RENAISSANCE

The Renaissance Project: Towards a strategic orientation and associated toolkit to support global UCD that is appropriate and accountable to local culture

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Companies strive to develop products en masse for a global market. The challenge for companies is to maintain product quality, consistency and profitability, whilst ensuring that products meet and respect local and cultural norms. When technology design contravenes expectation, a product will fail, which can be disastrous not only for a company’s profits but dangerous in safety critical situations, and a potential source of structural instability in complexly interconnected sensitive industries such as finance. The Renaissance Project Project will establish the first steps towards a strategic orientation and associated toolkit to support global UCD that is appropriate and accountable to local culture. There are three main research objectives: i) to capture information related to knowledge management strategies for UCD; ii) to establish a toolkit to support appropriate design in disparate cultures; iii) to disseminate this knowledge within industry and academia. This research directly builds on the researcher’s prior Marie Curie ToK research, during which a design framework and evaluation tool was developed at Philips Research in Eindhoven to support socially intelligent design of products. By exploring new and pertinent research findings, capitalizing on existing international industry and academic partners (whilst simultaneously seeking to extend this network of interest), and addressing social need to ensure design fits culture, The Renaissance Project research findings promise to lead to new understanding and support for technology design and innovation.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

As consumers become more demanding, supporting customer-centred design on a cultural level in manufacturing and industry could play an important role in rendering the European economy more competitive worldwide.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Global mass production may be good from a cost perspective, but it does not take cultural differences around the world into consideration.

Products often come in a single design that is delivered to many countries in identical packaging.

One way of raising European competitiveness is by promoting user-centred design (UCD) in manufacturing, which respects different preferences and cultural variations.The EU-funded project RENAISSANCE worked on a solution to encourage UCD that responds to cultural differences.

It sought to collect information on knowledge management strategies for UCD, develop the toolkit, and disseminate this knowledge within industry and academia.To achieve its aims, the project team conducted a theoretical and empirical investigation of design strategy using a leading global telecommunications company as a case study.

It presented a workshop regarding UCD approaches for the company's global design strategy.

The workshop covered the need for digital tools to support data collection on people's behaviours, practices and routines in the context where a product would be delivered.

The team then worked with another company that was keen on adopting a user-centred approach to support market and design research technology for studying people, practices and routines.

After conducting an ethnographic study of the rapidly growing organisation and collecting relevant research, the team helped the company adopt a UCD programme dubbed Customer Centred Design.

Overall, the UCD strategy employs interviews with market and design research professionals to capture user preferences, activities and attitudes, as well as interviews with client networks.

It involves using digital communications technology to conduct research across countries simultaneously in order to develop UCD products.

Examples of such data gathering include capturing the reaction to sporting events across the globe and studying the stresses of working practices.

Within the project, the key partners developing UCD have benefited substantially from the concept and have grown in size, in parallel with the demand for the toolkit.

In addition, the use of UCD has proven to have a positive impact on management and employees, as well as on organisational culture.

Currently, one project partner is exploring the use of the developed technology for social science quality assurance in educational settings and in clinical trials.

This bodes well for UCD in a number of fields that support the European economy.