Cultural Theory and Design:
Identifying Trends by Looking
at the Action in the Periphery
Christine Satchell

The Interaction Design Group , University of Melbourne | [e-mail]

 

Cultural theory helps us understand users’ needs and desires; it sheds light on why people are likely to adopt one trend but not another and helps indicate what cultural influences are shaping society at any given time. It points out things like why our love for the iPod extends beyond its functionality as an MP3 player and includes our collective embrace of its distinctive white headphone cords. So although design practice has ways of understanding technological features—and of eliciting user needs—cultural theory helps to illustrate the symbolic value of technological artifacts, which is often at least as important to their adoption and use as their instrumental functions. This makes cultural theory a viable way for a designer of new technologies to produce a well-received product or service.

The use of cultural theory in the design process is not necessarily about telling designers to “do” something different. Instead, like other theories, it is about thinking differently. The use of cultural theory is being applied in the development of a mobile phone prototype called Swarm, illustrating how different conceptual thinking can lead to actual results [ 1]. This is

followed by speculation about how this type of thinking can be applied as part of the design process.

 

Application of Theory to Practice A three-year study of mobile phones and youth culture revealed that participants’ needs were not about technology; they were about culture, style, fashion, identity, friendship, and deceit. Translating such complex, subtle user needs into design called for a framework to contextualize these nuances of mobile-driven interactions [ 2]. Cultural theory was ideally aligned to do this because it provides an in-depth perspective on the ingrained and intangible practices that are at the heart of social communication [ 3]. What follows are two key concepts—“focusing on the action in the periphery” and “digital identity”—along with an illustration of these concepts as found in user data and in a design.

to focus [ 4]. For example, one of the peripheral groups that have been of most interest to cultural theorists is youth. Significantly, cultural theory provides a holistic critique of everyday social behaviors of youth cultures, not as some sort of novelty but as unique, meaningful cultural formations. This is important because innovation is often occurring within the subcultures of youth cultures: Think hackers and gamers. By understanding the activities of these fringe users, new designs can successfully be brought into the mainstream. The process through which illegal underground peer-to-peer file sharing culminated in the development of the iPod is a classic example of this.

When taking this view, the focus of attention is not what properties youth have as a class of users, but rather by what mechanisms youth is constituted as a cultural category—not so much “what youth is doing,” but “how youth is doing it.” This highlights the contrasts between what the HCI usability specialist would look for and what the cultural theorist would look for. Another way of considering the difference is an emphasis on goals as compared with experi-

[ 1] “Cellphone Tells the World What Mode You Are In.” New Scientist. 23 December 2006.

[ 2] Satchell, C. “Cultural Theory and Real World Design: Dystopian and Utopian Outcomes.” In the Proceedings of CHI ’08, Florence, Italy, 2008.

[ 3] Sengers, P., J. McCarthy, and P. Dourish. “Reflective HCI: Articulating an Agenda for Critical Practice.” Extended Abstracts CHI ‘06, 1683- 1686. New York: ACM Press, 2006.

Focusing on the Action
in the Periphery
Cultural theory looks beyond
mainstream culture and
focuses on activities occurring
on the periphery. This means
that previously unrepresented
groups and practices come

[ 4] Eagleton, T.

After Theory. New York:

Basic Books, 2003.