Cross Cultural Design Research

Drawing inspiration from Plato's Allegory of Cave, I chose to explore how domestic migrants perceive 'Bengaluru-ness' because I wanted to understand if our experience of the city is only a fragmented shadow of its reality - a shadow shaped by assumptions, stereotypes and cultural biases. As someone navigating both identities - a North Indian adapting to a South Indian city - I felt like I was constantly shifting between Bangalore, the metropolitan illusion and Bengaluru, the authentic, nuanced experience of the locals. The study highlights the importance of examining cultural phenomena through methodologies that illuminate both shared experiences and variations in perception and construction of cultural identities.

Triangulated Framework

A triangulated framework combining semantics, semiotics and typicality mapping was employed to capture the ways participants assign meaning to symbols, language and imagery. Semantics provided insights into how key words and phrases take on specific meanings depending on the context, semiotics explored the cultural codes within visual and symbolic representations. Typicality mapping classified perceptions from typical to atypical, highlighting similarities and differences across participant backgrounds.

This study applies the above triangulated framework to the case studies which differ in their approaches: one emic and the other etic. It also demonstrates how this method can be used to obtain both qualitative and quantitative data, explore biases and broaden our understanding of cultural identity formation.

This approach can guide future cross-cultural research, providing a replicable model for studying complex social and cultural patterns in an increasingly interconnected world.

I started out with a deck of 112 images and made a Drag and Drop Game in JavaScript. Although the game was interesting for some people, others got fatigued in the middle of it. According to them the fatigue was an outcome of processing a large number of images. They started sorting images randomly after a point.

The other limitation of the game was that it did not provide space for side-to-side comparison of the sorted images which became a barrier in elaborate discussions from the perspective of Semantics and Semiotics.

Hence, I decided to shift to a more open method for Card Sorting. I also reduced the number of images to 50 for offsetting the fatigue factor. My first preference was doing the activity with physical cards as it provides a tactile experience which is more engaging but due to lack of availability of participants offline, I decided to conduct the activity on a Collaboration software called Miro.

This method allowed for more open and diverse discussions, active engagement of participants and better side-to-side comparisons of images.

Online Card Sorting was utilized as a tool to carry out semantics and semiotics on Miro. The participants could annotate images, create groupings, and engage in meaning making through collaborative discussion. This method bridged the gap between quantitative sorting data and rich qualitative insights.

This research was carried out with 16 participants initially but due to the paucity of time, I could only process the data of 12 participants. Out of the 12 participants, 5 were males and 7 were females. Majority of participants were natives of North/Central India. The insights obtained are as following:

The reflective notes document captures the researcher's ongoing observations, methodological decisions, and analytical reflections throughout the card sorting and typicality mapping process.