Universality
When writing my first blog ‘Regularity’, I was travelling in Abu Dhabi. But that was not my final destination. I arrived in Shanghai three weeks ago, where I worked on a school project. The project is an initiative from Designskolen Kolding and TongJi University. We collaborated with students from TongJi, to find out how Chinese children play. But besides the research question, there were some remarkable findings in a bigger perspective.
When observing the people in Shanghai, we discovered a lot of differences between the ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ culture (see figure 1). I don’t want to generalize both cultures, because they have so many facets. The Danish and American culture may differ like Korean and Chinese culture. But it may help me to understand the differences we might not always be aware of. Perspective Design means to me to come up with design solutions. The solutions can provide answers for cases or problems. But depending on your perspective, the outcome of a design can differ dramatically if you embrace other aspects.
In the ‘Western’ world we are often asked to analyse the problem, to come up with an innovative design. But the ‘Eastern’ idea is much more about embracing all aspects, to create a harmony between different aspects. Yang Li tried to capture the differences between Germany and China in simple icons (see figure 2). One of those is about contacts; which may not only be applicable on social relations, but also on their values. To me, it looks the ‘Eastern’ people try to find a balance - yin and yang - and are not fixed to one solution. Collaboration I also experienced the differences in language, because every student was forced to speak in his/her non-native language. And even speaking the same language, the interpretation can differ, according what we are used to. But when taking your time, it is possible to understand each other deeply (see figure 3).
Four different groups from Designskolen, both bachelor and master students, were given the oppurtunity to learn a lot in China. I hope that the new study 'Radical Innovation and Sustainability in the fashion industry' (september 2015) will have the same effect as my experience in Shanghai. For upcoming students, I see it as a even more mondial-based thinking education. My journey in Shanghai is almost finished, but I would like to bring my few new perspectives back to Denmark. It makes my existence relative to other cultures in the universe. I may hopefully even come up with new design solutions.