Increasingly, businesses and designers are tasked with developing products and experiences for people living in a globalised world, meaning that the complexity of diverse cultures and complex backgrounds must be considered.
People today are global – and that’s not going to change anytime soon. Thanks to technology and the internet, many people around the world have access to the same ideas, meanings and values – and these translate into global trends, demands and aspirations.
In the context of globalisation, culture is becoming an increasingly powerful force. On the one hand, we fear the homogenisation of culture and experiencing a void of cultural diversity. On the other hand, we’re also anxious about cultural fragmentation. Brands feel they need to connect with consumers at a local level because they know people don’t accept a ‘one size fits all’ approach any more. So what’s the answer?
Innovation has always needed research. R&D, technological research and technological developments for departments, such as marketing, are relevant. However, we’re now seeing that ‘design thinking’ and ‘human-centred design’ don’t give us enough information, alone, to tackle the global context and the requirements of global brands. These approaches use methods such as personas and customer journey mapping, which are good starting points. But they produce polarised results and rarely take localised cultural nuances or global trends into account. These outdated methods isolate the consumer from their wider context and are no longer suitable for brands that exist in an interconnected world.
Join Joanna Brasset on Thursday 19 March at Design Thinking & Innovation Week. Joanna will be discussing the need for us to take common processes one step further, so that we can begin to understand cultural context and develop global brands that can flourish.
Future London Academy has recruited a brilliant schedule of experts for this year’s Design Thinking & Innovation Week. Other speakers include:
Let’s embark on a journey towards a fair, inclusive, and equitable future. As entrepreneurs, creative thinkers, developers, and UX designers, we can shape the narrative of artificial intelligence (AI) to impact the world positively.
In this one-hour intO DISCOVERY workshop, you’ll learn how to master prompts to support brainstorming and the development of future scenarios, and receive practical tips for evaluating ChatGPT output effectively and responsibly. The session will be led by intO’s Director of Research, Chloe Amos-Edkins, and Foresight Strategist, Thiara Cavadas.
