DG412

The Geert Hofstede theory

This theory really gave me a new insight of other cultures. Before I read the book I have never even thought about the relations between subjects as individualism and collectivism and how they affect people in daily life. One thing that I learned from the interview we did with Huibert de Man is that you should not take the theory to seriously. The fact that you read the book does not mean you understand a whole nation or tribe or culture. It is giving you a good starting point for understanding other cultures but not everybody is the same and in one country there are a lot of differences. For example in the Nederland’s; people that live near Amsterdam are in my opinion much more self-centered then people that live in the south of the Nederland’s. The Nederland’s is a small country so you can imagine what the differences could be in a country as China or America.

Furthermore our interview gave me a lot of insight in the culture of China. Our expat worked as a teacher in China and bumped into a lot of situations that would have gone differently here in the Nederland’s. In China it is usual that if a teacher and students go out to eat something that the students pay for everything. In this way they treat well and hope that you as a teacher will give better grades. This is one of the examples that gave me an insight in the Chinese culture.

Interview expat

Thanks to this interview I started to understand the relation between design and cultures. There are so many different people and so many different views on religion and so on, it is really important if you are going to design something for people around the world that you know the culture. If you don’t know how the people think, then the chance of success for your product will be very low. Things that are very normal in the Nederland’s could be very insulting in China for example. If you do research to the culture you are designing for, then you can try to avoid this to happen and increase the chance of success of you product.  The project I am working on now is not really appropriate for this kind of knowledge but I can use this knowledge for my next project and the knowledge from the Geert Hofstede theory to improve my project.

Presentations

Our presentation was about individualism versus collectivism. My task was to come up with design examples that really could show this. This taught me a lot about the differences in cultures and countries and it also helped that we had on group member that lived in Singapore for a while. He really knew the differences in cultures and he asked the right questions during the interview. I learned a lot from him. Listening to the other presentation taught me more about the other subject of the Hofstede theory. These parts I did not really look into detail and that was a good way for me to learn more about them. It is easier for me to learn thing this way because it is much visual since I am not a really good reader.

The thing I really liked about the assignment was the interview but also the discussions in the classroom. This really forced you to think about certain subjects and preparing yourself with an answer because at any moment you could be asked for your opinion.

Nowadays I am also much more aware of the effect of culture on design. I see it everywhere, in websites, TV and all sorts of products. This assignment has sort of opened my eyes on social cultural awareness.

Next time in the assignment I would like to try to be more involved in the classroom and try to really interact in the discussions. I had difficulties with this because I felt that I did not have a contribution to the discussion. This does not always will be the case but at least I can try this more. I can try to improve this by asking myself questions about what I think about the situation.