promote interaction, convey mood and emotion, and teach students about Kawaii culture during an international travel course that exposes undergraduate students at an American liberal arts college to Japanese culture, technology and design. The LINE user experience incorporates the important Japanese pop-culture principle of Kawaii (cuteness in the context of Japanese culture) and Japanese users enjoy interacting with LINE’s Kawaii interface. We report on our method of integrating LINE software into an international travel course and our evaluation of how students compare LINE’s Kawaii interface with the communication tools and social media tools that they are more familiar with. We also report on the extent to which the students believe that using LINE helped them understand Kawaii design. We also report on opportunities and barriers associated with cross-cultural adoption of social media platforms.

There are a series of problems in the interaction design of car gestures, such as the weak consistency of interior interaction and external modeling, and the less contact between gesture design and cultural perceptual factors. In order to solve the above problems, from the perspective of feature line design, user experience experiment is used to extract the long path and short path features of car gesture interaction. According to these characteristics, combining with the knowledge of car modeling feature lines and the rules of line design in Chinese calligraphy, a HUD map display gesture application is designed for the target car based on the service design rule. The preliminary evaluation results show that the design method can improve the user’s interest and pleasure, and is helpful to the integrity and consistency of car design.

The development and advancement of ICT enable people to share excess capacity (e.g., car, apartment). In this paper, we focus on Didi Chuxing, which is one of the most prominent examples of car-sharing services in the sharing economy in China. This study aims to investigate the role of trust with car-sharing services in sharing economy from the consumers’ perspective. Based on the literature review, a research model with eight research hypotheses is proposed. The research model is empirically tested with Didi Chuxing by using survey data collected from a sample of 309 subjects. Six research hypotheses are significant supported, while two research hypotheses are rejected in this study. The results indicate that the most important determinant for the consumers’ trust in the car-sharing service platform is platform reputation. In addition, increased degree of the consumers’ familiarity with the car-sharing service platform has a positive impact the consumers’ trust in the car-sharing service platform. However, the perceived car-sharing service platform reputation has a positive impact on the consumers’ trust in drivers on the platform.

The dimensions of understanding and involving users and their context while constructing a system have become important. Participatory Design has shown promising success in recent times. The concept of Participatory Design originates from developed countries [11, 13, 16, 17]. Its nature and methods are more oriented toward the Western setting where there is more privilege in terms of economy, education, and technology and a different socio-economic context. However, in the Developmental context, these presumptions may operate differently. In this paper, we critique the operationalization of Participatory Design in a healthcare case study in a developmental context. The study was conducted in urban-poor areas in a metropolitan city in India with 5 users individually, by a Designer and Public Health policy student. All users were recruited on the basis of their education (not more than 8th standard) and the age of their child (below 18 months). This paper reports findings on various factors such as social-cultural barriers, family power hierarchy, language barriers, power distance issues which affect and limit an attempt to facilitate Participatory Design in a developmental context.

The explosive growth of social media has created new opportunities for social games and social payments. This study investigates users’ acceptance of the money gifting social game. The experiment was conducted on WeChat lucky money, a social game bringing the tradition of giving cash-filled lucky money into digital. WeChat lucky money becomes an immediate hit and boosts the usage of WeChat payment in China. Eight North Americans and eight Koreans were recruited to experience the WeChat lucky money. The results showed that international users enjoyed giving and receiving lucky money on WeChat. Most users preferred to play the WeChat lucky money with their close families and friends. Compared with North Americans, Koreans cared more about the extending meaning of the lucky money. Koreans also felt more social pressure when receiving a large amount of money from others.

The population of the world is aging and one of the main concerns of the aged care industry is to provide appropriate care for elderly people as their health and independent functioning declines. This paper reports a systematic review of the roll of Socially Assistive Robots (SAR) in elderly wellbeing, based on Cochrane principles. Relevant publications from diverse databases, including healthcare, engineering, and robotics were sourced and screened. Ninety-five studies in forty-two study groups have been synthesized. The reported outcomes have been categorized based on five PERMA constructs (Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Achievement) in addition to a sixth category (other effects). The findings indicate that SAR has the potential to enhance elderly wellbeing and decrease the workload of caregivers. Based on concerns that emerged during the quality appraisal process, several significant recommendations are made to improve future research and its applicability. Furthermore, acknowledging individuals’ needs, expectations, and preferences alongside multi-modal interaction and data collection translates into improvement of personalization of care. The development of new approaches such as web-based interfaces and cloud computing are highly recommended as the means of overcoming the constraints of the limited computing and storage capabilities of SAR. Moreover, human-like engagement characteristics of socially assistive robots should be seamlessly integrated with other assistive technologies such as tele-health, e-health, and smart homes.

OTAs use traditional statistics models to analyze huge number of data that is generated by the users, and then make predictions on their behavior patterns and preferences. In online tourism industry, statistics models were deeply studied and widely used by many big business companies. However, the author proposed a new model that is able to “freely” analyze and predict users’ online behavior patterns. It constructed a framework that is able to build and modify behavior models for different users in varied environments. Every single action conducted by the customer initiates an update of the existing model, which generates changes of parameters in quantity and/or quality. These changes get fed back to the environment where the customer faces, and cause changes of environment parameters in quantity and/or quality. The changes of the environment parameters stimulate another update cycle of the behavior model. In addition, the results of this study, which were based on the real data, demonstrated how users’ booking behavior affects the OTA’s products recommendations.

With the fast growing of AppStore market and the developing of techniques in opinion mining, this study was aimed to investigate the sentiment and opinions of customer reviews in both China AppStore and US AppStore, and identify the difference of key term and patterns of apps reviews among different genres and between China AppStore and US AppStore. Results showed that there were small differences in using adjective words used or expressing key opinions. The result of this study could help publisher to extract useful customer feedback from customers reviews when publishing apps in foreign countries.

The automobile driving interface pictures are designed and simulated, including 4 kinds of different layout designs and 3 kinds of different color designs, which are served as the simulation system interface to implement the prototype evaluation. Tobii X2-30 screen-type eye tracker and Ergolab man-machine circular simultaneous platform system are adopted in the experiment to gather and record the users’ eye movement data. There are totally 30 participators in 20–45 years old who participated in the experiment. In the formal experiment process, the participators are required to read out the data shown on the picture. The task accomplishment time and recognition accuracy by the participators are selected to be served as the evaluation indexes. After completing the experiment, the mean searching time, mean recognition and reading time and total time are calculated. The difference on recognition and reading efficiency among single picture, pictures with different layout schemes and pictures with different colors are compared, and the influence on identification performance by coding of dashboards and colors are analyzed.

This research explores the relationships between the following aspects: (1) Green product purchase intention and green consumption behaviours; (2) Consumption values and green product purchase intention; (3) Environmental awareness and green product purchase intention. The research made use of questionnaires that were physically administered around university campus. There were two groups of respondents in this study: electric motorcycle users and mobile phone users. The following findings were obtained from the study; (1). Behavioural intention are significantly correlated with green consumption behaviours. (2). Consumption values effect on behavioural intention. (3). Environmental awareness significantly impacts on behavioural intention. The findings can guide green product design and production towards a more effective direction.

The development of mobile application in our daily lives has changed our way of receive various of information, the way people use mobile devices to receive information has become whenever and wherever based on the mobile network technique. End user experience in the context of Internet services is also depend on the waiting time in the beginning of service and the intervals during the service caused by the system delays. We use several factors buffer, stalling time) to investigate the relationship between the video QoE and delay. We used the results of these analyses to inform the construction of the user’s satisfaction influenced by time delay. Given by the experiment results, we have conclusion some factors-based contexts which could influence the user’s satisfaction and some changeable QoE-related trends based on those three factors.

The purpose of this paper is to study the drivers’ information needs in automated driving. Virtual reality and simulation techniques were used to simulate the automated driving in different scenarios, and drivers need to fill in the information needs assessment questionnaires after completing the task. In automated driving, the eye tracker recorded the fixation behavior. The experimental results showed that, regardless of whether drivers focused on automated driving system or not, it is necessary for the system to feedback some general information to the driver, such as vehicle-related information (such as the current speed, blind spots), road-related information (such as the surrounding traffic, condition around, etc.), the auxiliary system state (on or off) and the ability of the auxiliary system to process the current scene etc..