Indulgence

the extent to which societies encourage or discourage the gratification of basic and natural human desires

Time Orientation

the extent to which a society fosters pragmatic virtues oriented toward short-term or long-term rewards and obligations

Uncertainty Avoidance

the extent to which members of a society tend to feel threatened by ambiguous and unknown situations

Gender Roles

the differences in emotional meanings and societal expectations between those born male and those born female

Social Dependence

the extent to which members of a society are dependent upon others and are obligated to maintain social connections

Power Distance

the extent to which members of institutions and organizations expect and accept that power is distributed unequally

Step 7 | Reflect

At the end of your project, you should revisit the assumptions you made in Phase 2 and reflect on where you were right, where you were wrong, what methods were successful, and what you might do differently next time. Like Design Thinking, Participatory Design Thinking is an iterative process that doesn’t stop at the completion of a project. Your process should never be set in stone, but should always be[...]

Step 6 | Participatory Design Thinking

The Participatory Design Thinking model is a hybridization of Participatory Design methods with the Design Thinking workflow. The traditional Design Thinking model (Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test) is an iterative process of problem-framing, ideation, and prototyping. It is a highly effective model for producing collaborative ideas—though, at times, it can lack opportunities for designers and stakeholders to collaborate. The Participatory Design Thinking workflow attempts to address this separation by including[...]

Step 5 | Assumption Personas

In this step, you will create a few Assumption Personas. Think of these as brief dossiers representing imaginary stakeholders. Look over the list of assumptions of cultural values you made in Step 4. Next, take one of your assumptions from each of these dimensions and group them together into a persona. Go ahead and give this persona a proper name. You might even add an avatar to help you imagine[...]

Step 4 | Check Your Biases

Use Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory to make estimations about cultural values. Hofstede’s theory groups several patterns found across cultures into six categories (or dimensions): Power Distance:the extent to which members of institutions and organizations expect and accept that power is distributed unequally Social Dependence:the extent to which members of a society are dependent upon others and are obligated to maintain social connections Gender Roles:the differences in emotional meanings and societal[...]