The Washing Machine
That Ate My Sari—Mistakes
in Cross-Cultural Design
Apala Lahiri Chavan

Human Factors International | apala@humanfactors.com

Douglas Gorney

Human Factors International | gorney@california.com

Beena Prabhu

Human Factors International | beena@humanfactors.com

Sarit Arora

Human Factors International | sarit@humanfactors.com

[ 1] Dervis, K. Annual
Commencement
Day Lecture of the
Export-Import Bank of
India, 18 March 2008.
Perspectives on the
New Structure of the
World Economy. UNDP.
<http://content.undp.
org/go/newsroom/2008/
march/kemal-dervis-
perspectives-on-the-
new-structure-of-
the-world-economy.
en;jsessionid=
axb Wzt8vXD9>

“At purchasing power parity exchange rates, the developing countries as a whole would, in recent years and according to growth projections for 2008 and 2009, account for about one-half of global GDP compared to about 37 percent in the early 1960s. It must be stressed, however, that this increase is entirely due to a set of middle- and lower-middle-income ‘emerging’ countries [ 1].”

—Kemal Dervis,

administrator of the United Nations Development Program

January + February 2009

[ 2] “Innovation in Emerging Markets.” Deloitte Development LLC, 2007.

[ 3] Trout, J. “Peter Drucker on Marketing.” Forbes. 3 July 2006. <http://www. forbes.com/colum- nists/2006/06/30/ jack-trout-on-marketing- cx_jt_0703drucker. html>

The rise of emerging markets has fundamentally altered the global marketplace. Actually, it has created a global marketplace, a vast, wired network of manufacturers, programmers, and designers who can be anywhere. But consumers and users are always local. And when it comes to developing successful products and services for these users, there is an almost infinite number of ways to get it wrong. Less than half of companies competing in emerging markets

have been very successful in meeting their goals, according to one study [ 2]. Bringing a new product to an emerging and possibly untapped market is seductive. But entering the market is an expensive proposition, and failure to launch can be very, very costly.

Peter Drucker said, “the business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation.” So successful marketers and designers are the ones who must get emerging markets right [ 3]. Designers need to gain a deep, almost tactile awareness of the culture and context of their target market, never letting the global threads of networks and supply chains wrap them in a cocoon. It’s essential that they learn from the mistakes others have made in creating products for emerging markets.

Slicing the Wealth Pyramid Designers have been dealing with cultural differences and

their impact on design since the first exports reached the shelves in faraway new markets. They have started to consider the distinct approaches required by emerging markets only relatively recently, however, as well as the tools and methodologies to clearly understand them. The design and marketing community is still in a dialogue about how to define the topic.

Coined in the early ’80s by fund manager Antoine van Agtmael, author of The Emerging Market Century, the term “emerging markets” has proved remarkably elastic, over time describing economies as divergent as Russia and Botswana. An emerging market is generally defined as one that has not yet fully developed but that has a middle class vital enough to attract goods and services from developed—and increasingly globalized—economies.

However, the needs of the rising middle class in Shanghai or Bangalore are very differ-