Developing cultural sensitivity

Abstract

Cultural sensitivity is an important issue in design and not only about dealing with cultural diversity, but also about designing for cultural dilemmas that are related to multi-cultural contexts. This paper is concerned with cultural sensitivity and presents students’ perspectives, which were obtained through workshops. For this aim at first workshops on cultural sensitivity in design were briefly introduced. Then the last workshop, which was performed in Kish Island (Iran) at University of Tehran, was explained and some design results were presented through illustration. 70 design students with different backgrounds and nationalities participated. In order to obtain the students’ perspectives, an online questionnaire was sent to them. The mix of open and closed questions was related to students’ learning experiences. The results were categorised into five themes that arose from the open questions. The findings indicate that students had a fruitful experience in the workshop and obtained a large amount of knowledge and experience regarding cultural sensitivity, not only through the workshop approach and teaching style, but also through the international character and its socials aspects.