Priming culture differences in a creative design course

Abstract

Extensive research has focused on the influence of culture on individuals’ performance in design, with either positive or negative effects. Moreover, studies have shown that it is possible to prime individuals’ cultural values to influence their behaviours in design. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study has explored priming culture in design, especially with digital stimuli. Therefore, we conducted a pilot study to explore the influence of priming culture by digital stimuli in design. First, we created video-based digital stimuli to prime individuals’ individualism versus collectivism (IC) cultural values. We tested the digital stimuli in an ideation exercise during a creative design course that aimed to explore and implement essential creative problem-solving and design thinking methodologies in practice for students. The results showed that the collectivism digital stimulus increased the participants’ IC value. However, in the other two conditions, the participants’ IC values also increased, which was unexpected. Therefore, we discussed the role that enjoyable group ideation plays in participants’ IC values. Furthermore, we found that their design aim changes by priming IC values. These findings can support the development of educational practices aimed at encouraging design novices in teams independently of their culture and inspire researchers to further explore the influence of priming culture in design.