Cultural Talk

During the study break,my classmates and I attended a cultural talk led by Shao Hong SER. Surprisingly the talk was not as boring as i expected, it turns out quite entertaining. He started to define what is culture, culture is the way of life for an entire society. For instance, if someone or even celebrities started to have a tribal tattoo on their neck, others will start to follow the person and eventually turn into a culture.
Besides that, he also mentioned that there are 3 cultural levels which were:
-Physical [Material culture]
-Social [Behaviour culture]
-Spiritual [Ideal culture]

Moreover, there are 4 steps before designing a product
1) investigation (setting a scenario, research)
2) interaction (telling a story)
3) development (writing a script, sketches)
4) implementation (designing)

These steps will help us a lot for designing a product, allow us to create a much meaningful and worthy product. If we do not follow one of these steps, things might go wrong. For example, Shao Hong has mentioned that was a controversy involved in the design of the limited edition Nike Air Force 1 in Thailand.

Besides having the the flag of Thailand and the royal patterns on the shoes which were consider to be disrespectful for the Thais. The main issue of the design of the shoes was the symbol of the holy spirit(only for the King of Thailand) on the back of the shoes, which was very offensive and disrespectful to the King of Thailand. As a result the shoes were ban in the country
When the designer of the shoe was asked why did he design in such way, he/she then replied that he thought the symbol looked cool and interesting when he/she first saw that symbol in a temple in Thailand. The designer who designed the shoes simply put the things he/she liked without doing any research about the meaning of the symbol and the culture of Thailand, which will eventually create a backlash from the society.
The lesson of the day was always do research on the subject before taking any action.