Design Ethics Across Cultures - Ideation for cultural clarity
Commentary from Center for Cultural Studies & Analysis
– Jamie O’Boyle and Margaret J. King, Ph.D., cultural analysts
Kile Ozier is a colleague and, IMHO, one of the clearest
and deepest thinkers in the field of experience creation and a master at
creating experiences that resound with the audience on a personal, emotional
level.
And we’ve never seen him create the same thing twice.
Recently returned from the Gulf Region where he was one of
many expats working on the upcoming – and troubled – Expo2020 Dubai, Kile has a
lot to say about several aspects of professional ethics for Experience
designers working overseas. Since we have written that creating a compelling
experience must be based on a shared vision that goes all the way to the top,
we couldn’t help being interested.
Also, Kile is one of the most ethical people it has been
our pleasure to know and work with.
The topics below come from Kile’s IMHO online posting of
March 20, 2017, at www.imho.kileozier.com (“Sharing what I’ve learned…of
creating experiences with deep emotional connections”), and on his Elephant in
the TEAroom 2017 (March 20, 2017) blogsite.
In these, Kile proposes areas of concern for designers
working in other cultures as start points for “Consciousness
Conversations.”
And we agree. Exploring topics of expectations, mentoring,
problem-framing, attitude, open communication, and installation maintenance
should become standard for discussions about best practices and the ethics of
cross-cultural project management, with designers as “Ambassadors of Best
Practices.” With this in mind, we
responded from our cultural analyst perspective below.
Kile asks:
Might we find ways to
communicate these things, cross-culturally, to the benefit of future projects?
Is it too late to impress
these lessons on EXPO 2020?
Do we not have an obligation
to support the ultimate success of all projects in order to continue to build
and evolve the industry? Is it possible; would such advice be or have been
heeded were it to have been given, supportively and early on, without coming
across as paternal?
What are the realistic
possibilities?
….It has to do with self-awareness, responsibility for the
business, the future of the
business, the sharing and spreading by example of best practices…and the
obligations inherent in leadership.
Cultural Studies & Analysis offered responses to
clarify cultural differences. Often this
is a matter of pointing to the contrasts between American values and developing
world cultures, roughly dividing culture into East and West.
1) Maintenance
and upkeep post-design: “It's natural to evaluate the
likelihood of good or poor maintenance at the pre-design stage, under ‘How will
this installation be used and abused?’
Our job is to do the absolute best work possible to prepare the
receiving client to manage and maintain…in the best way.”
CS&A: The maintenance
concept can often be an outcome of culture, which is the outcome of environment.
Many tropical and subtropical countries have evolved a fatalistic – and quite
environmentally sensible - culture that says “You can’t fight nature or God’s
will. Things will fall apart. The cost of keeping up outward appearances is
steep in labor and materials. So it
would be futile – if not outright blasphemous – to try to maintain when the
environment always wins out eventually.”
Maintenance is a cultural issue, based on the environment,
not a personal character quality (which also works for health care, for the
same reason). It actually makes sense from a cost/benefit analysis, so
deterioration is viewed as natural and just another aesthetic stage. That’s mostly
confined to Africa and Asia. However, Louisiana began as a French
colonial possession, and culture evolves very, very, slowly. You can see
evidence of this in the tourist zones of New Orleans. If you were trying to
theme New Orleans, you would have to build in a sort of genteel deterioration
to make it look right. That’s what they do with new construction in New
Orleans. If you are building a Cajun restaurant, it can’t be sharp and
polished. No foul here. It's the way groups think based on long
experience within their own environments of extreme heat, humidity, and the
sheer cost of upkeep.
2) Condescension: Across race, age, gender, ethnicity,
education, and language:
CS&A: Concepts
of respect and honor vary widely across the globe. In the US, we promote the
concept of “constructive criticism.” That value doesn’t exist in many countries,
where any criticism, even “constructive,” equates to a personal affront. Americans
are not culturally conditioned to the extensive social negotiation of the
Middle East and Asia--particularly whenever they have one eye fixed on the
deadline.
Condescension in working teams between client and
consultant: this is a tough one. As professionals, we are always selling our
ideas, but people accept or reject them on the basis of their own reasons—of which
a newcomer may be totally unaware. So as
a professional, you have to recognize that their local colleagues are not
unintelligent or willful. They have reasons – and these may be reasons they are
unwilling to share with an outsider out of mutual consideration. Some of
the dominance and hierarchical behaviors that go on in projects are outcomes of
stress; others are culturally driven. We are engaged on a project for a
major music school to identify some of the cultural awareness points that need
attention -- and finding that intense competition and professional stress at a
young age are the core issues, not cultural insensitivity or ignorance of other
ways of life.
The short form: when working outside the US: never
criticize, condemn, or complain. Not even “constructive criticism.”
3) Speaking
Up with negative communications: “Is there an approach where
projects known to be at risk can be rescued before it’s too late?”
CS&A: This one
has strong cultural underpinnings. In many strict hierarchies, including
China and the Middle East, you don’t ever, ever, give a superior bad news. Army
Special Forces are specifically taught the “no criticism, overt or implied”
rule when dealing with foreign nationals. One polite fiction was to ask
their advice, then say “Very good…and may I also suggest we … (do what actually
needed to be done).” This would generally be OK’d, not because they were
unaware of our ruse, but because they themselves probably invented that
particular tactic of face-saving dialogue.
Now nobody seeks criticism, but in many cultures “critical
thinking” can/will be interpreted as setting up an adversarial relationship.
Arab business relationships, for example, are built on a history of personal
exchange – they are trust relationships, but they are also fragile. The only
true trust relationships in these settings are family (extended). No matter how
good your relationship, as a colleague, you are not family. And criticism or trying
to set realistic deadlines when someone higher up the ladder has already made
their wishes known places you in the role of adversary – and trust-breaker.
4) Raised
expectations at openings:
“Today’s opening-day expectations are far more sophisticated, aware, and
critical of failure than in the past.”
The world is now full of lifelong theme park experts: they
are the sophisticated guest list.
They’ve seen the best and rest, led by top-shelf design. This is one reason museums hold "soft
openings," to learn from their own mistakes as part of the process of
fixing what doesn’t work in real time. Perhaps that's a way to frame the
opening as experimental - making the audience part of it as evaluators. Raised
expectations are part of the equation for competing in the experience economy. Beginning with Disneyland, the designers made
it better than it had to be – setting the A-plus standard for the industry ever
since. Unless you can exceed
expectations in novel ways (as innovation across park-design parameters),
there’s almost no sense in trying to be creative.
5) Role
of mentors / rescuers: “Can
we effectively offer advice, mentorship, responsibly sharing cautionary tales
to contemporaries in other parts of the world or industry?”
CS&A: This would
be far more routine if the profession were more self-aware and didn't view one
another as rivals bound by trade-secret silence. We'd love to see this
happen as what we should all be pursuing.
If you are working in another culture and you have a good
working relationship with your local counterpart, think of that person as a
guide, interpreter. Don’t offer your opinion, ask him what he thinks of this or
that idea. Placing yourself in the eager student position is flattering and you
may start hearing things that would never occur to you otherwise.
6) Problem solving for best design answers: “And how do we create
these answers? By applying our bodies of knowledge and experience to what we
learn before we act in a new context; using our judgement with that experience
to craft original approaches to the cross-cultural work.”
CS&A: Problem-solving
- and problem FRAMING, especially - rather than just coming in with
off-the-shelf answers, is the heart of the creative enterprise. This is
what expert opinion is all about: the "lay of the land,"
understanding the context of any project and its opportunities and limits -- as
we do for the cultural and human factors side in cultural analysis. The
Japanese might spend years preparing, thinking, and learning before they
initiate action. Then they go straight for their goal. Americans tend to
jump right in and correct as they go rather than spend their time making
certain that the problem they are solving is, in fact, the problem they should
be solving. We think we have a planning stage--but compared to other
cultures, our background research and percolation is ridiculously brief.
7) And
finally, Social Media: “…will cut the [subpar] project down before
the day is out,” if it’s found wanting.
CS&A: Think
about Black Sunday, July 17, 1955, at Disneyland in California--as a social
media event. Half a century later, such
a disastrous opening would have set the proto-park off course for the next two
years or killed it. Social media leaves
almost no margin for parks and events to develop and grow within the audience
experience feedback loop. Instant
feedback presents yet another aspect of design to be considered and weighed in
the pre-opening equation.
